First, he didn't say Goddamn America after 9/11. That was in 2008 when Obama was on the campaign trail. Here's the entire quote:
"Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontus Pilot – Pontius Pilate – the Roman government failed. The British government used to rule from east to west. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonised Kenya, Guana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian decent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese decent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African decent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them in slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing
“God Bless America.” No, no, no. Not “God Bless America”; God Damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God Damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!
Here's the video of that section:
View: https://youtu.be/whNE40AwVNo
. Where's the lie?
The AIDS thing is pretty ridiculous, but not exactly extremism considering what we know about the CIA allowing drugs to run into black communities, Tuskegee, and other sins. It's a popular myth, but has obviously been discredited by the scientific community. My point is you don't have to be an extremist to espouse it, just unwilling to look deeper at facts. Not exactly surprising from a minister.
Regarding Pearl Harbor, that's been a pretty popular trope in both CT circles and even among some historians for decades. There's not much hard evidence to support it, but like with 9/11 there have been theories about it forever. Again, it's not exactly an extreme position as many people believe it. Here's a Times article questioning the story from a few years ago:
The World: Early Warnings; What Did He Know, and When? and an NPR story where historians and FDR experts basically say it's nonsense:
View: https://www.npr.org/2016/12/06/504449867/no-fdr-did-not-know-the-japanese-were-going-to-bomb-pearl-harbor
The fact that it was even addressed demonstrates that it's not exactly a fringe belief.
Having grown up in the black church, my views on Wright are that he wasn't saying anything that wild for a church environment and it's nice that he did actually try to weave political and historical knowledge into his ministry. The fact that he didn't do his due diligence on all the rumors he'd heard isn't surprising because he's religious and to be religious generally means shutting off a part of your brain most of the time. Most disturbing to me was that he decided to be extra while Obama was on the campaign trail, basically taking advantage of the shine his parishioner was getting to say things he had to have known would exact a toll. Not surprising behavior from a pastor in my experience.