John Titor

It might be useful to look back at some recent history.

Back in the mid-90s there were a number of media reports about an "epidemic
of black church burnings". I remember pictures of black congregants crying
over the smoking ruins of their churches, with the implication that this was
a return to days when the KKK bombed black churches.

The Justice Department created a task force to investigate, and the first
conclusion they came to, obvious from the evidence, was that there was no
"epidemic of black church burnings", there was merely an epidemic of church
burnings. Black churches were no more or less likely to be victims of arson
than white churches. [See
http://hatemonitor.csusb.edu/atf/church1998/chart_a.gif] (It's unfortunate
that we still have "black" and "white" churches, but I digress.)

It seems there were people running around burning churches, and the most
common motive was bigotry against Christians, not racial bigotry. One guy
in particular, convicted of a couple dozen church arsons and suspected of
many more (if my memory is correct), had a deep hatred for Christians.

Of course the media never reported this to the extent they did when they
thought it was a racial story. Widespread racial bigotry conforms to their
"folk marxist" worldview in which black people are an oppressed group.
Christians are an oppressor group in their worldview, and many journalists
have their own biases against that group, so it's uncomfortable for them to
report a story like that.

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/church_arson/arson98.html

"Of the 308 persons arrested, 254 are white, 46 are African American, and
eight are Hispanic. One hundred and nineteen people arrested were juveniles.
Of the 106 suspects arrested for arsons at African American churches, 68 are
white, 37 are African American and one is Hispanic. Of the 197 suspects
arrested for arsons at non-African American houses of worship, 181 are
white, nine are African American, and seven are Hispanic. Five of the white
suspects were arrested for arsons at both African American and non-African
American churches. [See Appendix 1, Charts P-T.] As of September 8, 1998,
there were 427 investigations in which arrests had not yet been made."

...

"A. Motives

"The arsons at African American churches raised significant fears about an
increase in racially motivated crimes. The NCATF has recognized that, to the
greatest extent possible, it is important to determine the motives
underlying the attacks on houses of worship. However, it can be difficult to
establish motives conclusively.

"Among the racially motivated church arsons so far solved through
convictions, two church arsons have been directly linked to Ku Klux Klan
members. Evidence concerning a separate incident of two church arsons
included information that some of the arsonists had attended a Ku Klux Klan
rally two days before the arson. The remaining racially motivated church
arsons for which there have been convictions do not appear to have direct
connections to readily identified hate groups, but rather are the acts of
small groups of individuals or of arsonists acting alone.

"There have been convictions for racially or religiously motivated attacks
on houses of worship in Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

"As reflected by the list of convictions attached as Appendix 2, the arsons
-- at both African American and other houses of worship -- were motivated by
multiple factors, including racism and religious hatred. Arsonists have
burned churches for other reasons, including opportunistic and random
vandalism, pyromania, mental health disturbances, feuding with ministers,
retribution against religious authorities, parking or neighborhood disputes,
covering up of burglaries, and financial profit. In some cases, the
arsonists claimed they believed the church to be an abandoned building."

http://hatemonitor.csusb.edu/atf/church1998/chart_p.gif

Hope this clears up who the "usual idiot crowd" is.

-<name removed>

PS Looking through the list of convictions that came from the task force's
focus on this issue back then, it strikes me that many of those people would
be getting out of prison right about now. So maybe it's the same idiot
crowd.

(altough in a nice touch of synchronicity, the thread is called 'Is It Censorship' )