Far be it from me to question the perfidy of the media, but...
Surely the phrase means not just Christians but specifically Christians who were in church for Easter worship services. I've seen similar headlines for other religious holidays, e.g. "Ramadan Worshippers Targeted in London Mosque Terror Attack" -- obviously meaning people who were worshipping on the occasion of Ramadan, not people who worship a god called "Ramadan."
Also, a lot of those Google hits seem to be to meta-news stories about how people like you are upset about the use of the term.
@William - Everybody must make up his own mind about these things - as I did; trying to argue something like this is counter productive.
22 April 2019 at 21:37
Faculty X said...
The media does the same simultaneous broadcasting of propaganda in many different fields; it just depends on what you focus on.
The prince of the power of the air rules the airwaves (media).
"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—"
Ephesians 2:2
23 April 2019 at 01:23
Anonymous said...
WJT, it is a small nudge or step showing how Christ and Christians are being othered and re-written into Newspeak.
When I heard it on the radio, the commentators said one use by one person wouldn't have bothered them. But when tweeted, individually, by several higherups, essentially simultaneously (HRC and BHO), it bothered 5 talk show hosts in one day. "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."
One thing BHO and HRC have in common is Saul Alinsky. HRC did a thesis/dissertation on him. BHO and many of his inner circle were groomed by SA's Chicago acolytes.
Bruce, I have made up my mind that the media is completely untrustworthy, which is why I stay away from it. The only time I check the news is to understand the context of posts like these -- and even then, I would probably be better off resisting the temptation. Getting lured into the outrage du jour, whether to join in the chorus or to critique it, is obviously harmful and plays into the media's hands. In the future, I will ignore your news-inspired posts (which, fortunately, are relatively few and far between).
@William - The point I return to sometimes, is that the mass media is actively and strategically evil.
Plenty of people will accept that the media is a waste of time, dishonest etc; but few will accept that there is an agenda. Among those who accept there is an agenda, most think it is a political agenda - motivated by (for example) the desire for power by one particular group; or to create a permanent toltalitarian world government - but few will accept that the mass media is about Real evil, demonic evil.
This means (for a christian) that the core media strategy, that underlies all its distraction, dishonesty, power grabbing etc... is anti-Christian. Being anti specifci churches is merely a part of this - the aim is to corrupt the hearts of individual Men - because that is the battlefield of the spiritual war. The heartys of individual Men.
Your insticts are, of course, correct. One strategy of evil is to lure us out from our hearts, to fight the spiritual war at the mass level of the mass media - in which case they will have won already. The correct response to massification is to dwell in the individual heart.
dearieme comments: "...'few will accept that there is an agenda': those who don't are the sort of people that my father's generation would have called "bloody fools".
"On the other hand, I agree with Wm Jas - the expression might well have started as meaning "those who worship at Easter". On the other hand that embodiment of evil, Mrs Clinton, started a tweet with "On this holy weekend for many faiths ..." which took my breath away, I must admit. Thereafter much can be explained by the bone-idleness of media people who plagiarise by means of copy-and-paste as a way of life."
Dearieme, that's a much more clear-cut example of going out of one's way to avoid saying "Christian," even if it means saying things that don't make any sense. Even if we give her Rastafarianism (4/20 and Grounation Day), "many faiths" implies more than two. I wonder what other religions she could possibly have had in mind!
23 April 2019 at 15:10
c matt said...
Well, it is not too difficult to pull off such a news conspiracy. Outside of local events, most news "outlets" get their reports from a handful of services (AP, Reuters), and just repeat what has been handed to them.
The Swedish media are using the phrase “ Easter attacks”Not one source used the word Christian. The latest narrative is revenge for Christchurch and the unceasing “ dance of death” between “ right wing extremists” and extreme islamists.
@c matt - Actually, if you begin to think about the logistics of dissemination/ evaluation and policy decision; combined with the inculcation of instant professional obedience across such a global and instantaneous system - this is actually as amazing conspiratorial achievement, that has taken many decades to construct. Certainly, nothing like this has ever existed before. Nor such an actively-addicted/ passively uncritical, vast audience of consumers that drink it in, believe it implicitly, and spew it forth to each other. Yet this is what we find.
@WJT - once upon a time, I too used to use the "to be fair" point of view... Meanwhile, Google Ngrams has zero results for "Easter worshippers" for 200 years, and now 80,000 of them!
Note added Nov 2023 - Easter Worshippers was apparently only used for that particular event; and was essentially unrecorded both before and afterwards.
This *may* indicate that the backlash was too great from the neologism to survive; but it *surely* demonstrates that the mass media can *overnight* invent and mass-disseminate a global insta-phrase, whenever it suits their Masters' purposes.
20 October 2023 at 13:29
Even as recently as 2014 when I wrote Addicted to Distraction; I doubted the reality of a global conspiracy among the mass media; mainly because I could not conceive of a plausible mechanism that operate over such a vast volume of production...
Well, I have since changed my mind. I still don't know the mechanism, but half a decade of extra observation has clinched it: the evil, secular, materialist, leftist anti-Christian stance of the international media Is A Conspiracy.
If I had any doubts, then yesterday would have quelled them. The Global Mass Media decided that it did not want The World to know that Christians has been targeted, slaughtered and maimed in Sri Lanka; and so they suddenly invented the term Easter Worshippers, as a deliberately-confusing synonym.
This fresh-minted neologism was then used, according to Google, by about 84,000 news stories - i.e. nearly 84K items with the brand-new phrase were published yesterday!
From near-zero to tens-of-thousands of simultaneous phrase-users in a matter of hours!
