Salon.com > Marilyn Elias

Texas church pushes racist doctrine

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:51:00 +0000

“The curse of Ham,” an old-time Biblical (mis)interpretation used to vilify black people and justify slavery and laws against racial intermarriage, is still alive and spreading bigotry in the United States.

The Appleby Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, is among this country’s scattered, independent fundamentalist churches still openly promoting the idea that the Biblical Noah pronounced a curse on descendants of his son, Ham. Ham had sexually molested Noah as he slept in a drunken stupor, and Noah realized it, the story goes. The curse ultimately fell on Canaan, Noah’s grandson, whose descendants were black and fated to be an underclass of slaves, according to this version of the Bible, which has been widely discredited by mainstream religious scholars.

But the canard is trumpeted loud and clear in an online statement of conviction by Appleby leaders. The East Texas church, 90 miles from Shreveport, La., is “a bit of a throwback, but these people are still out there,” Rachel Tabachnick, a fellow at the think tank Political Research Associates, told Hatewatch. She researches the impact of the religious right on politics and society.

Extremists blame everyone but white men for Boston bombings

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:42:00 +0000

Who was responsible for the deadly Boston terrorist attack?

The Muslims did it. No, it was an illegal immigrant. Think again – it was a gay guy. Wait, you missed the key signs: Our own government once again pulled off an act of covert terror to promote its nefarious aims.

Fingers have been pointed in all of these directions by conspiracy theory peddlers and professional hatemongers since the bombings Monday.

“It’s a pretty safe bet right now that this attack was carried out by an Islamist,” declared a post on the Tea Party Nation website Tuesday. The obvious cause for the violence? “We have a government that is not committed to protecting America.” Linking Islam with Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” of Communism, the post warned that the Boston bombings are just another event presaging future violence in “an ideological war” that can only be won if we have tougher, more anti-Islam U.S. political leaders. That, of course, would be the Tea Party cabal.

Illinois politician has ties to controversial websites

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:59:00 +0000

Michael Kleen, the Republican candidate for mayor of Rockford, Ill., is running on an innocuous “safer streets” platform, pledging “appreciation for commonsense and moderation” on a campaign website that sparkles with sweet reason, offering a profile of a trustworthy, public-spirited candidate.

But Hatewatch has discovered that there’s more to Kleen than the sanitized information his campaign offers. The citizens of Rockford — the third largest city in Illinois, with a population that is 20% African-American and 16% Latino — may not realize that Kleen has published his very controversial views on immigration, secession and education on hate-oriented sites such as VDARE.com and WorldNetDaily.com. He also participated in several interviews on The Voice of Reason Radio Network, a mouthpiece for the white nationalist movement that went offline last August.