Conservative media outlets are pushing a racist trophy hunting PR campaign
The latest trophy hunting industry public relations campaign is a coordinated effort to push racist myths.
The Daily Mail, Times, and Telegraph published a coordinated trophy hunting public relations campaign on November 5, 6, and 7, respectively. The campaign, conducted by London-based public relations firm Abzed, claimed that a poll found that Africans think the UK’s attempt to ban trophy hunting imports is racist.
Since when did conservatives become so concerned about racism?
There is no evidence to backup the claims made about the poll. No one published the poll anywhere and the typical trophy hunting apologists won’t take credit for it.
All we know is that the trophy hunting industry hired Abzed to fight the proposal to ban trophy hunting imports to the UK. Abzed contracted Appinio to conduct the poll that supposedly showed that anti-trophy hunting lobbying was racist.
Appinio is a phone app that pays anonymous users to answer survey questions. That should tell you all you need to know about the integrity of this poll.
Abzed is in the business of generating headlines and talking points. There is no incentive for it to produce evidence that supports their claims.
Even if the poll is eventually published somewhere, don’t let that distract you from the fact that this is a public relations campaign. Abzed says it does two things, “Firstly, we ensure the survival of businesses when powerful forces want to use regulations to ban them. Secondly, we also protect reputations from journalists who would casually destroy them.”
Labeling opposition to trophy hunting racist is nothing more than projection. It’s also Abzed’s modus operandi.
Elitist grouse shooters hired it to fight the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. It created “a classic “astroturfing” PR operation that gives the impression of a grassroots operation, suggesting the public and landowners all hate the RSPB, but which actually represents the views of very few anonymous landowners,” according to a Guardian article.
The astroturfing operation owed its ability to manipulate public opinion to its companions at the Daily Mail, Times, and Telegraph. What a coincidence…
Abzed claims that it flipped the script on RSPB. Its website states, “The RSPB was the unquestioned source on conservation matters for the media and politicians. Now it is seen as a biased source with an axe to grind.”
For Abzed’s trophy hunting campaign to work, you need to believe that Africans want to be colonized. It’s hoping that you believe in these racist myths:
Black people are weak and need the Great White Hunter to protect them from dangerous wild animals.
Black people are dangerous predators and wild animals need the Great White Hunter to protect them.
Black people are incapable of ‘developing’ without the Great White Hunter.
It might be hard to spot the racism behind these myths when they’re spouted by so-called conservationists like Amy Dickman. But the racism becomes obvious when white supremacists like Candace Owens try to justify trophy hunting.
Abzed isn’t doing any original here.
The trophy hunting industry said it needed to hire a public relations firm “to give trophy hunting linked to community based conservation and development an image to the world” almost 30 years ago. The industry also conducted an astroturfing campaign filled with disinformation to challenge trophy hunting regulations until I exposed it in 2020.
It’s the same old tactics from the same old white guys.
Well done, Jared. I could do a Twitter poll among my followers and it would be more relevant ... It's indeed a mystery that none of the usual suspects want to even mention this weird survey. Maybe the PR wasn't supposed to be this obvious.
Regarding racism, there was a wildly racist article within the general pro-TH campaign in September, in Times Travel. A tourism investor - Chris Fox - whose family lobbied for an expansion of Ruaha National Park that has led to neverending human rights violations speaks for Tanzania in that article. The article's message is that trophy hunters are repugnant, but "we" are doomed without them since nothing is more repugnant than rural Africans land uses. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-uks-ban-on-trophy-hunting-will-harm-wildlife-this-is-why-2bbn52nk5
I knew the poll sounded suspicious, especially after listening to the accounts of locals in Zimbabwe and Tanzania who absolutely DESPISE foreign trophy hunters. Jared, didn’t you interview somebody from Zimbabwe a while back?