#in a racially motivated hate crime

[youngpettyqueen]

🔥 for shipping or fic tropes?

ill answer for ships cause I really dont think I have any controversial fic trope takes? ill come back and reblog this if I think of anything

but hot take on ships! just because a ship is popular doesnt mean its actually any good

[cursed-40k-thoughts]

I just want one faction that doesn't think they have the best race. Why are there none that are like "Yeah we are better at this thing but the Necrons are way better at technology so I guess there isn't one inherently superior species?"

Against all statistical odds, in the grim darkness of the far future, the entire galaxy is racist. Without exception.

Many of the Mechanicus acknowledge that xeno tech is better than theirs in some shape or form, they’re just weird and religious and horny about it culturally

I DO really like the overall absurd levels of racism, though. It’s just a sandbox filled with slightly different coloured cats that are all intermittently taking the time to violently bat at each other before going back to yowling loudly

[ausetkmt]

As they sat in the lobby of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Washington, D.C., last month, Garnell Whitfield Jr. and others who have lost relatives nationwide to gun violence listened as U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland helped dedicate an exhibit honoring those killed.

Garland spoke of some of the victims on the new "Faces of Gun Violence Memorial" wall, including Whitfield's 86-year-old mother, Ruth, describing her as a "mother, grandmother and great grandmother whose door and pantry were always open to family and friends." He said the wall will serve as a reminder to ATF employees of who they are fighting for each day.

In this May 15, 2022, file photo, police sit in front of a Tops Grocery store in Buffalo, New York.

"That in and of itself is progress that they would understand the need to be more empathetic and to realize the impact of gun violence on the people that they're trying to protect and serve," Whitfield, the retired Buffalo, New York, fire commissioner, told ABC News.

This week marks two years since a self-described white supremacist killed 10 Black people at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo. In addition to Whitfield's mother, the other victims were Roberta Drury, 32; retired Buffalo police officer Aaron Salter Jr., 55; Heyward Patterson, 67; Pearl Young, 77; Geraldine Talley, 62; Celestine Chaney, 65; Katherine "Kat" Massey, 72; Margus Morrison, 52; and Andre Mackniel, 53.

"I will always carry the scar of 5/14 and what happened to my mother. I'll always miss her. So, I don't expect to be healed," Whitfield said. "I know that's something everybody talks about. I think that's kind of an unrealistic expectation."

Garnell Whitfield Jr. has dedicated his life to fighting white supremacy in honor of his 86-year-old moth...

Malik Rainey for ABC News

One of the major hurdles to overcoming his grief, he said, is that such racially motivated killings and other hate crimes targeting Black people continue to rise across the country.

An ABC News analysis of the most recent FBI data shows that of the more than 8,500 hate crimes reported nationwide between 2020 and 2022, Black people were targeted in 52.3% of the offenses. Between 2021 and 2022, the numbers rose from 2,217 to 3,421, making Black people four times more likely to be targeted than the overall U.S. non-Hispanic Black population.

Hate Crimes Against Blacks in America 2020-2022

ABC News Illustration / Federal Bureau of Investigation

Among the hate crimes committed since the Buffalo mass shooting was a racially motivated attack at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, that left three Black people dead on May 26, 2023. On Nov. 22, 2023, a white gunman wounded two Black and two white shoppers at a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio, in what police said was a racially motivated shooting. The gunmen in both rampages died by suicide, according to police.

In February 2023, a Florida man and a Maryland woman, both alleged to be white supremacists, were arrested and accused of plotting to attack multiple energy substations with the purpose of destroying Baltimore, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. Officials said the pair was fueled by a racist extremist ideology as they "conspired to inflict maximum harm on the power grid" and "lay this city to waste." Both suspects have pleaded not guilty to the charges and are awaiting a trial

"Honestly, we shouldn't even have to look at the FBI statistics to know that Black people in America are still victims of subjugation, of discrimination, of racism, of hate," Whitfield told ABC News. "The fact that's still the case all these years later tells you a lot about this country and what its intent is for us."

'It was a modern-day lynching'

About two months before the massacre at a Tops store in the predominantly Black East Side neighborhood of Buffalo, President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching law, named after a Black teenager who was kidnapped, beaten and killed in Mississippi in August 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman. The law defines lynching as a hate crime and increases the maximum penalty to 30 years imprisonment for anyone convicted of conspiring to commit a racially motivated crime resulting in death or serious bodily injury.

To date, no one has been charged under the law.

