Church-and-Synagogue-Burning Video Used to Promote Atheist Event at Ft. Bragg, where Richard Dawkins will be the main “performer”

We live in a barbarous time, the Nazi-Regime was not too long ago, and now we must experience this in a civilized country, the U.S.A.

From Foxnews

1938, the burning Synagogue of Bielefeld, Germany, during the Pogrom Night

Atheists are using a music video that celebrates the burning of churches and synagogues to promote an upcoming atheist-themed festival at Fort Bragg.

“Rock Beyond Belief” is scheduled to be held on the parade field at Fort Bragg in March. The event was created in part as a response to a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association event that was held last year.

Justin Griffith, who organized “Rock Beyond Belief,” said he was personally offended that a Christian evangelical event like “Rock the Fort” was held on the base.

“We felt it was entirely inappropriate for anyone to say your current religion is wrong,” Griffith told Fox News& Commentary. “We view all soldiers as already spiritually complete. Whatever their current religious preference is has no bearing on how fit they are as a soldier or anything related to military business.”

Göppingen, Germany: Hilter's SA-members holding an antijewish and antichristian rally in the streets

Griffith confirmed the lineup includes atheist speakers, a rapper who raps about evolution and a “kiddy pool” where boys and girls will be able to scientifically walk on water.

There will also be a number of bands performing – the most famous of which is Aiden. They are featured in a video on the “Rocky Beyond Belief” website that includes images of burning churches and bloody crosses.

The website Christianfighterpilot.com was the first to raise questions about the music.

The website labels the song as the “atheist anthem.”

Among the lyrics: “Love how the burn your synagogues, love how they torch your holy books.”

The group is no stranger to strong lyrics. Another of their songs says, “F*** your God, F*** your faith in the end. There’s no religion.”

Griffith said that particular song would not be performed at the festival, but defended the video of burning churches.

“You can buy their albums in Wal-Mart, a Christian-friendly store,” Griffith said. “If you have issues with bands that sometimes have swear words, or naughty words, or shocking imagery, that’s a part of the First Amendment.”

Benjamin Abel, a spokesman for Fort Bragg told Fox News & Commentary that they were launching a review of the bands scheduled to perform along with their content.

“This is a family-friendly event and we expect the entertainment will meet the standards of decency that would be typical on a top-40 music station,” Abel said. “We owe it to our soldiers and families on post to make sure it is.”

As for the graphic, anti-Christian lyrics – Abel said “I would have to think we would have to take a very close look at that kind of lyric.”

“I don’t know how family-friendly that is,” he said.

Griffith said there is absolutely no controversy about Aiden’s upcoming performance.

“It’s a little shocking to hear some of this stuff,” he said. “I’m sure you understand that these types of shocking things are not going to be front and center for a rock concert that is on a military base. This is not controversy. This is not a real story.”

But if that’s the case, why is there a video of the band performing in front of burning churches on the “Rock Beyond Belief” website?

The military could not answer that question.

“I can’t speak to somebody’s website,” Abel said. “We are reviewing the material and will ensure that event organizers understand that we will have to hold them to a certain level of decency.”

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27 Responses to Church-and-Synagogue-Burning Video Used to Promote Atheist Event at Ft. Bragg, where Richard Dawkins will be the main “performer”

  1. toadspittle says:

    .
    Toad is very fond of CP&S, but really, some of the stuff that you fall for does your cause no favours. There is an old (Arab? jewish? Chinese?) saying, “If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.” (Not Toad’s dogs, of course.)

    On the website called “Christianfighterpilot” (a horribly scary thought, in its own right) after the usual half-baked, hysterical, scaremongering gibberish, Toad found a reply/comment from someone serendipitously (that looks wrong) called Bjorn Again:

    “WOW, I had never heard of Aiden before but surely thank you for bringing their message out into the light. After careful review I see that you have totally missed the point of their message in the video you so thoughfully presented here. Certainly they are not advocating the burning of churches and if you would have the whole content of the lyrics available instead of just a few chosen lines, anyone could see that….”

