Boston Herald is a right-wing newspaper that regularly promotes racist, pro-policing propaganda - including when it comes to Israel. In 2022, when Harvard students protested the university giving a fellowship to Israeli air force general Amos Yadlin, the Herald published a piece praising Yadlin as an "Israeli hero," and used the opportunity to smear the BDS movement. This is just one of many of the Herald's pieces that vilify Palestinians and efforts to resist Israeli colonization.
As expected, the same writers at the Boston Herald that smear BDS and praise Israel also smear Black activists resisting white supremacy while praising US police forces. In one egregious case, a Herald columnist (who regularly smears Palestinian resistance) even reported the names of and charges against 53 individuals arrested by Boston police during the George Floyd uprisings in June 2020. In a June 2, 2020 editorial on the Floyd uprising titled "Protesters, police can reclaim positive message," the Herald falsely equated police and protesters ("Demonstrators peacefully protesting the death of George Floyd and law enforcement officers who serve their communities share something in common — both have had their narratives hijacked by agents of chaos") and painted the police as agents of "peace."
The Herald regularly serves this kind of copaganda, including by publishing rants against politicians like Elizabeth Warren who are ultimately supportive of policing and US militarism. For instance, a Herald piece from August 19, 2019 titled "Elizabeth Warren, others try to score points bashing cops" stated that:
Bashing cops...plays well to some demographics...
It’s indecent but effective.
So, charging our criminal justice system is “racist, front to back,” and claiming Michael Brown “was murdered by a white police officer,” igniting a riot in Ferguson, Missouri, was good stuff in Warren’s campaign playbook, guaranteed to win the huzzahs of nitwits who hate cops, unless of course they need one.
Cops just can’t win; they have to die to be seen as the good guys.
The Herald's racist, pro-policing coverage can be seen in the newspaper's writing on the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson. An August 13, 2015 piece titled "It’s a sad joke that society gives benefit of doubt to lawbreakers" states that "To hear TV commentators repeatedly refer to Brown as “an unarmed black man shot by the police” is to understand how we are being manipulated." The columnist identifies Boston Herald writers with police officers, both misunderstood and censored by society, apparently:
We’re a lot like cops these days, inhibited in our actions and our speech by the likelihood both will be intentionally twisted by self-appointed activists aching to take offense.
While they should be getting fitted for bulletproof vests, cops may soon be ordered to wear camera equipment so that cop-bashers, unencumbered by a situation’s context, will find it easier to allege police brutality.
Bad cops? Of course there are bad cops. There are also bad coaches, bad nannies, bad priests. We’ve read about them all, yet somehow maintained faith that they were aberrations, not the norm.
A bad cop doesn’t mean all cops are bad.
Yet the job they’re asked to do on our behalf becomes potentially more lethal as society begins giving the benefit of the doubt to the lawbreaker, not the law enforcer.
It's not surprising that these same entities that promote US policing and attack efforts to dismantle white supremacy are also supportive of Israeli colonization and apartheid. The Boston Herald is yet another example.
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