"There was a reason why it took nearly 200 years to pass an antilynching law in Congress. It's because the power of lynching is so much embedded into the society," Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, a professor of law and Africana studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told ABC News.

Browne-Marshall said lynchings were committed to strike fear in Black communities, to "send a message to the community that white men are in charge."

Browne-Marshall described the Emmett Till Antilynching law as "powerful," but said prosecutors have been reluctant to apply it to criminal hate crime cases.

"So few prosecutors are doing their jobs when it comes to lynching. We as Americans have ignored the power of the prosecutor to bring charges," she said.

Gloria Brown-Marshall is a professor of law and Africana studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

ABC News

"Without protest, the prosecutors are sitting back and allowing these cases to be put under the rug," Browne-Marshall said.

But federal prosecutors countered they are using an arsenal of federal hate crime laws to seek justice for victims of racially motivated crimes.

In the Arbery case, the defendants -- Travis McMichael, his father, Gregory McMichael, and a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan -- were convicted on state charges of malice murder, four counts of felony murder, aggravated assault with a shotgun, aggravated assault with a pickup truck, false imprisonment and criminal intent to commit a felony. They were all sentenced to life in prison, the McMichaels without the possibility of parole. They were also convicted of federal hate crime charges, including using violence to intimidate and interfere with Arbery because of his race and because he was using a public street. The McMichaels were given additional life sentences, while Byran received a 35-year prison sentence.

“Protecting civil rights and combatting white supremacist violence was a founding purpose of the Justice Department, and one that we will continue to pursue with the urgency it demands," Attorney General Garland said following the sentencing of the McMichaels and Bryan.

"Racially-motivated acts of violence are abhorrent and unlawful, and have no place in our society today," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said earlier this month after a 52-year-old North Carolina man was sentenced to 41 months in prison and three years of supervised release for an unprovoked attack on a Black motorist he shouted racial slurs at and physically assaulted. The attacker, who prosecutors said displayed a Ku Klux Klan flag at his home, was also convicted of physically assaulting a Hispanic neighbor in a hate-filled assault.

"The severe sentence imposed for these vicious hate crimes should send a strong message that perpetrators of hate-fueled violence will be held accountable," Clarke added. "The Justice Department is steadfast in its commitment to investigating and prosecuting hate crimes wherever they occur in our country."

Payton Gendron, the gunman in the Buffalo massacre, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to 15 state charges, including 10 counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder and domestic terrorism motivated by hate. In January, federal prosecutors announced they would pursue the death penalty against Gendron.

A federal grand jury indicted the Buffalo gunman with 27 federal charges, including 14 violations of the Shepard-Byrd Act, a landmark anti-hate crime law signed by President Barack Obama in 2009. The law was named after Matthew Shepard, a gay student who was tortured and murdered in Wyoming in October 1998, and James Byrd Jr., a Black man killed in 1998 by white supremacists who abducted him, beat him and dragged him by a chain from the back of a pickup truck.

Garnell Whitfield and Browne-Marshall argued that the Emmett Till Antilynching law should be expanded to include racially motivated mass shootings.

"It was meant to strike fear into our communities, to start a race war and further subjugate us, keep us in our place. So, yes, it was a modern-day lynching," said Whitfield, adding that the only difference was that the killer used an AR-15 rifle instead of a rope.

While the antilynching law requires proof of a conspiracy, both Whitfield and Browne-Marshall alleged that some social media companies facilitated the teenage killer's white supremacist radicalization by allowing racist propaganda to fester on their platforms.

"This is a conspiracy. It's the oldest conspiracy we know – white supremacy," Whitfield said.

But no precedent has been set for criminally charging a social media company as a co-defendant in a mass shooting, and prosecutors have found no evidence the Buffalo shooter entered into an "agreement" with any social media company to carry out his attack, a requirement of federal conspiracy.

In May 2023, Whitfield and other relatives of those killed in the Buffalo attack filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Buffalo in an attempt to hold several social media companies responsible for aiding the killer in his attack.

The gunman was "motivated to commit his heinous crime by racist, anti-Semitic, and white supremacist propaganda fed to him by the social media companies whose products he used," the lawsuit argues, adding that the teenager did not appear to have been raised in a racist family, did not live in a racially polarized community and had no reported personal history of negative interactions with Black people.