    Without going further, (because he simply can’t be bothered,) Toad suspects Bjorn has got it right.
    Still, it has given those who choose to, yet another most welcome opportunity to rock back and forth, head in hands, keening and wailing: “Persecution! Demons! Communist bishops! Bogey Men! End of the World!”

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  2. teresa says:

    Toad, the whole report is lifted from Foxnews, not from some crank sites, so if an established international news agency can report it, we can also as amateurs.

    And here is the songtext:
    http://www.songlyrics.com/aiden/hysteria-lyrics/
    enough Hysteria in it, IMHO. Of course we can understand it in this way: the Rocker Aiden likes to make a satire out of our nice and “tolerant” Dawkins’ style atheists and say look atheism alá Dawkins is Hysteria, not unlikely to me, and the atheist organisers are too silly to discern is, also very likely.

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  3. toadspittle says:

    “…from Foxnews, not from some crank sites,”

    Well, Teresa…regarding Fox News.. Oh, sod it. What’s the point? Explain to her Jabba, please.

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  4. toadspittle says:

    .

    OK. Let’s put it like this.
    If Atheists choose to be stupid in their attacks on religion, it is not a very good idea for believers to react by being even more stupid.
    Or so Toad thinks.
    Of course, he might be wrong.

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  5. toadspittle says:

    .
    Sorry folks, for yet another bloviation, but Toad has just read the “lyrics,” very kindly posted above by Teresa.

    Not much reason there for, say, Cole Porter or Noel Coward (both GAY!!!!) to be revolving enviously in their respective graves, thinks Toad.

    A seemly sense of proportion would not go amiss here, he also suspects.
    But what does he know? He’s only a Toad.

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  6. merlynleroy says:

    “…from Foxnews, not from some crank sites,”

    Well, Teresa…regarding Fox News.. Oh, sod it. What’s the point? Explain to her Jabba, please.

    Can I take a shot at it?

    To-MAY-to
    To-MAH-to

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  7. JabbaPapa says:

    Well, Teresa…regarding Fox News.. Oh, sod it. What’s the point? Explain to her Jabba, please.

    I might have difficulty explaining Fox News to teresa, or indeed anyone at all, given that I avoid it like the plague…

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  8. toadspittle says:

    .

    “I might have difficulty explaining Fox News to Teresa, or indeed anyone at all, given that I avoid it like the plague…” Jabba tells us.

    Toad could not have put it more succinctly himself. (Well, he could have – but, since he chose not to, many thanks, Jabba.)

    Like

  9. teresa says:

    I don’t see any problem with Fox News. If it is fact, it is fact, it is independent from who reports it. If I can quote Guardian and New York Times (what I did and will do whenever there is something interesting or important appearing there) I don’t see any problem with quoting fox news, I’ll only see problem when what is reported is a lie but in this particular case here it is no lie so why must fox news be censored? Only because it is fox news or because it is a report displaying atheists in an unfavourable light? In either way to disqualify Fox News because of this report, there is some ideological presumption in play.

    There are also people who avoid the Guardian and the Independence like plague, then we have those who avoid Fox news or Washington Post like plague. It is just the question whether you are politically near to the right or to the left, but it has nothing to do with fairness, tolerance or any values. Papers are in one way or the other biased, we have all our different perspectives so it says nothing about why it is O.K. for atheists to find “burning church” an attractive idea.

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  10. toadspittle says:

    .
    “Papers are in one way or the other biased, “

    Declares Teresa – who is in no way biased herself.

    “It is just the question whether you are politically near to the right or to the left, but it has nothing to do with fairness, tolerance or any values.” She tells us. Who is the “you” in here? Couldn’t be Teresa, by any chance, could it? No? Thought not.

    Oh, well, off to bed for Toad.

    (Who will first check underneath it, for Commies and /or Atheists.)

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  11. teresa says:

    Let us just make a thinking experiment: some Christian fundamentalists featured a video of burning mosques or some atheist symbols, freemanson symbols etc., should Guardian report it or not? I think every news agency has the right to report it and should I say as a Christian that the Guardian is a “crank site” and one must avoid the Guardian “like the plague”? Our tolerant friend won’t say so. So why it is a problem when atheist fundamentalism gets into the press? Or is Atheism beyond critique and every one who dares to say hey I find what you are doing there not O.K. a crank? If so, then I see how tolerant our tolerant friends are.

