Within hours of an attack on hundreds of worshippers in a Michigan Latter-day Saints Church, Barnes-Ross published an inflammatory post attacking the Church and its members.
These days people sling the term “brainwashing” around like a Frisbee at a park or more aptly, like the fists, rocks, bricks and bullets which fly when some attempt at a rational discussion devolves into selfishness, hatred and bigotry.
If you had a neighbor who constantly spread nasty, malicious rumors about you and your best friends, wouldn’t you pity that person? I mean, what kind of a small-minded, craven individual would expend energy trying to tear down people of good will like that?
Not so many years ago I was accosted on the street by a wild-eyed man who had chosen me to vent his spleen upon. I had never seen the man before but he swore up and down (literally) that he knew me, that he knew all my misdeeds and that I should be ashamed of myself.
An 1838 manifesto, signed by hundreds of Missouri officials and business leaders, exposed the bitter heart of this campaign: “We believed them deluded fanatics, or weak and designing knaves...”
In a pair of articles aimed at marginalizing Australian Scientologists, Ben Schneiders of the Sydney Morning Herald shamelessly employs techniques of antireligious propaganda.
Netflix’s recent three-part documentary, Murder Among the Mormons, is just the latest in a long line of mainstream media attacks against religion which perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Unfortunately, such stereotypes fuel “other-ness” and hate against minority groups.