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Analysis Of Alexander Bissonnette Case

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On January 29th 2017, Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old Laval University student and right extremist, entered the Centre Culturel Islamique de Quebec and opened fire on the men’s floor of the mosque. Bissonnette was charged with six counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder of the men and children who were sitting prayer that night. Bissonnette is currently is awaiting trial in Quebec, though as of yet he has elected not to plead to any of the charges. Though the roles of the victimizer and victim appear simple in the Quebec Mosque shooting Case, this essay will look at case-related news articles from CTV, the National Post, and The Globe and Mail in order to analyze the various representations of those involved in the case and …show more content…

The National Post media representation of Bissonnette entitled “Alexander Bissonnette Charged with Six Counts of Murder” uses Bissonnette’s whiteness as a focus of the article through description and imagery in a way that establishes a racial hierarchy (Satzewich and Zong 1996), through which Bissonnette is partially absolved of his culpability because he belongs at the top of the hierarchy. The article focuses on elements of Bissonnette’s life that signify whiteness in order to partially absolve him of guilt in the minds of the readers, such as his accomplishments in higher education, a patriotic member of the Canadian Armed Forces (National Post 2017), and white friends and family who vouch that Bissonnette “...was not necessarily overtly racist or Islamophobic...did not suffer from any mental illness....and didn't think he was part of an organized extremist group either” (Boissonneault, National Post 2017). This implicitly puts Bissonnette at the top of the racial hierarchy and is therefore invulnerable to stigmatized forms of crime such as

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