A String of Church Arson? Now That’s a Stretch
What do you get when you clump together a few local stories about churches going up in flames and try to find a connection between them all? In the eyes of the Leftmedia, you get a string of racial hate crimes sparked by the Charleston AME church massacre. Since the attack, six churches have burned across the South. While some circumstances were suspicious, many of the fires were deemed to be an accident. One was even a white church. That didn’t stop The Washington Post from running a thinkpiece on the “trend,” titled “Why Racists Burn Black Churches.” But a spokesman for the ATF, which is investigating the fires, said, “We don’t believe they’re racially motivated or related. I mean, if you go back and look at some of these circumstances, everyone is just lumping them in as one and that’s not good. There’s no linkage at this time.” In 1996, some 37 churches were burned across the South in what the Clinton administration pinned on a wave of hate crime, writes commentator Michelle Malkin. Later, only four were shown to be racially motivated. Twenty years ago, burning churches were used to propel a race-bait narrative, and it looks like some are trying to repeat history. (Updated.)