Terrorists torch five black Ferguson-area churches, nation yawns

[alistairmichaelkinne]

Yeah yeah, I get that.

I was referring to the reported story.

[davide405]

Sorry 'bout that

[OtherMichael]

Linus Torvalds, apparently.

[Max_Blancke]

Have there been non-church arsons in the area? I am not saying that is not white supremacists, I just think we should rely on known facts. It does not appear that they have suspects, or that info is not being released. I did notice that BB removed the phrase “white supremacists” from the title of the story.

[andy_hilmer]

@Max_Blancke

It could be someone that hates all religion.

That will indeed be the way Fox spins it if he’s caught.

[popobawa4u]

@anon15383236

Violence meant to inspire terror in others is terrorism.

Sure, that’s pretty much a tautology.

The problem is that experiencing a feeling doesn’t reveal what a person meant. Especially when the person or group who inspired it is unknown. Also, I think people don’t have a right to assume what others feel and declare outrage for them. Trying to speak for victims may or not be justified. Have some people in the Ferguson area said that they feel terrorised about this? Or are a peanut gallery of other people saying this on their behalf? I honestly don’t know.

Even if people do feel terror as a result of some action or event, this provides no evidence that it was the intention of the perpetrator. And this intention, for better or worse, is how terrorism in this context is legally defined. For example, if somebody robs me at gunpoint, I probably would feel terror. But how do I know that it was their goal? It could be that they didn’t even need what I had, and only wanted to intimidate me, to make me sweat and beg for my life. Or, it could be that they were jerks who were desperate for money or whatever. It could be some other motivation I couldn’t guess. If I claim to know what their motives were, I cannot do this based upon my own emotional state. I need evidence, testimony, background information - anything which takes it out of my realm of the completely subjective. Otherwise, what I am pursuing is not justice, but merely revenge.

@anon15383236

I often wonder if the people who put such energy into this kind of terrorism denial do the same when corporate media outlets jump to describe incidents apparently involving Arabs or Muslims with that word.

I sure as hell do. As far as I am concerned, it is a pure witch-hunt word with absolutely no redeeming legal or social value. Because it functions as a code-word for “we don’t need real evidence”.

[Cowicide]

@churba

Most covered same day as the US uncut story(again, barring the pieces on individual fires that I left out many of which came well before), some of them before the US uncut story went live, as best I can tell. And it’s not like this was obscure or hidden, either - these are literally the first bunch that came up with a quick google search, and some of them are national broadcasts. This is not even close to a comprehensive search or list.

So, which one of those links shows where we’re going to dedicate trillions of dollars fighting these terror attacks that’ve been launched against us on American soil?

Snark aside, I think part of Cory’s point may be that our collective, national reaction to these terror attacks is pretty pathetic especially compared in relation to our hysterical reaction to Muslim terrorism.

There may be plenty of coverage you can find with a Google search, however, the actual national response (real action) is lacking.

[kthejoker]

Boing Boing’s comment section is beginning to look more pathetic than Salon’s.

Hey moderators, you guys supposedly worship at the altar of Shirky, let’s pick up The Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy and start busting heads, eh?

[anon61221983]

@kthejoker

Boing Boing’s comment section is beginning to look more pathetic than Salon’s.

Care to elaborate on this?

[Mal_Tosevite]

@churba

Ugh, not this tripe again.

Thank you. I was beginning to think it was because I live relatively close, that I was hearing all about it. Of course, there’s mum from the people who were screaming about how, oh, no, the blacks are the real racists! And nevermind that KKK Grand Wizard who openly threatened to use deadly force against rioters.

So I personally have seen a lot about it…but yeah, not a lot of outrage outside of devout Christians.

@ActionAbe

I think you’re missing the part where broadcast media is the premier gauge of what this country is paying attention to, for better or for worse.

1985 called…no, really, it did, because current broadcast news has an audience about half of what it was 30 years ago. There’s this thing called the Internet that came along. It’s hard for Grandma to share the evening news on Facebook when she’s outraged about what the Obummer is doing to get the government involved in Medicare.

@anon61221983

Care to elaborate on this?

I know I’d personally love to jump in here, but…

[Thebarton_Gamer]

So, you’d say you’re disappointed in Boing Boing?

@churba

Ugh, not this tripe again.