Some social media companies named in the lawsuit denied the allegations it is aiding the indoctrination of users of their platforms in white supremacy. Twitch, the Amazon-owned social media gaming site the Buffalo gunman used to live stream the shooting, said in a statement that it closely monitors its site and took down the livestream of the Tops rampage in two minutes.

"We take our responsibility to protect our community extremely seriously, and trust and safety is a major area of investment," Twitch said in its statement in response to the lawsuit, adding it was continuously examining the Buffalo shooting and "sharing those learnings with our peers in the industry to support a safer internet overall."

Google, the parent company of YouTube, which was also named in the lawsuit, also issued a statement denying the allegations, saying, "Through the years, YouTube has invested in technology, teams, and policies to identify and remove extremist content. We regularly work with law enforcement, other platforms, and civil society to share intelligence and best practices."

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads, said on its website in February, "We define a hate speech attack as dehumanizing speech; statements of inferiority, expressions of contempt or disgust; cursing; and calls for exclusion or segregation. We also prohibit the use of harmful stereotypes, which we define as dehumanizing comparisons that have historically been used to attack, intimidate, or exclude specific groups, and that are often linked with offline violence. We also prohibit the usage of slurs that are used to attack people on the basis of their protected characteristics."

MORE: Buffalo mass shooting suspect 'radicalized' by fringe social media: NY attorney general

The Buffalo lawsuit followed the release of a scathing report by New York Attorney General Letitia James' office, alleging several online platforms played roles in the Buffalo mass shooting by radicalizing the killer as he consumed voluminous amounts of racist and violent content and allowing him to broadcast the deadly attack.

The KKK is 'alive and well'

The 64-year-old Shepherd, who describes himself as a "reformed racist" and now advocates against racial hate, said he also felt guilt.

He said many of the same practices he used to recruit KKK members are still being followed. But instead of rallies and cross burnings, white supremacist groups today use the internet to grow and indoctrinate their ranks, Shepherd said.

"It's not the robes and hoods, it's the mentality. And that mentality is what we've got to address," Shepherd said. "As I've said before, the internet is a great thing. But that's one of the tools that's being used to radicalize these kids."

'There's nothing special about this day'

On Tuesday, a monument titled "Unity" will be unveiled outside the Tops store where the Buffalo mass shooting occurred. A moment of silence will be held at 2:28 p.m. ET marking the time the massacre unfolded followed by a tolling of the bells, officials said.

The 5/14 Memorial Commission will also reveal the design picked for a second monument to be erected in Buffalo that is being funded by the state.

But Whitfield said that for him, the day will be no different from any other.

"So 5/14 may be significant for some, it's two years now since then. But it's no more significant on 5/14 than it is on 5/13 or 5/12, or today. I have to live the rest of my life without my mother and with what happened to her," Whitfield said.

Whitfield said he'll continue to speak out against white supremacy and is motivated to be as "consistent and determined" in that work as white nationalists are in their deeds.

"Every day since then [5/14] and for the rest of my life, I will honor my mother by doing this work," Whitfield said. "There's nothing special about this day coming up because I've tried to live according to these principles every day. That's how I'm going to honor my mother and my ancestors."

[tomorrowusa]

Yet another racially motivated mass shooting was perpetrated by a shithead with an AR-15. This one occurred in Jacksonville – the largest city in Florida.

There will undoubtedly be a formal Thoughts and Prayers Declaration from the GOP-NRA even as they plot to make it even easier for the unhinged to conduct future orgies of violence.

Three people were killed Saturday in a racially motivated attack after a gunman targeted Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, in one of several weekend shootings that again shocked Americans in public places – from stores to football games to parades. “This shooting was racially motivated and he hated Black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said at a news conference early Saturday evening. Waters said the shooter, who he described as a White man in his 20s, shot and killed himself after the attack. The suspect left behind what the sheriff described as three manifestos outlining his “disgusting ideology of hate” and his motive in the attack. All three victims, two men and one woman, were Black. Waters said the shooter lived in Clay County, Florida, south of Jacksonville, with his parents. Jacksonville is located in northeast Florida, about 35 miles south of the Georgia border. Waters said the shooter told his father by text to “check his computer.” The father found documents described by Waters as manifestos and called authorities.

At least the Nazi attacker is dead.

Waters showed photos of the weapons during a news conference, which showed swastikas were drawn on one of the guns with white paint. “We have opened a federal civil rights investigation, and we will pursue this incident as a hate crime,” said Sherri Onks, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Jacksonville office.

This is coverage from the CBS station in Jacksonville.

