Comedian Aziz Ansari's Hashtag #RupertsFault Takes Off in Response to Murdoch's Anti-Muslim Tweets

Screen shot 2015-01-12 at 6.29.51 PM

From Aziz Ansari's Instagram account uploaded 3 months ago with the caption, “Hugging my parents on stage at MSG. Happiest I've ever been.”

American comedian Aziz Ansari launched a Twitter hashtag #RupertsFault to ridicule media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s comments that Muslims should be “held responsible” for the attacks at Charlie Hebdo and the Kosher supermarket in Paris. 

With nearly 27,000 tweets already using the hashtag according to the social analytics service Topsy, waves of Twitter users continue to join Ansari’s online movement.

Murdoch, founder and CEO of the world's second largest media conglomerate News Corp, sparked outrage when he aired this tweet to his 550,000 Twitter followers in the aftermath of the attacks at the offices of the satirical newspaper in Paris:

The Australian-American hit back at angry Twitter users by saying:

Some of the famous media companies Murdoch and his family owns are 20th Century Fox, Fox News, Fox Networks, Sky News, Star TV, Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and UK's The Times, and The Sun. 

Ansari was particularly irked by the idea that each of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims should be held accountable for the attacks committed by extremists, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly.  

Murdoch's use of the outdated term, ‘Moslems’, further fuelled his critics. The word has colonial connotations – it was used by the British Empire to refer to the inhabitants of its conquests in the Middle East. The Washington Post notes that it was after September 11, 2001 that the media really reconsidered the term’s use, recognizing that “many regard Moslem as a term of abuse”.

The Parks and Recreation TV actor poked fun at the media mogul in a series of tweets, asking him “are you responsible for the evil shit all Christians do”? Intent on branding Murdoch a hypocrite, Ansari started the hashtag #RupertsFault – holding him accountable for crimes committed by Christians, with #RupertsFault. 

Many used the hashtag to blame the media mogul for all injustices and crimes in general:

Murdoch soon had a change of tone, which was not welcome by Ansari:

Ansari was born in South Carolina. His family are Tamil Muslim, originally from India but he is careful to clarify on his Twitter feed:

Murdoch is no stranger to scandal on Twitter. In 2013, he declared “Society has to integrate. Muslims find it hardest”. And in the aftermath of the Sydney siege, he congratulated the Daily Telegraph (part of his newspaper empire) for capturing the “bloody outcome”.

Ansari was not the only famous person to take on Murdoch's tweets, J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, also tweeted:

 

7 comments

  • Guest

    Mr Murdoch wrote “Moslems” instead of “Muslims”; what kind of media mogul is he, who is illiterate? What’s the level of his media?

  • Leona

    Murder rate: White America, like most Christian countries in the Americas, Africa and Eastern Europe, is markedly more violent than most of the Middle East (murders per 100,000 population):

    0.6 Bahrain
    0.7 Oman
    0.8 United Arab Emirates
    0.9 Qatar
    1.0 Saudi Arabia
    1.2 Egypt
    1.7 Cyprus
    1.8 Jordan
    2.0 Iraq
    2.1 Israel
    2.2 Kuwait
    2.2 Lebanon
    2.3 Syria
    3.0 Iran
    3.3 Turkey
    3.4 WHITE AMERICA
    4.1 Palestine
    4.2 Yemen
    Terrorist attacks: According to the FBI, only 6% of the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 were carried out by Muslim extremists. Even Jewish extremists carried out more (7%).

    War: Wars with at least a million dead:

    Christian wars:

    years: name: conservative body count in millions
    535-554: Gothic Wars: 5.0m
    790-1300: Reconquista: 7.0m
    1096-1272: Crusades: 2.0m
    1337-1453: Hundred Years’ War: 3.0m
    1562-1598: French Wars of Religion: 3.0m
    1568-1648: Dutch Revolt: 1.0m
    1618-1648: Thirty Years’ War: 3.0m
    1655-1660: Second Northern War: 3.0m
    1763-1864: Russian-Circassian War: 2.0m
    1792-1802: French Revolutionary Wars: 2.0m
    1803-1815: Napoleonic Wars: 3.5m
    1830-1903: War in Venezuela: 1.0m
    1882-1898: Conquests of Menelik II of Ethiopia: 5.0m
    1910-1920: Mexican Revolution: 1.0m
    1914-1918: First World War: 20.0m
    1917-1922: Russian Civil War: 5.0m
    1939-1945: Second World War: 41.5m (European deaths only)
    1946-1954: First Indochina War: 1.0m
    1950-1953: Korean War: 1.2m
    1955-1975: Vietnam War: 1.1m
    1998-2003: Second Congo War: 2.5m
    Muslim wars:

    1370-1405: Conquests of Tamerlane: 7.0m
    1681-1707: Conquests of Aurangzeb: 5.0m
    1967-1970: Nigerian Civil War: 1.0m
    1980-1988: Iran-Iraq War: 1.0m
    1983-2005: Second Sudanese Civil War: 1.0m
    1989-2001: Afghan Civil War: 1.4m
    Seven times more people have died in Christian wars: 113.8 million compared to the 16.4 million who died in Muslim wars.

  • […] He pulled Rupert Murdoch up on his shit and created a hashtag for other people to do so too. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/01/13/comedian-aziz-ansaris-hashtag-rupertsfault-takes-off-in-res… This article discusses it from the very beginning. Rupert tweets that all Muslims should be held […]

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