I’d agree there. (But not for the same reason)

[andy_hilmer]

@Mister44

re: Terrorism - newest KMFDM shirt I plan to get:

Speaking as a KMFDM fan, they’re NAIVE. The poor man’s terrorism is to shame the rich with ideas and be called a terrorist because those ideas threaten the non-living aspects of what the wealthy value. AKA money and bullshit forms of “ownership”.

[churba]

[quote=“Mal_Tosevite, post:92, topic:67888”]
Thank you. I was beginning to think it was because I live relatively close, that I was hearing all about it. Of course, there’s mum from the people who were screaming about how, oh, no, the blacks are the real racists! And nevermind that KKK Grand Wizard who openly threatened to use deadly force against rioters.

So I personally have seen a lot about it…but yeah, not a lot of outrage outside of devout Christians.
[/quote]No need for thanks, it’s entirely born of my own annoyance with this ignorant shit. I live in another fucking country, on the other side of the planet, and I knew about the churches burning, and yeah, thanks to the mainstream media. I was talking about it the next day with some co-workers - all of whom knew of it happening, though some were fuzzy on the details.

If we hear about it on the other side of the planet, and it’s common enough knowledge that it’ll support workroom conversations without getting people up to speed - What’s this mob’s excuse?

Not to mention chucklenuts that Corey is linking to - He didn’t break that story. He got it from…three guesses who and the first two don’t count.

It’s less this story in particular, but more just getting sick of the whole alt-media fan “The mainstream media is ignoring this!” shit that people have turned into a rallying cry.

And when you look, it’s always a case of “Well, they did, but I didn’t see it, so they clearly didn’t do it at the same volume as (X other thing they were told to be outraged about by a blog, and they think everybody remembers without prompting), so it still stands!”
Ignoring, of course, that they are also proud of avoiding the mainstream media because they think it’s terrible, and that the volume of the show is irrelevant to the viewer whose TV is turned off.

“The Media” - rarely individual outlets, always “The Media” - is our favorite whipping boy. Because it’s big, powerful, and trusted to supply information, seen as a must-have for intelligent people - so attacking it makes people feel big and clever. After all, it must be smart, if Intelligent people use the media to keep up on current and world events, so if you slag it off for petty ideological victories, you must be even smarter, right?

Here’s some advice - If someone blames “The Media” or “The Mainstream media” or similar for something, accuses them of something, and if they can’t specify which outlets our journalists specifically, or they can’t point to some examples, then they’re trying to feed you something, be it their opinion, or bullshit. Usually, both.

[Thebarton_Gamer]

[OtherMichael]

@Max_Blancke

I did notice that BB removed the phrase “white supremacists” from the title of the story.

I hope that you lefty politically-correct language police are happy!

[anon15383236]

@churba

“The Media” - rarely individual outlets, always “The Media” - is our favorite whipping boy. Because it’s big, powerful, and trusted to supply information, seen as a must-have for intelligent people - so attacking it makes people feel big and clever. After all, it must be smart, if Intelligent people use the media to keep up on current and world events, so if you slag it off for petty ideological victories, you must be even smarter, right?

It does seem silly in a way, since corporate and most “alternative” media are basically converging ideologically in a fundamentally conservative capitalist direction.

Alternative and Mainstream Media

[anon34812172]

five seven churches…

[anon34812172]

All of this is meaningless unless someone can come up with viewership or readership volume on this issue compared to Hillary, Biden, Isis, etc. my bet is that viewership, aka public knowledge of the church burnings wasn’t big until it was actually reported in the MSM yesterday. Before that it was back page at best and that’s being generous.

[OtherMichael]

 

#And in conclusion:

 

[churba]

I will, in fairness, give them the credit that many wear their ideology on their sleeve. It’s the ones that try to present themselves as unbiased sources just reporting the news that really get up my nose.

I do struggle to blame it entirely on conservative capitalists(and or libertarians, An-caps, tea-partiers, Neo-republicans, neo-confederates, and whatever else is the right-wing flavor of the month), though - the left-wing alt-media certainly isn’t on markedly more familiar terms with the truth, facts, or anything remotely resembling decent journalism. It just tends to skew in a different ideological direction.

Hell, I saw one just today whose name I won’t mention to avoid giving them hits but may be linked somewhere very close to the top of the page, who ran an article about how another country was handling their financial crisis - Literally no part of it was true. And, as a kicker, part of it was sourced from a conspiracy theory nutter blog. I mean, seriously, what the fuck.