[arachnik]

taking a break from comms for a minute but im gonna restate what i said on twitter and say that some of the jessica d.rew hate is rooted in anti-blackness

[letsalldegenerate]

Los Angeles 💔 Worst news to wake up to on New Year's. We're supposed to be celebrating, not mourning.

[baeddel]

on the racist riots in Belfast

i made a post in 2021 titled "dispatch on the unrest in Belfast" (click) trying to provide some local-knowledge context for the sectarian riots in town. i have no such special knowledge to offer this time. it has been, to be honest, shocking to me how many people came to them and how well organized they were. we have seen an increasing prevalence of anti-immigrant racism in the north in recent years; graffiti saying "locals only" (simple meaning: "whites only") on council houses going to market has been reported on since 2014 (click, 2018 click, 2023 click), for example. and in 2022 the PSNI released a report stating that hate crimes of every kind, including racist hate crimes, had reached the highest of any year since they began counting in 2004/5 (click). according to the BBC as of 2014 "on average a racially motivated offence takes place at least once a day" in Belfast (click) and it has only risen since that. but it was obviously not organized at this scale before. my girlfriend remarked that this was the first time Northern Ireland has had a race riot and i think, assuming we treat sectarian riots as something else, that may be true? (the UK-wide 1919 race riots did not seem to affect Ireland from what i could find and anyway were a bit before partition; otherwise they are quite similar to what is happening today).

perhaps no further context is really possible to give; they are race riots and they are happening because of racism. nevertheless i will try and write down some things i've thought about it.

in the 2021 post i talked about the nature of the disorder, where if you looked at the footage mostly people stood on the pavement and watched while the professionals—loyalist paramilitaries—handled the direct action (hijacking and burning busses and such). that is because these demonstrations were organized by the paramilitaries and everyone must obey them. that is not the case here; the crowds attack people of colour and immigrants, their homes or businesses owned by them, wherever they can find them. if they were kicked out of one area they went somewhere else and did it there; or else they did it where they lived as on Sandy Row. so it seems to be genuinely spontaneous and not directed from above.

the paramilitaries claim they did not organize it (the Belfast Telegraph quote what they call a 'senior loyalist' saying "[w]e didn’t start this, we aren’t behind it" click—what a demonstrative article, by the way, the police asking the paramilitaries for help with population control!). they say that about everything, but i think i believe them this time for that reason. it doesn't look paramilitary. i suppose whoever organized it must be taking orders from England. however, we are aware of at least some involvement by paramilitaries. the rightists who travelled up from Ireland were identified by PSNI and Gardaí to be fraternizing with UDA men (click). blueshirts associating with loyalists is not really surprising but i am not sure it has happened before. PSNI also claim there is a "paramilitary element" within the racist riots but are reluctant to say they're behind them (click).

i have talked before about how loyalism has felt a bit of a transition from an armed struggle into something that looks like a popular movement, with demonstrations and direct action becoming the main source of spectacle. it's possible there is a gradual transition towards this point, where paramilitary hierarchy becomes secondary to a spontaneously organized reactionary movement.

it also fits into a pattern that i have talked about before (click, also here), which is that democracy in the north has undergone dramatic changes recently. whereas in the past the national conversation dominated politics, today ordinary issues of civil society are decisive. the DUP lost their monopoly on unionist voters because of how they handled COVID, the border, the cost of living and so forth—problems a normal political party is expected to solve, not a party holding down a sovereignty under siege as they were supposed to be—and that's why SF got the majority. immigration is one such 'normal' political issue, and racist violence breaks out in Belfast in a way that doesn't differ substantially to how it breaks out at the same time in a normal country like England.

speaking of the fracturing of the DUP, i felt that it was significant that we could name, as a precipitating event, the fracturing of the right wing parties in general. in the north of Ireland the DUP lost much of its support, but no single party could replace it; several unionist parties now leech its vote, while moderate unionists vote for Alliance. and in the recent election the Tories lost to Labour, but they also lost many seats to Reform. between SF and Labour we are in an era where for the first time in a long time the UK is governed by center left parties, meanwhile it is unclear what opposition has the mandate of the right-wing voter. this means that for a right wing person electoral party politics looks like an ambiguous, distant and unrewarding terrain of struggle. perhaps that is a background condition as to why racist propagandists have been able to mobilize so many people into joining these events.

