While it's shitty to vandalize a church, none of this implies an attack on Christianity. The act of vandalizing a church isn't automatically anti-christian, no more than throwing a brick through a window makes you anti-window. Unless they know the motive of every vandal, which the article makes no mention of, they're just jumping to conclusions in order to fire up the good ol' persecution complex.
Also, it doesn't look like they're ready to rule out arson, it just looks more likely that it wasn't. But man, how much of a raging asshole would one have to be to try to fucking burn down Notre-Dame?
Don't read the comments on this article is all I can say.
International Business Times
Factual reporting: MIXED
Also references The Sun.
It's not total garbage but I'm not sure i trust that article. It's clearly got an agenda in mind.
They lobbed in "theft of property" under the total of 'vandalized' churches, so take that as you will.
There is a large anticlerical movement in france dating back to the revolution and some of the vandalism is motivated by that.
Obviously some of the hate towards the church as an institution is absolutely justified in my eyes - vandalism of cultural architecture isn't.
It's incorrect to pretend it doesnt exist, it absolutely does. Hard to know if the destruction is motivated by it but simply following french politics would show you how strong anti church/anti religion ideologies can be here. Again I think a lot of it is justified, some of it goes too far.
I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I'm saying it's a stretch to consider every act of vandalism anti-christian.
Didn't someone post a variation of this but the source was super right wing?
Sure yeah I agree with that.
It wasn't even about Notre Dame, it was just "hurr Christianity is under attack and you should get mad at guess who".
Yikes
what does that change?
Manipulated statistics like this should automatically be thrown out and considered false for all intents and purposes. That's like including unsolved garden decoration thefts in hate crime statistics just because "hey, those flamingos might have been maliciously stolen by the KKK, you never know"
Interestingly, the OP's article says "some French politicians are calling for an investigation into the hate crimes" yet doesn't provide a single source or name of what politicians.
Yeah I was about to ask about that. Far as I know France has quite a lot of antitheism in general.
What do you think extreme bias changes? You should obviously be more skeptical of sources that might put a political mission above accurate reporting. And the mission, right now, from the sort of far-right pandering tabloids that IBT sources much of its reporting from, is to play up the Notre Dame fire as a metaphor for ~the downfall of western civilization~ at the hands of brown people
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/172/681c6f18-1e86-4846-aaf2-6e9d672803dc/image.png
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/172/6a4829f2-b072-4ed1-bee0-dcfb6a6e7a46/image.png
Not like it's hard to find sensationalism and misinformation here: IBT says a fire at Saint-Suplice "will cost several hundred million euros to repair, Courrier International reported." - The article they link says "hundreds of thousands". Boy I sure do wonder why people would be skeptical of this shit
Christians are being persecuted.
But not in Europe or the west.
They're being persecuted in China and the Middle East. And much of it deals with cultural differences of those specific regions, not a general global attack on the faith. And at least in China, there haven't even been mass executions, it's mostly just political suppression.
ANYONE who claims Christians en mass are being attacked for their faith in Europe or the west is just using the wording as a facade for their racism.
As a Christian, it's disgusting to see people using this tragedy as a tool to spread their fear and hate.
I'm athiest and I dont like it any more than you do. It just ain't right to try to hide terrible acts behind 'omg persecution'. But it wont stop until society as a whole puts its foot down and says 'look there is no persecution of your religion in this country so fuck off'.
I'm very hesitant to believe those who say a church attack or vandalism on "western culture" rather than "Christianity" actually have any kind of faith whatsoever. And probably have only a romantic perspective of Christianity from afar.
If one wanted to attack 'western culture' a Wal Mart is the proper target. Not a church. Not that anyone should go torching wal marts either...
12 Wal Mart locations targeted by spree arson, Wal Mart employees "relieved" and "thankful"
While I kind of appreciate the attention this raised, I have two problems with this;
it's unfair to limit this arbitrarily to christian churches when other religious places, notably jewish cemeteries, are also the frequent target of attacks.
this entire raise of awareness kind of reads to me as a desperate "well it wasn't arson THIS TIME but look at all those other times it was!!!" type move, which isn't very helpful.
Besides the fact the fire took place in a cathedral, there isn't really much correlation between its accidental burning and the very intentional attacks on other religious establishments, and I find it kind of distasteful to use this sort of false dichotomy to try and push for awareness of an ultimately very different problem.
These things don't have to compete for coverage and they're problems with very different solutions and very different origins. Mixing them together like this is a massive disservice.
I mean, as long as nobody is in them, no one is going to mourn a Walmart.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w2zFq5UlMUk
Is beyond disgusting how the far right is pushing around this lie and being used as propaganda on their rallies. Same deal with their bots that uses copy-paste text ( with slight variations like adding emojis or different words ) about "how can care to this when it was an instrument to torture LGBT/racialized people" to push around the "progressive people are crazy" agenda.
It makes me puke.
I'm a Former Associate(Promoted myself to Customer <3) and can confirm. Majority of those wearing the Blue Vest of Shame would probably be making smores as the store burned to a crisp in front of them while having a low-key party.
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