28 Matthew J. Walton and Susan Hayward the town of Meikhtila) to the fact that “others” outside of their control are defaming an otherwise holy symbol. U Wirathu has vehemently denied any responsibility for the riots in Meikhtila, Lashio, or other cities in Myanmar. “I don’t have any contacts in [the areas where violence occurred],” he stated in one interview. “We’ve just become scapegoats because no culprits were found after the Meikhtila riots...In our community, the real 969 [campaigners] do not use violence” (Kyaw Zwa Moe 2013). Similarly, Ashin Sada Ma, one of the monks who takes credit for creating the movement in its current form, has pointed to the fact that there has been no violence in Mawlamyine, the city where 969 had its genesis, as evidence that the movement bears no responsibility for anti-Muslim violence elsewhere (Galache 2013). In fact, both monks have placed the blame squarely on Muslims, alleging that they were the instigators of the worst incidents. After rushing to Meikhtila in March 2013 in the wake of rioting, U Wirathu —who claimed to have come to the affected area to promote interreligious peace—brazenly heaped blame on local Muslim residents for the riots, despite ample evidence to the contrary (Irrawaddy 2013b). He claimed that Muslims had thrown bags of acid on peaceful Buddhists crowds, which agitated them and caused the ensuing violence. He also stated, in response to a question about the “planned” nature of the attacks carried out by Buddhists, that the only systematic attacks came from Muslims who provoked the Buddhists. One 969 monk, U Wimala, admitted that the movement might have “inspired followers to commit anti-Muslim violence.” However, he immediately deflected the blame by claiming that those who had committed violence were “an ill-educated minority,” and that the scope of the attacks had been “exaggerated by Muslim-owned media” (Marshall 2013b). Ashin Sada Ma shifted responsibility to outside groups, which took advantage of the decentralized nature of 969: “In other places, they will spread the symbol on their own. Other townships use the logo for their own purposes” (Galache 2013). In fact, this monk even distanced his own 969 efforts from those of U Wirathu, claiming that the movement’s most well-known face acted “independently” of the original organization (Galache 2013). This dynamic of denying responsibility for violence connected to one’s actions is not uncommon in situations where the hate speech of