something else that struck me as possibly a precipitating event is that for the better part of a year we've had extremely active and persistent organizing around Palestine in the UK, in terms of demonstrations, direct action and even in electoral politics (with several independent candidates who care about Gaza taking seats from Labour in the last election). thus, right-wing racists have seen news about pro-Palestine organizing almost every day for a long time. we know that here in the north when Palestinian flags are flown it isn't long before Israel flags are flown in response. i think it's possible to see the specifically anti-Islamic character of the riots as a kind of counter-revolution or reaction to Palestine.

those were the thoughts i had to share. on Friday 9th (today as i write this) there is a racist demonstration planned, as well as a counter-protest. the counter-protest is backed by NIPSA (a big NI union) as well as the Belfast City Council (! click), so perhaps it will be big. it starts at 4:30pm. stay safe.

[mandy4ever69420]

the thing about prisons is they don't make sexual assault go away they literally regularly facilitate it. even require it. because strip searches are sexual assault.

i beg any shameless blogger to think a fucking second before being like "so-and-so should've called the cops in this situation" because you are almost certainly fucking wrong. this includes calling the cops on kash not because kash wasn't being horrible but because having him arrested would involve:

outing ian

forcing ian to be cross examined by lawyers in testimony

potentially leading to the security tape being played in front of 15 probably total strangers

leaving ian feeling like he's lost someone close to him traumatically. even if he shouldn't have trusted this person, and taking an even more aggressively protective stance towards this guy who regularly used ian's protective instincts to manipulate him

putting someone in prison doesn't stop them from hurting others it just means you can't see it

nor does imprisoning someone help their victims cope emotionally with the repercussions

and, if you're with it enough to understand that people who do horrible things still have basic human rights it's worth noting

people convicted of sex crimes especially against minors are frequently subjected to punitive rape by any fellow inmate who learns what they've done

prison is by its definition a system of abuse.

traumatizing someone doesn't make them stop being dangerous. probably makes them worse.

police brutality doesn't stop being a bad thing just because you dislike the victim

like holy fuck lol

also as a side note as much as kash's kids shouldn't be used as an excuse for why you cant do anything to stop them i feel like it's just healthier for them to not grow up knowing that their dad is a pedophile.

[jewishvitya]

@turgidturnip I hope you don't mind me replying to this on a different post.

This is about "from the river to the sea" and the claim that it's an antisemitic rallying cry, calling to ethnically cleanse Palestine from Jews.

There's a misconception that this slogan comes from the Hamas charter, but it predates Hamas by, I think, a couple of decades. It's been used this way by more militant groups, and by Iraqi leadership at some point, but before that it's been used to call for a democratic secular nation state.

The reason you see these claims of antisemitism from Jewish people online is that this is the context where most of them will have seen it. Both because it is part of the history, and because that's how antisemites use it against Jews.

Both "Free Palestine" and "from the river to the sea" are thrown at random Jewish people, who are completely unrelated to Israel, to tell them essentially "You're not wanted anywhere and we want you gone."

This abuses the cause of the Palestinian people to weaponize against Jews. It's wrong and violent, but doesn't make the desire to be free in their homeland into something genocidal. And I'm not willing to just give antisemites this, but even if I was, I'm not Palestinian and giving up on a slogan because antisemites are abusing it is not my call to make. It's pretty obvious Palestinians don't want to put it away. Any slogans Palestinians might create can be used this way against Jews, because antisemites will always look for ways to be hateful towards us. But it doesn't make the antisemitism inherent in the desire for freedom.

Recognize where it's used in an antisemitic way from context: if someone uses those slogans to throw at a random Jewish person, or if it's used to disrupt a conversation about antisemitism, that's a misuse of it that does a disservice to Palestinians in favor of harming Jews. That's when it has genocidal intent applied to it.

Otherwise, don't let antisemites steal a slogan of a group of people who have been facing ethnic cleansing for over seventy years. Their real ethnic cleansing takes priority over the hypothetical one we're supposedly threatened with.

I'm not trying to tell other people what their liberation should look like. But when I talk to Palestinians, so far what I heard was a desire for one state that isn't an ethnostate. A civic state that tries to be safe for all the people within its borders. As far as I could see, Palestinians have been saying for a while that what they mean by this, is a state that will be free and equal to everyone.

The assumption that Palestinians will pull some sort of reverse ethnic cleansing against us is racist. And this assumption is the reason Israelis feel comfortable calling the carpet bombing of a civilian population "self defense." Killing them based on this is not self defense, it's a racially motivated crime against humanity.

