Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Van Jones, the CNN host and commentator, recently complained that neither the global left nor the mainstream media are covering the horrific violence against Nigerian civilians by Islamic terrorists.
True, they are not reporting the slaughter.
Truer still, they should be.
However, Van Jones went completely off the rails when he blamed “the Jews.”
Or as he put it, “No Jews, no news”—a stereotyped statement as anti-Semitic as it is untrue.
In truth, lots of mass violence worldwide is ignored.
Unlike Trump, neither the left nor the mainstream media cared much for the recent mass ethnic cleansing of Armenian Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh—more than 120,000—by Azerbaijani Muslims.
Nor did they report much on the dangerous May 2025 “mini” war between nuclear Pakistan and nuclear India, prompted by a mass killing by Pakistani terrorists.
These mostly ignored mass evacuations, terrorist acts, and ethnic cleansings had nothing to do with Jones’s absurd idea of “no Jews, no news.”
Nor were they neglected because of the color of the dead.
The West snored all through the 1990s when Russia obliterated Chechnya and left Grozny completely flattened.
Why then so much more attention to the Middle East conflicts, and for that matter, the Ukraine War?
The Middle East is the historic and volatile nexus of three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Choke points, like the Straits of Hormuz, Suez Canal, and Bosphorus, are critical to the global economy.
The region is the birthplace of three global religions—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Religious wars there have incited world attention continuously, from well before and after the Crusades.
The Middle East proved a critical front in both World Wars. During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1973 neared a nuclear showdown over a proxy war.
Over 40 percent of the world’s daily oil leaves the Middle East.
It is the birthplace of the terrorists of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and Hezbollah. Over the decades, they have collectively killed thousands of Americans.
To the degree the media now fixates on Israel, it is likely because of fear of an exchange between wannabe nuclear Iran and Israel, in such a historic, oil-rich, and geostrategically contested area. Or better, we might fault ancient anti-Semitism, which explains why the majority of condemnatory UN resolutions have fixated on tiny Israel.
Moreover, Europe has learned that any violence in the Middle East quickly translates to widespread terrorism and mass violence on its own streets by its growing and restive Islamic minorities.
As far as media attention on the Ukraine war, it marks the first proxy conflict between nuclear Russia and the nuclear West, in which one side is directly involved in the fighting, on Russia’s own border and at the doorstep of Europe.
The war is the greatest bloodbath in Europe since 1945, exceeding battles at the Somme, Verdun, and Stalingrad in both duration and body count.
As for the horror in Nigeria, the only time when the left and the mainstream media really covered violence in Africa was during the unrest of the 1980s in apartheid South Africa, when it was a daily news story.
Then the Western media focused only on white Afrikaner-on-black violence.
In contrast, there is plenty of black-on-white violence today in South Africa, whose cities are statistically among the most dangerous in the world.
But the media and the world have mostly ignored the failures of a post-Mandela and increasingly racist and violent South Africa.
It is also lamentable that the left and the media do not talk much about the 12,000 murders per year of black Americans, mostly by black males.
Instead, it focuses far more on rare white-on-black iconic deaths that the left sees as politically useful, such as those of Michael Brown, George Floyd, and Trayvon Martin.
To the degree that the media reacts to particular pressures at home, domestic constituencies play some role.
Meteoric rises in the U.S. Islamic population and foreign students from the Middle East have made the Gaza “genocide” front and center in popular culture and the news, and far more covered by the media than October 7 itself.
If Jones wishes proper attention to the Nigerian catastrophe, he might better explain why American blacks have not commensurately pressured the left to publicize the slaughter of innocent Nigerians by Islamist terror gangs.
The reason is not “the Jews,” but more likely the nature of the killers.
The mass deaths in Africa are not due to affluent white “colonial settlers,” but to radical black Islamic terrorists.
Moreover, the protocols of diversity/equity/inclusion have strangely cast radical Islam as a shared victim in the binary of victimized/victimizers.
In sum, black Islamic terrorists who mass murder are often immune from left-wing and media censure, and thus their innocent black victims are mostly forgotten as well.
Trayvon Martin was killed in self defence by a man the media insisted on labeling a “white hispanic”, with a white father and Peruvian mother. In that case, Obama is a “white Kenyan”. The fact of the matter is that blacks killing whites is far more common than the reverse even though blacks are outnumbered by whites over 5 to 1. Why does US media choose to pretend whites are gunning for blacks when the reverse is true? And are black parents really misinforming their kids in “the talk” when they are statistically much safer in white areas or near police than they are among their fellow blacks?
Van Johnson’s use of the phrase “No Jews, no news” in the context of his appearance on the Bill Maher show cannot be attributed as being antisemitic. Mr. Johnson used the phrase in the context that Israel’s permanent representative to the U.N., Gilad Erdan (2020-2024), previously had because of the absence then of the news media addressing Arab on Arab, or Muslim on Muslim violence and being fixated entirely on Israel.
Van Jones is a straight up twisted Marxist. He is a snake in the grass. He is a Marxist propagandist dressed up as a left wing moderate. I don’t believe anything that guy says.
