This morning Creepy Eddie tweets yet another biased, carefully twisted STAND League blog post blaming “the media” for the increase in hate crimes.
As there is no byline one assumes Parkin wrote the piece himself which makes the fact that he quotes himself in the article rather strange.
He begins with what appears to be a sideways accusation aimed at Leah Remini, Mike Rinder and The Aftermath.
Anyone who has been keeping an eye on Eddie will clearly recognize his mention of the media since he has an ongoing campaign of attack against A&E Network, Disney Corporation and any other company that has supported the show. Also recognizable are the particular types of attacks listed. These are the same crimes directed toward Scientology Parkin has already blamed on Leah, Mike and The Aftermath.
“Across the globe, religions are under attack.
These assaults materialize as hate speech through all forms of media, legal persecution, graffiti plastered over houses of worship, bomb threats and violence, including arson and murder.”
Once he establishes this subtle link between “the media” and the rise in hate crimes, the rest of his piece is basically statistics lifted from various articles dealing with the subject.
Interesting that he includes a statistic for the Jewish community considering Scientology’s support and partnership with Louis Farrakhan and the NOI.
“The Anti-Defamation League reported that anti-Semitic hate crimes increased 57 percent through 2017, the largest single-year increase on record.”
With Farrakhan spewing his hate filled tirade against the Jewish people from the pulpit, inciting his followers to adopt that same intolerance it isn’t a surprise that there is a surge in anti-Semitic feeling. While Farrakhan may not be solely responsible for the whole increase, he is certainly culpable for some of it.
What Parkin carefully fails to include in his post is that experts agree that a large contributing factor to this rising rate of hate is that there has also been an increase in the reporting of these crimes.
According to a quote by Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism-California State University, San Bernardino in an article on Politifact.com;
“Levin said that some of the increase, especially in cities with very low numbers before, was the result of the more rigorous reporting.”
Emeritus Professor Alfred Blumstein from Carnegie Mellon agrees, saying;
“…with the increasing national attention, people could be more ready to report hate crimes to the police and are better equipped to decide if an offense is a hate crime when targeted to members of a special group.”
—https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/apr/03/hate-crimes-are-increasingly-reported-us/
Levin also spoke about this issue for an article in the January edition of DeseretNews.com where he “…attributes the national rise in hate crimes to expanding population and diversification in the United States.”
He goes on to explain “Islam and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are two religious populations that are growing in the United States…When we have demographic changes, what it tells us is we’re seeing a shift, he said. For some people, the reaction to change is fear and violence.”
—https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900050212/the-fbi-has-been-tracking-crimes-against-latter-day-saints-for-3-years-heres-why.html
The political climate is also cited for the rising hate crime rate as mentioned in the politifact.com article.
“After studying the pattern and seasonality in the FBI data, the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism found that “hate crimes have increased in every presidential election year since national FBI record keeping began in the early 1990s.”
While Parkin would have everyone believe that Leah and Mike, or “the media” are the common denominator in the increase of hate crimes around the world, the fact is, as usual, he is grossly exaggerating the situation.
The media absolutely has an impact upon intolerance towards others. It would be irresponsible to say otherwise. The way News is presented, biased political views and even fake News contributes to how people view certain groups. In the UK there has been a rise in hate crimes since Brexit. Here in the U.S. the migrant issue and border wall politics is an undeniable influence.
There are many factors involved with the issue of religious bigotry but Leah Remini and Mike Rinder are not two of them.
Edward Parkin uses facts like a child uses play dough, he squeezes and reshapes it into something that pleases him, then sets it out for the world to see. Unlike art however, the truth is not quite so subjective.
Neither Remini nor Rinder have ever once even hinted that violence be done against anyone for any reason. All they have done is allow hurting people to share their experiences both as a way of beginning the healing process and as a cautionary glimpse into the closed world of Scientology.
It is also important to note that while Eddie would have people believe that the statistics he quotes are exclusively religion related, this is not true.
“Hate crimes are defined as ‘crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender or gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity,’ according to the Hate Crime Statistics Act passed by Congress in 1990.”
So while he attempts to make his readers believe that “the media” is a key player in rising anti-religious violence, one would do well to remember that the statistics include race, gender identity, ethnicity and sexual orientation as well. None of these issues have anything at all to do with The Aftermath or it’s participants.
Creepy Eddie cannot back up his claims with any unadulterated fact so he invents his own script. The fact is, Parkin is a huge purveyor of his own brand of fake News and it is exactly this kind of behavior that sets sparks to tinder.
With every untrue accusation he makes against innocent people he is mirroring exactly what he is accusing others of; hate, bigotry and intolerance.
If Eddie truly wanted the madness to stop then he needs to begin with himself. Stop the Fair Game and the skewed, dishonest fiction and start addressing things fairly and in a balanced, truthful way.
Ignoring the realities surrounding the rise in hate crimes over the last few years and trying to make people believe that these attacks are due largely to a bigoted media is simply hogwash.
Confront And Shatter 