Gaza is experiencing a genocide. This is because Israel wants the land - without the people. The manufactured Jewish majority can't be sustained if they're made equal citizens. Palestinians are risking the ethnostate by being alive.

So far Israel is the one practicing the genocidal interpretation of "from the river to the sea."

Palestinians deserve to be free on every single part of this land.

[antifainternational]

Far-Right Mass Shootings, May 2022-May 2023

Now that we know that the mass murderer in Allen, Texas was a far-right extremist and incel (as well as that puzzling but not-that-uncommon mix of being a racialized neo-nazi/white supremacist), we wanted to illustrate that mass shootings by the far-right are not aberrations with this list of similar events from over the last twelve months: December 23, 2022: A gunman opens fire in Paris, killing 3 Kurdish people & wounding 3 more in a plan to “kill non-European foreigners.” The attacker had just been released from prison after attacking migrants in Paris with a sword the year before. December 19-20, 2022: 22-year-old Anderson Aldrich enters a CO. gay bar with an assault rifle & opens fire, killing five and wounding 25 others before he is subdued. November 25, 2022: A 16-year-old former student storms two schools in Aracruz, Brazil, armed with two pistols and wearing a bulletproof vest emblazoned with a swastika. The teen shoots 16 people in the rampage, killing three of them. October 12, 2022: After posting an online manifesto against Jewish & LGBTQ+ people, a Bratislava, Slovakia teen shoots three people outside a local gay bar, killing two and wounding the third person before fleeing. The suspect was found dead the next day. September 27, 2022: Brothers Mark & Michael Sheppard are charged with manslaughter for opening fire on a group of migrants getting water near Hudspeth County, TX. One victim died from gunshot wounds, and one is recovering at an El Paso hospital. September 26, 2022: A gunman wearing a balaclava and a t-shirt with a swastika emblazoned on it enters an elementary school in Izhevsk, Russia, killing 15 people - 11 of them children - and wounding another 39 before turning the gun on himself. September 11, 2022: 53-year-old Igor Lanis’ obsession with far-right conspiracies ends when he guns down his wife, 25-year-old daughter, & family dog, before turning his shotgun on responding police, who shoot him dead. Only his daughter survives. August 9, 2022: A group of Black men helping someone jump-start a car in a Macon, GA. Wal-Mart parking lot are subjected to racial abuse by another man who then pulls a gun and begins shooting at them. May 15, 2022: 68-year-old David Wenwei Chou is charged with hate crimes after storming a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods, CA. and shooting parishoners, killing one and injuring five others

May 14, 2022: An 18-year-old white supremacist opens fire in a supermarket in a black neighbourhood in Buffalo, NY, killing ten customers and wounding three others while livestreaming the attack.

May 11, 2022: A masked gunman walks shoots 3 Korean women working in a Dallas hair salon. Authorities believe the incident is connected to two earlier drive-by shootings targeting Asian-owned businesses in the Dallas area on April 2nd and May 10th. This is just a list of mass shootings committed by bigots, fascists, and far-right extremists over the last 12 months. We haven't included shooting with less than two victims, thwarted mass shootings, or any of bombings, stabbings, vehicle attacks, or other acts of violence.

In 2022 we documented 477 violent incidents motivated by hate or committed by bigots, fascists, or right-wing extremists, including 112 shootings. These attacks killed 366 people and injured 399 others. Read our 2022 report here. When we say anti-fascism = self-defence, we meant it. The endpoint for far-right ideology is mass murder. Fascists intend to do harm to our communities and will seize on any opportunity to hurt others. The only thing stopping them is ourselves. WE PROTECT US!

[isfjmel-phleg]

December 2024 Books

The Wild Robot Protects by Peter Brown

This entire series is very charming and poignant. I enjoyed this one about as much as I did the previous ones.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (annual reread)

Someday I'll have an original insight into this book, but not this year.

Go to the Room of the Eyes by Betty K. Erwin

A family moves into an unusual house (that actually exists in the real world!) in 1960s Seattle and have slice-of-life adventures and get involved in solving a mystery left behind previous inhabitants. An enjoyable example of this type of story. Unfortunately very out of print and hard to find, though!

The Probability of Everything by Sarah Everett

Ostensibly this is the story of a girl and her family as they deal with processing that an impending comet is about to obliterate the earth, but--I won't spoil it--there's much more to it. I loved the family relationships, and the poignant examination of grief. It does deal with some heavy topics, including a racially-motivated hate crime, but I thought it was tastefully handled for a middle-grade audience. There were some worldview things that I personally would differ with, and this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but on the whole, this was a real page-turner for me.

