Re:The Great Hobby Lobby Artifact Heist
by themaninthedark on Monday March 24, 2025 @01:27PM
(#43463370)
I think there is a little difference in culpability between directly sending money or traveling to a terror cell vs contacting buyers to purchase artifacts.
If my local church was attempting to support African businesses by purchasing goods but the buyer was getting good from a factory that used slave labor, I would expect the FBI to come talk to the church as well.
This is the same logic that got DJI a ban from some proposed invisible link to Uyghur oppression.
Re:The Great Hobby Lobby Artifact Heist
by washadjeffmad on Monday March 24, 2025 @07:57PM
(#43466694)
The article mentions the family had tens of thousands of looted artifacts (there's no legal way to acquire them) and attempted to evade detection by customs by mislabeling them. They knew what they were doing, were told to stop, and they kept doing it.
If you discovered the clergy or elders in your church wanted a supply of something so badly that they secretly used your tithe or offertory to fund a warlord who then enslaved people to acquire it for them, how would you feel? That's a closer equivalent of what Hobby Lobby did to their customers.
Unrelated, but how would you summarize the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark?
The Green family wields a personal antinomianist doctrine reserved for the rich and powerful. Under their brand of Creationism, God has given them literal dominion over the world (Genesis 1:26-31), and not exercising that, whether or not in defiance of conflicting secular laws, would be a denial of the mission of their faith.
I remember my first time hearing them called "Wahabbi Lobby" in the mid-2000s after the FBI had "spoken to them" about ISIL targeting early (pre-)Christian sites to plunder artifacts, knowing the Greens had a taste for them.
Consider the implications. What would have happened if your local church had sent money or took a secret mission trip to aid Al-Qaeda?