By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--December 22, 2016
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The Greenville church fire made national news when, on Nov. 1, authorities were called to the burning sanctuary and found the spray-painted message. Town officials, including the fire chief, the mayor and church leaders, expressed a heightened sense of grief at the sight of flames licking the building. “I’ve seen a lot of things burn but when I arrived there on scene that night, it was just a different feeling,” Greenville Fire Chief Rowan Brown told the Clarion-Ledger. “I’m used to seeing houses, cars. … It was just a sad, sickening feeling because I understand how sacred a place of worship is and what it means for families to come together. “It definitely hit a low note in my spirit when I saw it burn,” he said. The possibility that the fire was strategically accompanied by a “Vote Trump” tag to inflame further political and racial divisiveness is not new. In recent months, alleged crimes have been committed in the name of Trump and Black Lives Matter, the victims claimed, sparking initial outrage only to be later deemed hoaxes by police.
These fabricated reports do little to advance the civil rights for which activists are fighting, they say, and instead undermine the cause. “If you are having personal problems, want attention or need to raise awareness, crying wolf helps no one. In fact, it makes it worse,” attorney and journalist Wajahat Ali wrote on Facebook after a Muslim woman in New York falsely reported that men screaming “Donald Trump!” called her a “f???ing terrorist” and tried to rip off her hijab.These phony stories only happened as extensively as they did because of the media's willingness to uncritically report them - and not just the individual alleged incidents themselves, but also the supposed broader trend of out-of-control hate crimes inspired by the evil and maniacally racist Donald Trump. This was one of those too-good-to-check storylines that the lefty media couldn't possibly resist, or even slow down on lest their narrative prove just a little too good to be true. As to the police claim that the fire was "not politically motivated," I can only make sense of that if they mean "not motivated by right-wing racial hate." Obviously when you paint "Vote Trump" on your own church and then set it on fire, it's politically motivated. You're trying to spread the false notion that Trump-loving racists are feeling their oats and on the rampage. It's not true. It was never true. What I wonder now, though, is whether the exposure of these reports as false will be extensive enough to make the nation as a whole realize how false the narrative always was. The truth about supposedly "racist" police incidents, usually trickling out months after sensationalized media headlines, hasn't been enough to destroy the nascent widespread belief that evil racist cops are shooting innocent black men for no reason. Colin Kaepernick wouldn't still have any defenders if it had.
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