this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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Those with the means to retrieve that property don't consider poor people as human life.
it's an easy mistake to make.
Weeks of coverage over a few billionaires out on a lark to view a shipwreck and this is the first I’ve heard about more than 80 people dying in another sinking.
The difference is money.
Odd, because I hear about it in nearly ever comment section on articles about the sinking of the Titan.
The difference is not money, it's novelty. The fact that a submarine built with hubristic lack of adequate safety was lost at the site of the Titanic's wreck is going to catch a lot of attention. It fits so perfectly into the narrative of the original Titanic's sinking. And losing a submarine at all is noteworthy, that doesn't happen very often.
A ship loaded with immigrants sinking in the Mediterranean is, unfortunately, a Tuesday. It's like the Joker says, nobody panics when everything goes as expected, even when what's expected is horrible.
While novelty is an aspect, it is not the only aspect. Racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and classicism all tie into it. This is why refugees from Ukraine and refugees from Syria experience pretty different treatment even on a governmental level.
The reason why people are talking about the sinking of this refugee dinghy in the Mediterranean is that it was a big enough tragedy that the news covered it. Usually, none of it is even covered by the news. As someone who works in aid focusing on refugees and has contacted news organizations about these things, there is just no interest. It took years of grassroots organizing and collecting evidence to get them talking about pushbacks. And even then it is mainly about the whole shebang instead of individual cases. Talking about the absolute incompetence and malice of the Hellenic Coast Guard is hardly mentioned while NGOs working with refugees in Greece, Balkan and Turkey have been talking about it for years and years.
If things go as they usually go, like with Alan Kurdi, people will talk about it for a couple of months and then it will be forgotten unless someone broughts it up.