The Thursday Kidnapping by Antonia Forest

This entire problem could have been avoided if the adults in this story would have been responsible enough to look after their own children and not expect literal children to do it for them. I had a hard time warming up to the characters in this one.

Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing, and Batman edited by Kristen L. Geaman

The essays are of varying quality, but the better ones had some interesting analysis, and the interviews with writers were insightful.

Fault Lines by Janet Sumner Johnson

Not as effective for me as the previous book (Final Word). It stretched my suspension of disbelief a bit (that's a lot of faked deaths), and it was a bit hard to keep all the family straight, especially when most of the cousins are fairly underdeveloped. But it was an entertaining mystery, and I would read a third book if it happens.

Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight by Travis Langley

Varying degrees of interesting. Words cannot express how few darns I give about Batman's rogues gallery, but the explorations of Bruce's psychology, upbringing, and mental health and of the Robins in a familial context were fascinating. Apparently there's an updated edition, so I think I'll track that down.

I would love to see more books in a similar vein for other DC heroes. There's so much that could be explored.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy

Very sweet and nearly made me cry a few times. Don't go in expecting a narrative; this is a series of illustrations and vignettes involving the four eponymous characters--funny, sad, or inspirational by turns.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Lovely polished writing. I think I will need to read this again to figure out what exactly is being said; this is a very Literary piece (not a criticism, I just read this on a tired brain).

Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery (reread)

I had a hankering.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Enjoyable. I liked the epistolary format.

The Chinese Egg by Catherine Storr

I don't know why it is, but Storr tends to lose me whenever she wanders out of the middle-grade level. This was YA, and I didn't really get anything out of it.

The Woods by R. L. Toalson

I picked this up in a bookstore local to my family's city while on adventures with my sister in October. Never heard of it before, but I liked the cover and premise. And I did enjoy the book! Stories about children coming to stay in mysterious gothic houses full of family secrets are almost always my thing. But there were a few historical nitpicks that drew me out of the story a little, and in the end, I'm not sure that the story was fully cohesive. Historical fiction involving a real-life tragedy in 1940s Texas is great, and so is gothic fantasy about dangerous creatures in the foreboding woods. But this book had both, and it was hard for me to reconcile them in the same story (especially the fantasy elements supposed to be set in East Texas). This might have done better as two separate books, or perhaps if the fantastical elements and the family's background had been adjusted to suit the intended setting.

Solomon Snow and the Stolen Jewel by Kaye Umansky

...I hardly remember this one.

Victoria by Barbara Brooks Wallace

I am still processing this one. Not sure what to make of it.

Network Effect by Martha Wells (reread)

A lot going on in this one. Definitely had more of an impact on this reread.

Comics

Infinite Crisis

Rip my heart out, why don't you. This is the event in which Grant gets his face destroyed, Bart comes back aged up (before going on to star in an absolutely terrible miniseries that would mischaracterize him and others and then kill him off), and Kon dies. Do I love this story? No. But I am not over Kon dying with tears in his eyes while characteristically framing the situation as something positive.

Damage (most of it)

A very 90s book that didn't get to live up to its potential before getting canceled, but its characterization of Grant has never quite been replicated by later writers. I would love to interview Tom Joyner (the writer/co-creator, who wrote this while in college!) about his work on this book.

The "Return of the Hero!" arc from various titles, Justice League Task Force (#15-16, 0, 17-37), and Triumph

This guy. He's the worst. Compels me though. More analysis forthcoming.

[crossdreamers]

Hate crimes against transgender people are up 125% in LA

Hate crimes against transgender individuals in Los Angeles County surged by 125% in 2023, with 97% of these crimes being violent, according to a report by the LA County Human Relations Commission.

LA Public Press reports that the county recorded 1,350 hate crimes overall, a 45% increase from 2022, marking the highest number since data collection began in 1980. Hate crimes against transgender people represented the largest increase.

The report linked the overall rise in hate crimes to national political rhetoric and improved reporting systems. Experts highlighted the role of divisive political discourse, particularly targeting transgender and LGBTQ+ communities. High-profile incidents, such as threats and attacks on the TransLatin@ Coalition, were cited as emblematic of the violence faced by these groups.

Key findings included:

LGBTQ+ hate crimes rose 48%, making this group the second most targeted.

