Hate Monitor Blog
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
In a recent post on Patheos.com, Richard Ostling, who goes by “the religion guy,” starts by speaking sympathetically of IRS employees for being tasked with investigating Scientology, which he refers to as “godless.”
ANTI-RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA
Ms. Hitt is building a reputation as a writer who refuses to let the truth get in the way of a titillating story—even if it means trashing good people trying to do good things through the faith they practice.
MEDIA & ETHICS
Using rhetoric disturbingly akin to Nazi propaganda “outing” Jews and depicting them as nefarious, Hitt’s article blatantly seeks to dehumanize Scientologists and spread hate. Hitt writes about the religion’s “influence” and “involvement” in the business in question because several of its staff are members of the Church of Scientology.
MEDIA & ETHICS
The Daily Beast, for its part, has published Stern’s profoundly bigoted, one-sided content even while it strains to project an image of commitment to diversity and inclusion—going so far as naming “religion” as a subject it seeks to cover with respect in a PR statement on its website.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
It was hailed as “the world’s mightiest spectacle,” “the eighth wonder of the world,” and “history written with lightning.” It was the biggest, longest, loftiest, and most profitable movie in history until Gone With The Wind a generation later. It was D.W.
MEDIA & ETHICS
Let’s assume that Phillips wouldn’t say about Jerry Seinfeld that the director of his latest comedy special is excited to work with him “in spite of his being Jewish” or that Herbie Hancock’s new music is great “once you get past the fact that he’s a Buddhist.”
ANTI-RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA
The tabloid media regularly employs an old tried-and-true technique upon the public known as the “seed of doubt.” It is probably the most powerful tool of unsettling or controlling the mind of anyone from a single person to large groups. It’s the suggestion of something invisible—often an absurdity so incongruous with reality that our minds fixate upon it in an attempt to prove or disprove it.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
It can be comforting and comfortable to share the same private snickers and public derisions as one’s friends about everything from a person’s skin color to their religion.
MEDIA & ETHICS
“Accelerate360 executives have done their company and its investors an enormous disservice by not immediately straightening out AMI—an ‘acquisition’ which will drag the entire corporation down with it,” she continued.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
On February 1, a KNBC TV host interviewed anti-Scientology extremist Leah Remini—an individual whose hate speech has been the documented inspiration for violent hate crimes against Scientologists, their families, children and houses of worship.
