Tea at Trianon: Anatomy of an Ecclesiastical Smear Campaign

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Anatomy of an Ecclesiastical Smear Campaign

From Catholicism:

Pax Christi. You may recall the startling revelations that came out on February 8 of this year, when a heroic whistleblower named Kyle Seraphin published an internal memo from the Richmond, Virginia FBI Field Office. The memo concerned the threats posed by “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVE)” and their overlap with “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” (RTCs). In that memo, our little religious community, along with other groups of traditional Catholics, was named as an extremist threat to American society which must be monitored, and even infiltrated, by the federal government! Yes, you read that correctly, there was serious talk among some ideologues in the federal government of targeting and infiltrating our small community here in Richmond as a menace to society.

While the memo cited the leftist publications Salon and The Atlantic, the main source of misinformation for the unconstitutional and sloppy memo was the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization aptly described by our friend, C.J. Doyle, as, “a lucrative bunco scheme which monetizes left wing paranoia by inciting fear of conservative Christians.” The SPLC first attacked traditionalist Catholics, including the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, about sixteen years ago, and we have remained on their fraudulent “hate map” ever since.

There is good news to report, though. The enormous and rapid backlash against the memo earned the Richmond Field Office of the FBI instant notoriety, so much so that the higher-ups in the Bureau rescinded the document, stating that the memo does not meet the FBI’s “exacting standards.” Refreshingly, the memo’s reliance on the SPLC elicited a great deal of public ridicule and contempt. The SPLC is so thoroughly discredited now that only the utterly ill-informed or slavishly ideological put any stock in the veracity of its lunatic utterances.

This good news does not change the fact that, in the sixteen years since the SPLC defamed us, various parties have weaponized their ludicrous statements against us in the press, in the court of public opinion, and even in a court of law. First, the SPLC libels against us were used by those who attempted to stop a building project for God’s glory. But we prevailed in court more than a decade ago; here stands our sacred structure. Now, in more recent years, the SPLC, and even the FBI have been leveraged against us in other venues, though, with a much higher cost. (Read more.)