That shows that it is indeed possible to co-ordinate thousands of news outlets (including dozens of famous Twitter users) so that they walk in lockstep; it shows the kind of world we live in; and it shows us yet again What They Want.
Note added: I read-over and posted this - and then checked the hypertext links; in that time there had been 600 further usages of Easter Worshippers. At this rate, 'Christians' will have been de facto renamed within a few more months...
""Easter Worshippers" proves the global conspiracy"
15 Comments -
Amazing, considering that no one has ever worshipped Easter.
22 April 2019 at 19:33
Here is another good example. It is a video compilation of many different news outlets parroting literally the same phrases.
22 April 2019 at 20:25
Far be it from me to question the perfidy of the media, but...
Surely the phrase means not just Christians but specifically Christians who were in church for Easter worship services. I've seen similar headlines for other religious holidays, e.g. "Ramadan Worshippers Targeted in London Mosque Terror Attack" -- obviously meaning people who were worshipping on the occasion of Ramadan, not people who worship a god called "Ramadan."
Also, a lot of those Google hits seem to be to meta-news stories about how people like you are upset about the use of the term.
22 April 2019 at 20:51
@William - Everybody must make up his own mind about these things - as I did; trying to argue something like this is counter productive.
22 April 2019 at 21:37
The media does the same simultaneous broadcasting of propaganda in many different fields; it just depends on what you focus on.
The prince of the power of the air rules the airwaves (media).
"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—"
Ephesians 2:2
23 April 2019 at 01:23
WJT, it is a small nudge or step showing how Christ and Christians are being othered and re-written into Newspeak.
When I heard it on the radio, the commentators said one use by one person wouldn't have bothered them. But when tweeted, individually, by several higherups, essentially simultaneously (HRC and BHO), it bothered 5 talk show hosts in one day. "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."
One thing BHO and HRC have in common is Saul Alinsky. HRC did a thesis/dissertation on him. BHO and many of his inner circle were groomed by SA's Chicago acolytes.
-B. S. Linger.
23 April 2019 at 01:40
Bruce, I have made up my mind that the media is completely untrustworthy, which is why I stay away from it. The only time I check the news is to understand the context of posts like these -- and even then, I would probably be better off resisting the temptation. Getting lured into the outrage du jour, whether to join in the chorus or to critique it, is obviously harmful and plays into the media's hands. In the future, I will ignore your news-inspired posts (which, fortunately, are relatively few and far between).
23 April 2019 at 02:33
@William - The point I return to sometimes, is that the mass media is actively and strategically evil.
Plenty of people will accept that the media is a waste of time, dishonest etc; but few will accept that there is an agenda. Among those who accept there is an agenda, most think it is a political agenda - motivated by (for example) the desire for power by one particular group; or to create a permanent toltalitarian world government - but few will accept that the mass media is about Real evil, demonic evil.
This means (for a christian) that the core media strategy, that underlies all its distraction, dishonesty, power grabbing etc... is anti-Christian. Being anti specifci churches is merely a part of this - the aim is to corrupt the hearts of individual Men - because that is the battlefield of the spiritual war. The heartys of individual Men.
Your insticts are, of course, correct. One strategy of evil is to lure us out from our hearts, to fight the spiritual war at the mass level of the mass media - in which case they will have won already. The correct response to massification is to dwell in the individual heart.
23 April 2019 at 07:06
dearieme comments: "...'few will accept that there is an agenda': those who don't are the sort of people that my father's generation would have called "bloody fools".
"On the other hand, I agree with Wm Jas - the expression might well have started as meaning "those who worship at Easter". On the other hand that embodiment of evil, Mrs Clinton, started a tweet with "On this holy weekend for many faiths ..." which took my breath away, I must admit. Thereafter much can be explained by the bone-idleness of media people who plagiarise by means of copy-and-paste as a way of life."
23 April 2019 at 12:24
Dearieme, that's a much more clear-cut example of going out of one's way to avoid saying "Christian," even if it means saying things that don't make any sense. Even if we give her Rastafarianism (4/20 and Grounation Day), "many faiths" implies more than two. I wonder what other religions she could possibly have had in mind!
23 April 2019 at 15:10
Well, it is not too difficult to pull off such a news conspiracy. Outside of local events, most news "outlets" get their reports from a handful of services (AP, Reuters), and just repeat what has been handed to them.
23 April 2019 at 16:17
The Swedish media are using the phrase “ Easter attacks”Not one source used the word Christian.
The latest narrative is revenge for Christchurch and the unceasing “ dance of death” between “ right wing extremists” and extreme islamists.
23 April 2019 at 17:35
@c matt - Actually, if you begin to think about the logistics of dissemination/ evaluation and policy decision; combined with the inculcation of instant professional obedience across such a global and instantaneous system - this is actually as amazing conspiratorial achievement, that has taken many decades to construct. Certainly, nothing like this has ever existed before. Nor such an actively-addicted/ passively uncritical, vast audience of consumers that drink it in, believe it implicitly, and spew it forth to each other. Yet this is what we find.
23 April 2019 at 17:35
@WJT - once upon a time, I too used to use the "to be fair" point of view... Meanwhile, Google Ngrams has zero results for "Easter worshippers" for 200 years, and now 80,000 of them!
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22easter+worshippers%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=
27 April 2019 at 03:16
Note added Nov 2023 - Easter Worshippers was apparently only used for that particular event; and was essentially unrecorded both before and afterwards.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2018-09-20%202020-10-20&q=%22easter%20worshippers%22&hl=en
This *may* indicate that the backlash was too great from the neologism to survive; but it *surely* demonstrates that the mass media can *overnight* invent and mass-disseminate a global insta-phrase, whenever it suits their Masters' purposes.
20 October 2023 at 13:29