When Gary Nathaniel Moore (shown) was arrested on Wednesday on charges that he set the fire at a Houston Mosque on Christmas Day, the narrative promoted by the national media blew up.
During the investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (known as the ATF), Moore was identified from surveillance videos of the scene of the crime and confirmed after a search warrant revealed evidence in his home of charcoal lighter-fluid bottles that matched one left at the mosque.
In the days before Moore’s arrest, however, the narrative promoted by the mainstream media was that somehow it was a “hate crime” resulting from inflammatory statements made by Republican candidates, especially including Donald Trump. Said the Washington Post: “If arson is confirmed, the incident would be the latest in a series of hate crimes and vandalism targeting Islamic centers of worship across the country.” (Emphasis added.) CBS News also pointed to the GOP and Trump:
Advocacy groups believe there has been a spike in anti-Muslim incidents across the United States in recent weeks that can be linked to the mass shooting in California and the inflammatory rhetoric of Donald Trump and other Republican presidential candidates. [Emphasis added.]
CBS News then quoted a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to confirm the point:
The spike began with the Paris attacks and has intensified with what happened in San Bernardino and now with what Donald Trump is proposing.
I have never seen such fear and apprehension in the Muslim community, even after 9/11.
The Southern Poverty Law Center got into the act as well, blaming a “growing number” of such incidents on “anti-Muslim rhetoric from politicians and white supremacist organizations.”
All of which evaporated when the ATF investigators revealed that Moore told them that he had attended the mosque for five years, going for prayers five times a day. MJ Khan, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, seeing that the narrative had been blown, admitted that yes, Moore had attended the mosque, but added, “I wouldn’t call him a regular.”
With the likely suspect in hand, the presumption that “anti-Muslim rhetoric” by white GOP politicians was the proximate cause — especially including the one leading in most polls for the GOP presidential race, Donald Trump — disappeared. Khan declared: “We are really very surprised and saddened by this whole thing.”
What no one in the national media is willing to consider is that Moore’s arson could well have been a “false flag” incident designed to inflict damage on the GOP and other so-called “racists” and “haters,” while posing helpless Muslims as victims and allowing them to maintain their innocence and their distance from the arson and the arsonist. A false flag event is a deliberate attempt to deceive so that the incident appears to have been carried out by enemies of the victim, when the event was actually performed by the “victim” or his supporters.
One of the key incidents that propelled Adolf Hitler to absolute power in Nazi Germany occurred on the evening of February 27, 1933. There was an arson attack on Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag. Arrested at the scene was an unemployed bricklayer who also happened to be a communist. That was sufficient evidence for Hitler to claim that the communists were a key threat to Germany and to parlay the arson into consolidation of his power as the Führer.
As William Shirer wrote in his towering The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:
The whole truth about the Reichstag fire will probably never be known. Nearly all of those who knew it are now dead, most of them slain by Hitler in the months that followed.
Even at Nuremberg the mystery could not be entirely unraveled, though there is enough evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that it was the Nazis who planned the arson and carried it out for their own political ends.
What’s especially interesting is that, with the potential deceit exposed, it’s back to normal at the Houston mosque. Said Khan to his adherents: “This case has come to the point where now the court system can take care of it. Please go about your business. Attend the daily prayers.”
Photo: Gary Nathaniel Moore
A graduate of an Ivy League school and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
