Conservatives make excuses for Roof

Let's review what we've learned about Dylann Roof, the suspect in the Charleston shootings:

White Shooter Reportedly Told Black Victims: 'You're Taking Over Our Country'

In the wake of this heinous crime, right-wingers swung into action, blaming everything but Roof's explicit hatred of blacks. For starters, they tried their favorite "persecution of Christians" fantasy:

“Fox & Friends” just can’t stop the spin: In the wake of Charleston, we must arm our pastors and priests

It's "extraordinary" that it's being investigated as a hate crime, Steve Doocy said--it's an attack on Christians

Problem solved! Good guys with guns to shoot bad guys with guns. Pump 'em all full of lead and let God sort them out.

Santorum Calls Charleston Shooting 'Assault on Religious Liberty'

Ri-i-ight...it was an atheist assault on Christianity, not a white assault on blacks. Despite what the killer explicitly said. Thanks for demonstrating that none of my parodies is more extreme than the right-wing reality.

The following is not, I repeat not, an Onion satire:

White Supremacists Worried Charleston Shooting Makes Them Look BadStormfront commenters continued to hold out hope Thursday morning that perhaps Roof wasn't motivated by racism--maybe it was anti-Christian hatred instead--and their movement could keep what they think of as their good name.More from the lunatic fringe

Conservatives also floated the usual "crazed lone gunman" theory, which others shot down:

It’s not about mental illness: The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males

Blaming "mental illness" is a cop-out--and one that lets us avoid talking about race, guns, hatred and terrorism

Racism Is Not a Mental Illness

Then Fox News agreed with Dylann Roof that "different cultures" was a reason for his mass murder:

Fox News host blames mass shootings on ‘different cultures’ living together in America

"All those brown people...so different from me...must kill them!"

And of course they blamed Obama, the root of all evil:

Frequent Fox guest: Whites might shoot up more black churches if Obama keeps calling them racist

Right...because the worse thing you can do to whites is call them out on their racism. It's practically a hate crime. It makes them so mad they literally can't stop themselves from pulling the trigger and killing more blacks.

For more on the subject, see Were Charleston Shootings "Unfathomable"? and Initial Reactions to Charleston Shootings.