A very thought provoking article. Attempting to absorb the data while I drink my morning coffee, is an excellent use of my time.
There wouldn’t be as much so called antisemitism in the world. If people didnt talk about it, all day every day. Everything today is antisemitism it seems. Netanyahu is A piece of crap. But you cant say that. Cause if you do they say that you hate all jews. That your antisemitic and want to see all jews dead. Its freaking ridiculous and retarded. Likewise blaming everything on THE jews is ridiculous and retarded. I could go the resf of my life without hearing those two words again. Antisemitism, jew. And it wold be too soon.
Agreed, Jeremy, what happened to the podcasts or any information on what’s going on. I miss VDH’s great summaries, Jack’s humor, Sami’s commercials. 😉
Thanks for setting the record straight about Van Jones’s ignorant anti-Semitic statement. What makes his statement more egregious is the fact that his alleys in the media cover the plight of Jews in their defense of survival from the perspective, that the Jewish state is evil and must be stopped, not real evil in the form of Hamas. The whole world suffers when it doesn’t stand with Israel and their fight for civilization.
What is stopping Mr. Jones from taking up the issues he raises? Perhaps his editors are controlling the narrative…I thought so!
Bibi Netanyahu is right, this is yet another unhappy proof that anti Semitism never goes away, it flares up cyclically.
Mr. Jones should comment on why the Christian world has ignored the murders of Christians in Africa and the Middle East for decades. And I’ll bet he would find that among the few who did notice were Jews with a media platform. But it just doesn’t make any difference to anti Semites.
What+components+of+the+leftist+collectavist+phycology+makes+it+unlikely+any+of+them+will+realize+their+hypocrisy.
@Steven Getz
‘Palestinians’ are not Canaanites. That is totally absurd. Canaanites disappeared soon after the Jewish conquest of Canaan, absorbed or destroyed into new Jewish polity. ‘Palestinians’ are just another bunch of Arabs, the spearpoint of Arab imperialism, that hail from all over the other Arab conquests of the area.
All excellent points by VDH and commentary. Mr. Majoros makes an important observation:
“It seems now the politicians and news media are capitalizing on the product of the American educational system. Teach people poorly and one can shear the flock endlessly.”
Our educational system is so lost, the only possible way out is school choice. Competition will raise standards.
Van who?
Does anyone know where the VDH podcast has been this week? I miss it!
I feel privileged to read pieces like this by Victor, and I’m also encouraged at some of the excellent comments here.
I started being bothered by the bias in American media over 30 years ago, but lately I’ve started to feel a breakthrough.
I don’t mean by this that the media is any less terrible – – it’s obviously become worse. But something has happened since Trump’s rise to begin exposing all the ridiculous bias in the media. There are even signs that common sense is making a comeback that’s something to be thankful for.
Victor hits another home run with this analysis. Van Jones is a product of racist left-wing upper class whites who hate their parents for their achievements and carry guilt for historical past injustices.
The God of the Jewish people was and still is against sacrificing your own children to gain favor power or wealth. That was the lesson that God taught Abraham with Isaac. Western European Romans were also against child sacrifice. That is one of the reasons they destroyed Carthage and enslaved the few Carthaginians that remained. Romans considered the Carthaginians to be perfidious and evil child-killers. Canaanites, from whence the Carthaginians emigrated, also believed in both child sacrifice and eliminating the Jews, as Nazi fascists in the 20th century. Under Stalin and Chairman Mao, many million Ukrainian and Chinese children were sacrificed at the alter of Communist ideals. Palestinians are the progeny of the Canaanites. They are gladly sacrificing their young sons in their war with the Jews. How are they different than their ancestors many millennia ago? The Western world needs to wake up and smell the carnage of anti-Jewish death. God is watching.
All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” – George Orwell
You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.” – Robert A. Heinlein
It seems now the politicians and news media are capitalizing on the product of the American educational system. Teach people poorly and one can shear the flock endlessly.
I’d bet Hillside has a solution for this.
MSM …either lies or doesn’t cover stories that do not fit the narrative they are paid to report on.
The hopelessly biased, corrupt media-democrat complex has been the seed to our country’s division. Even so-called conservative mediums are impacted by the deliberate deception of the media. Israel was a victim of genocidal slaughter on Oct 7 and the NYT and Dems immediately and asymmetrically flipped the script and established the false narrative that Israel was the aggressor committing genocide. How? a false story that Israel bombed a hospital and the monstrous lie that tens of thousands Palestinian women and children were indiscriminately targeted and killed. Today, Trumps peace plan is being under-reported and poo-pooed in the legacy media including the
WSJ and National Review, which buried the story, like newspapers of old, below-the-fold.
Van Jones, in real life a rip-roaring commie, does what little he can to stay visible by feigning serious punditry. Here, he picked up a stock phrase to simulate insight. He’d had ample time in the past to sound off about the constant savagery against non-Muslims in Africa, but was off on other, more appealing errands.
Well said, as always. Any “news” that is not of utility to the Left is routinely minimized, or ignored entirely, by the media in the USA. It is a fact. Jones is very “selective” with his umbrage, isn’t he?