The American website Counterpunch published an article that strongly criticizes the double standards with which law enforcement and the media deal with various religious groups in the United States.

While those intelligence agencies and the media see that spying on Muslims is benign and acceptable, they find it bad behavior and unacceptable if it affects Christians, according to the article.

The article stated that the FBI had disavowed a document showing that its branch in Richmond, Virginia, had opened an investigation into "radical traditionalist" Catholic supporters and their possible ties to the "far-right white nationalist movement."

The office attributed its retraction of the document to the fact that it "does not meet our strict standards".

In his article on the site, American journalist Ari Paul cited examples of the authorities and the media - especially those with conservative right-leaning tendencies - dealing with traditional radical Catholic groups.

While the National Review magazine described the FBI document as slander, Fox News saw it as evidence of the federal government's persecution of conservatives, and the broadcaster on the same channel, Tucker Carlson, considered it a "doorway" to attack Christians in general.

According to the article, the FBI document linked to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has identified several Radical Traditional Catholic hate groups, to differentiate between adherents of the extremist ideology of Radical Traditional Catholics "targeting Jews as the perpetual enemy of Christ" and between The larger community of devout Catholics.

He noted that the famous talk radio host, Hugh Hewitt, described the supporters of the ultra-traditional Catholic group as "good, generous and loyal people who take their duties seriously."

He added that the FBI "seems intent on going after harmless people, if they are conservative".

Hewitt called on FBI Director Christopher Wray to deal harshly with what he called "ideological extremists and political partisans" working within the office who led the charge against traditional Catholics.


Double standards

The problem, Ari Paul explained in his article, is that many of the right-wing media critical of the memorandum are the same ones who endorsed law enforcement's widespread surveillance of Muslim communities.

The National Review magazine was quoted as saying that "monitoring Muslim societies is indispensable to defeating terrorism."

The magazine also celebrated the FBI's severance of its ties with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The writer touched upon the New York Post's editorial board's praise of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for describing police surveillance of Muslim activities as "a cause for pride."

He noted that the Associated Press won a Pulitzer Prize for its series documenting New York police spying, which the New York Times editorial board called an "indefensible program" of spying on law-abiding Muslims.

But the far right saw otherwise.

The writer pointed out that there is no evidence that the FBI document related to extremist traditional Catholics led to widespread spying on them, as happened to Muslims during the era of Mayor Bloomberg of New York.

However, the conservative media handles these matters quite differently, according to the article, whose author confirms that the FBI quickly distanced itself from the document related to Catholics, while law enforcement spying on Muslims only resulted in lengthy legal and political debates.

The writer points out that what happened on September 11, 2001 was not the worst "terrorist" attack on American soil, but rather the attack on Oklahoma City that was carried out by the white Christian nationalist, Timothy McVeigh, who is still closely linked to extremists today.

The article concludes that the double standards of the right-wing media make the Christian religion a sacred element and the Islamic religion a suspicious element.

Religious Catholics - especially those who are staunchly opposed to abortion and LGBT rights - are, in the eyes of these methods, an essential part of conservative American culture.