@ageha @anemone @arcana @mischievoustomato @jeffcliff we were taught that catholics were pagans and duped by satan and not really christians but it never really escalated. there has always been a distrust of catholicism in the USA by protestants but just generally not violent.

I have done some research on historic hatred of mormons in the USA and it seems to have been driven by a few historic things:

1. success and in-group bias caused great resentment in many places
2. legitimate disgust caused by polygamy
3. rejection of mormonism's placement of self as the only correct branch of christianity while incorporating smith as a modern prophet and overtly heretical views
3. secret rituals (this was tied to a general new-world distrust of secret societies and things like freemasonry)
4. strongholds created by the mormons in the west fleeing persecution were eventually encroached by others with the expansion of the railroad system

mormons got very powerful for a while and the combination of all this was disturbing even to non-observant people.