I ran into this with the Pagan community years ago. I found Pagans with a 'persecution complex'. They were mostly in New England which is one of the most tolerant parts of the country regarding Paganism, I think at least partly because of the unfortunate Salem witch trials. While anti-Paganism is everywhere (mostly juiced by fundy Christians), they were a helluva lot less persecuted, I think, than the few Ohio Pagans I knew who STFU about what they did and only admitted their beliefs to those they knew wouldn't judge or truly persecute them. Yankee Pagans had to rely more on centuries-old grievances, "how I would be murdered as a witch for speaking my mind in days past," and so forth. They also (and myself as well, in my early Pagan years - baby Pagans are like just-born-again-Christians - a bit insufferable for a little while) really stoked grievances based upon the horrible tortures and methods of execution during 'The Burning Times' which also, let's remember, included other 'heretics' like Jews, Muslims, competing Christian schools of thought and atheists. Boy oh boy did we come to hate men and the Catholic Church for awhile, even if we cut the men today some slack since we've never known any who put a woman to the boot, the strappado, or the stake. Priests were a little harder to forgive just because...you know, the kids.

One of my Medium articles drew a correlation between our ancient grievances as Pagans to the ancient grievances of slavery, which are only a little less ancient (and shorter) than our own. Instead of raking old wounds constantly and pouring lemon juice on them, I argued for both antiracists and Pagans, let's focus on the present and the future, two time periods we *can* change - acknowledge the abuses of the past but don't give them any more cranial real estate than necessary. You can't accomplish much if you keep yourself in a constant state of hostility.