    I oppose every kind of fundamentalism and that is the reason why I am against promoting the new atheist faith with “burning churches and synagogues” (=hatred, intolerance).

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  12. toadspittle says:

    .
    “I don’t see any problem with Fox News.”

    Says Teresa. Goodness, Toad wishes he had her eyes.

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  13. teresa says:

    The problem with Fox News for some people is mainly that it is conservative, that someone made a film saying Fox News is rubbish. But if this report is not a made up one so where is the problem? Because someone criticised Fox News so everything Fox News says including the weather report should be rubbish?

    The problem with Guardian / Independence for some people is mainly because it is leftist liberal. So is everything what Guardian writes rubbish?

    If one answers the first question with yes, he is taken by our tolerant friends to be a good fair minded fellow, and if someone answers the second question with yes, he is for our tolerant friends a bigot.

    I will answer both question with “NO”, but our tolerant friends will say I am still wrong because I dare read the vile Fox News.

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  14. teresa says:

    Toad wrote : “Papers are in one way or the other biased, “ Declares Teresa – who is in no way biased herself.

    the first sentences does not implicate the second, I don’t declare that I am not biased, I wrote before that “we have all our own perspectives”
    I am only saying papers have their own political agendas, the big national papers are either conservative or liberal. So Guardian or New York Times is not better than Fox News, they are only different.

    And yes, which papers one reads or avoid depends on your political convictions, it applies to every one, I read more often European national papers of more conservative tendency but if the liberal press reports something which is true I won’t say it is not true or wrong to report it only because it is not reported by my favourite press.

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  15. rebrites says:

    I was a daily news reporter on US papers for 22 years. The last three were spent in a news bureau alongside one other print reporter and three TV “news teams.” We all covered a lot of the same stories, so bias was easy to spot if you saw, day to day, two or three accounts of the same set of facts. I worked for the big-city “liberal” paper and did a lot of stories about people. The local “conservative” paper did a lot of stories about judges, police, and politicians. The TV news people did stories about puppies, murders, and perverts, or any combination of the above.
    We knew a story was a particularly lurid or outrageous when the Fox News reporter showed up. If the news did not involve a certain volume of bodily fluids, (or vitriol) they wouldn´t bother.
    As a journalist I have zero respect for that organization´s ethics, outlook, or audience.

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  16. teresa says:

    Rebrites, thanks for your comment. As a foreigner (to the U.S.) living without TV (indeed I haven’t watched TV for more than 15 years) I can’t be less bothered how people judge Fox news subscribers ethically. There are 17 Million subscribers of Foxnews Channel (according to Wiki-pedia) in 1996 and this channel has grown meanwhile to the major Channel in the U.S. so you must have zero respect for a very great part of the U.S. population. I find it strange. In Germany there is a so called “Bild-Zeitung” which is conservative and likes to report sensational stories, somewhat not unsimilar to Foxnews you described, or better Dailymail of the U.K. might be in the same sort. I am not a reader of Bildzeitung but I will be very careful to treat Bildreaders with contempt. Or let us say there is so called leftist paper in Germany called TAZ (for communists), and I am not a reader of it but I won’t treat its reader with contempt either.

    As if what we read can decides how ethically righteous we are or not! This kind of attitude is widely spread but not justified. We can carry a party card with us as well and if you have the right party card you are nice guy for some and a bad guy for others. I think people watch too much Western movies and don’t know the reality any more. Life is too complicated and so are people. I would be rather more careful. If you know the style of the media you can judge better and get a better picture of the reality behind the story they report, but to make an ethical judgement about the readers, journalists, employees etc. of the media one dislikes is too simplistic and also lazy thinking with a big dose of self-righteousness.

    On the other hand, I will still use Foxnews or Bildzeitung or Dailymail or Guardian or New York Times whenever there is a story which is interesting. And nobody of you has ever told me why you find that saying “loving your burning churches and synagogues” and using it to advertise for a big atheist event attended by our very reverend and righteous Mr. Dawkins is totally acceptable. O.K. the story was brought up by the O O O so vile Foxnews, but does it say that then if it is Foxnews which reports on a murder so the murderer must be a good man?

