Media’s Hate Peddlers and Conservative White Terrorists

By Carol Morgan

This wasn’t a blog I had planned to write. Like the rest of the nation, I’m emotionally wounded by Wednesday’s events in Charleston, the latest in a series of overt and unashamed racist acts.

There may no longer be “Colored Only” signs, but that sentiment still lurks beneath the surface in the minds of many Americans.

Partial blame should be assigned to America’s addictive and backward love affair with guns, but the bulk of the blame goes to the media’s hate peddlers. The Hannitys and Limbaughs, Fox News, the venomous writers at World Net Daily, the Pamela Gellers, the bald and tattooed white supremacism at Stormfront stir the noxious roux every day.

Dylann Roof may have pulled the trigger, but he was fueled by hate radio and conservative journalists. When you consistently consume mental garbage day-in-day-out, it’s only a matter of time before you act on it.

There are those who chalk up Dylann Roof’s actions to mental illness, but they are merely avoiding the “R” word. As Nietzsche once said: "Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages, it is the rule."

And America is definitely mad and sick. The hate media whips up the madness and our conservative politicians finish the job.

Conservative media and the GOP presidential candidates have attempted to frame this incident as an assault on Christianity (which they love to do), refusing to acknowledge that it is a hate crime, a crime of racism, as well as a terrorist act. What is the difference between the actions of the Tsarnaev brothers and the actions of Dylann Roof?

In the beginning, all reporters avoided any mention of the gunman’s apparent racist motivation or even the victims’ race. When law enforcement caught the suspect, you didn’t see pictures of a struggle or police brandishing guns or tasers unholstered. It was a radically different capture from the Michael Brown, Walter Scott, or Freddy Gray incidents. Dylann Roof may have killed 9 people, but heaven forbid, he should be selling cigarettes on the street or stealing Cigarillos. Brown, Scott, and Gray were thugs, but Roof was “a boy gone astray” according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.

Yesterday, much of the media labelled Dylann Roof, who is 21 years old, as a boy. Yet Tamir Rice, a 12 year old who possessed a toy weapon was called a man. What gives? We’re unconsciously blind to our hypocrisies.

And all the while, the Confederate flag waved proudly, almost mockingly, in the background at Columbia’s statehouse. It was never removed. The Governor said there was no need to remove it because no CEO visitor to South Carolina ever complained.

Friends and acquaintances of Dylann Roof said that he held "strong conservative beliefs". How many times have we heard this same phrase from our own Congressman and our three representatives in Austin? Strong conservative beliefs are synonymous with hatred (racial, gender, and socioeconomic) and strong conservative legislation enshrines that hatred into law; much the same as the braided leather quirt that kept the slaves and the serfs obedient and submissive.

It’s not enough to question or critique the motives of Dylann Roof; it’s much bigger than a single individual.

Americans need to begin questioning the systems that give rise to this pattern—the media’s hate peddlers and the bitter poison of conservatism that is sickening our citizens and impeding our country’s progress.

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Carol Morgan is a career/college counselor, a freelance writer, and former Democratic candidate for the Texas House. She is the award-winning author of two books: Of Tapestry, Time and Tears and Liberal in Lubbock. Email Carol at elizabethcmorgan@sbcglobal.net , follow her on Twitter and on Facebook or visit her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org

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Permission granted to post Ms. Morgan's blog in its entirety.