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  17. toadspittle says:

    .

    .
    Toad is well aware of the utter pointlessness and futility of hanging in here, but what the heck?

    The issue here Teresa, is that neither you nor I know the facts about this story.

    We only know what Fox choses to tell us.

    The wonderfully named “Bjorn Again,” quoted above by Toad, says that she(?) has taken the trouble to investigate further, and that what Fox has written is totally inaccurate.
    That the pop group in question, far from advocating the burning of churches, deplores it as unseemly behaviour. Having watched Fox at work over many years in the U.S. I am inclined to believe her. And my thanks for her doing the dirty work.
    Naturally, I might be wrong.

    Toad further suggests that Teresa treat all future stories from Fox with the greatest possible initial scepticism.

    In fact she might consider treating all stories in that fashion. Even from “The Guardian,” “The Wall Street Journal,” “Hello Magazine,” or L’Osservatore Romano. (Particularly the last, now he comes to think of it.)

    Toad will leave the last word on this topic to Teresa. Who will have it anyway.

    Like

  18. JabbaPapa says:

    cripes teresa, I think that you’re taking the comments about Fox News perhaps a little too personally…

    I don’t think there’s any problem with Fox News having this or that political angle ; but from everything that I’ve heard about this news channel, they go beyond just the mere bias of any news media, into a territory of manipulating the information itself to make it artificially appear* supportive of their agendas.

    Fox News is like the little boy who cried wolf, so that it’s hard to be certain of the honesty of this reporting. I don’t think that anyone has ventured any further than expressing reservations concerning the story, and some habitual reservations about the source of that story.

    Though rebrites may have gone a little far in expressing lack of respect for the audience of Fox News, whereas I myself feel that a certain amount of shame and contrition towards some people whose opinions are being so cynically manipulated might be appropriate…

    *(and yes, toad, that [b]is[/b] a split infinitive)

    Like

  19. JabbaPapa says:

    curses wordpress for not recognising standard html code

    Like

  20. Frere Rabit says:

    As we once again retreat from the Damian Thompson blog, a number of Catholics are looking at the Catholicism Pure and Simple blog. As one of those involved in the early days, I am pleased to see that it has developed and continues to flourish. Unfortunately, this story is a load of cobblers, and it does not really do the blog much credit. At times, if there is nothing to write about, it is best not to write!

    Like

  21. JabbaPapa says:

    As we once again retreat from the Damian Thompson blog

    What, have there been collective bannings or something ?

    Like

  22. JabbaPapa says:

    looking at the latest edition, all that I can see there is that it’s astonishingly even worse than previously …

    Like

  23. The Raven says:

    Good lord, is this one still rumbling on?

    I have to fully endorse Toad’s comments about Fox News, it really does exist in a parallel universe; one where “The Daily [Hate] Mail” is a bastion of liberalism and objective reporting.

    As to the story, I am entirely convinced that (i) it is entirely true (viz. lurking at the back of neo-athiests’ minds is an unspoken desire to ship all of us believers off to the GULAG) and (ii) it is a load of unremitting cobblers: they wouldn’t articulate it this way except in jest.

    And before you rush to judgment on Teresa, let’s not forget that in parts of Germany, during our lifetimes, a profession of religious belief would have landed one with a one-way ticket to that apex of atheist civilisation, the labour camp. Given that context, we must forgive her for seeing a real threat in this report.

    Like

  24. toadspittle says:

    Welcome home., anyway Mr. W. At least on CP&S, when Jabba and Toad split their infinitives, they do it knowingly and with insouciant bravado.

    Like

  25. teresa says:

    Toad, you are right in saying that we should take a healthy dose of scepticism towards what is reported by a certain news agency with a certain political tendency.

    And thus I did some research yesterday and found at theBlaze the same story, not lifted from Foxnews but it reports a similar story. Across the landscape of liberal media, there is very very hard to find one single report on this incident. But, then I find a report at BBC, where the endeavour of the organiser Julius Griffith is highly praised (not a surprise). But even BBC can’t leave out a short remark like the following:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/magazine-16859421
    “But with that bigger voice comes bigger criticism. Because atheists so often fight to keep religion out of public property or government activities, they are perceived as being anti-Christian.

    When Fox News reported on Rock Beyond Belief, it focused on a music video by Aiden, one of the bands performing at the concert. That video featured images burning churches and references to burning synagogues and holy books.

    Mr Griffith says the band was referring to sectarian violence in the name of religion, not an appeal for atheists to incite violence”.

    The whole lyrics is (from an atheist blog site):

    Love how they burn your synagogues
    Love how they torch your holy books
    Filling coffers with your grief
    Filling coffins with your misery
    Faith holding outright criminals safe
    This is just the world we live in
    Can you justify the pain
    The death of fiction will save us all

    Hysteria
    We live We die
    I wont give up
    In a world worth saving goodbye
    I don’t have anything to fear
    I live, I live hysteria

    Wait supporting outright genocide
    Hate let us all disseminate
    A message to your herd
    Our voices will be heard
    Now faith is a question you can choose
    Faith whether Christian, Muslim, Jew
    Still you all distort the truth
    The death of fiction will save us all

    Searching for the answers are
    you asking all the questions
    Will the evidence suffice your fear
    Human evolution is the only real solution
    All the truth you gotta hear
    Would you stand and fight

    http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/aiden/hysteria.html

    Now we must judge according to our ability to read and analyse a text, whether Mr. Griffith is having the intention he told BBC or it was only to cover up the more violent aggressiveness as understood by many Christians.
    I watched the video, using a proxy as it can’t be shown in Germany (because of Copyright but it is highly probable that the band Aiden gets in Germany a process before the Court because of the line “loving your burning churches and synagogues”. The video is musically mediocre (my opinion), and the pictures less horrible than the verses in the lyrics. I admit the burning churches and Synagogues I’ve seen recently in documentary films, as crimes committed by the NS-Regime) are more shocking.

    Perhaps this video is less harmful and I am over-reacting. But what I want to say is, tolerance means also to know the cultural and historical backgrounds and associations of words and expressions. I take it for granted that people know what picture and mental association the expression “love how they burn your synagogues” can invoke, for me it invokes the crimes committed by Nazis.

    But given that both the band and the organiser are young Americans, it can be that they are totally ignorant of what emotions they will provoke with this video. Perhaps if they had learned some more in their history lesson they would be more sensitive.

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  26. JabbaPapa says:

    teresa, a basic, superficial textual analysis of those lyrics on a first reading would support your position that Mr. Griffith wishes to cover up a more violent fundamentalist atheist aggressiveness towards religion, and probably brings us closer to the dark heart of this petty squabble about the source of your information.

    A second, more focused analysis, shows that this is an incredibly bad piece of writing, given especially that there are 2 or 3 sections that make no actual sense, although they pretend to do so.

    cripes, analysing bad writing is an unhappy task …

    The lyrics appear to be a clumsily managed attempt to foment anger and disagreement between people on the topic of religion, “clumsy” mainly because the appeal of the lyrics to people of a religious persuasion can be estimated as virtually nil ; and among those of the opposite persuasion, they could only appeal to those who are availed of some rather limited critical abilities.

    The inability of the author of these lyrics to provide any manner of semantic coherence, not even a logically paradoxical one, does not lead one to a positive appraisal of the aesthetic sensibilities of those who enjoy them.

    Like

  27. teresa says:

    Jabba, I think you are right, the writing is really miserable and it is no real sense to make out of it, only the first two verses, if read alone, are there to invoke strong feelings immediately to people who know the atheist anti-religious propaganda and acts. Perhaps the band means something else which is not to be interpreted out of the text, and Mr. Griffith understands it in another way which is dark to us, so everyone has his own interpretation and then we have already too much stuff for a “culture war”. I think it is good to follow Raven’s wise advice that I should just take it in a more relaxed way.
    Btw. as we are already at it, there is a video I just saw on youtube and it might explain why some strong emotions are combined with these lines:
    1938, at the pogrom night, 1550 synagogues were burnt down, and with them, the Torah-rolls (holy books):

    then this one, Stalin ordered to demolished the Christ Saviour Cathedral, 1931:

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