The majority of gender-based hate crime suspects were male (86%), and many incidents occurred in public spaces (58%).

Anti-Black crimes represented nearly half of racially motivated hate crimes, despite Black residents comprising only 9% of the county population.

Religion-based hate crimes spiked 90%, and anti-Asian crimes increased by 31%.

Community leaders emphasized the need for education, partnerships, and stronger enforcement to address hate crimes. While the increase in reports may reflect greater victim confidence in coming forward, officials stressed that rhetoric fueling polarization and intolerance continues to have dangerous consequences.

2023 LA County Hate Crime Report

Photo: karandaev

[ninelivesastrology]

Listening to Kendrick's diss and thinking of my ex abuser. Usually I organize my thoughts a lot better than this and I even drafted a post about my reasons for being kink critical and how you can't even tag something as "tw: really bad sexual things" in the Tumblr tags because weirdos literally comb through those tags looking for victims. So please forgive me.

TW: misogynoir, racism, rape, CSA, pedophilia, slavery, colorism

"He hates Black women, hypersexualizes 'em with kinks of a nympho fetish" and I'm so fucking glad he said this. From Serena to Rihanna, man. I wondered for a whole year why Black women were constantly preyed on by men (regardless of race) who also prey on children because I have seen it happen to four other Black women, including myself. The answer is not as simple as "men."

1. Black women look younger than what they are and can be used as proxies

2. Simultaneous racial and gender power dynamic

3. Hypersexualization of Black women that perceives us as sexual taboo, lumping them in with children

4. Black women and their children are dehumanized and not perceived and believed as victims, making it easy for predators to prey on both of them

5. A Black mother's fear of reporting CSA and lack of justice if reported (see 4)

There's even a colorism element to this and I noted it with Cassie. Darkskinned Black women and lightskinned Black women are sexually fetishized and victimized for different reasons, but the experience of it overlaps in the middle like a venn diagram. There's this myth that we can't be raped either because no one would be attracted to us or because we "tempted" our assailant. It definitely goes back to slavery.

It's not to invalidate one group over the other, but I think if DSBW and LSBW compared notes, they would have way too much in common when it comes to the men that preyed on them.

My non-Black abuser was obsessed with Black culture in a really disgusting, perverse yet covert way. Back then, I had no idea that non-Black people seek out Black romantic partners to victimize with racially motivated domestic abuse (repeated hate crimes), but abusers seek out victims in general and it never starts off in the beginning.

My abuser literally tried to coerce me into having a child and leaving my child with him and saying his mom would take care of the child—Bullshit. Like having that blind trust demanded of me makes my skin crawl with what I know today.

I remember asking him, "Why?" And the answer was such a red flag. "We would have cute babies."

When it comes to mixed Black children, they are fetishized. Often, they're the entire result of racial fetishization. You just can't have children based on what they could look like. You have children because you want to be a parent, a father, because you see a life with your child's mother. Not because of some weird Get Out shit where you need my genetics. The fuck?

There's a lot of ways that misogynoir really shows up in sex, the sexual violence is so extreme. It deserves its own post, but I'll just start by saying that the fetishization of Black women really revolves around the belief that our bodies are free for all's whereas white bodies must be treated with care—Tender is the Flesh really opened my eyes to that just off one paragraph. That's another essay for another day, goddamn.

[bohemian-nights]

As a WOC, I will never be able to sympathize with Rhaenyra. She’s such an over privileged and lazy person. I just can’t bring myself to sympathize with her for getting usurped because I feel like that’s mainly her fault for being lazy and thinking she’s entitled to everything.

And then we have nettles. A girl who comes from nothing. She manages to claim a wild dragon, she fights for Rhaenyra’s cause and how does Rhaenyra repay her? By trying to murder her. How can anyone sympathize with Rhaenyra over nettles? This white woman’s trauma and paranoia do not excuse her trying to kill a black woman.

So many of her Stans like to pretend they have the moral high ground while also defending Rhaenyra trying to murder nettles.

Yeah, that’s my main complaint with her and why I get so frustrated when people think I’m being mean, petty, or overly critical about her character.

Yes, she is objectively a victim of the patriarchy, but she’s also a privileged white woman who tried to exercise her privilege by attempting to commit a racially motivated hate crime against a Black woman(Nettles).

And yes she’s a fictional character, but there have been so many women throughout history who have behaved in that same exact manner. Women who despite being discriminated against based on their sex still managed to punch down and ruin real lives, separated families, and got innocents killed all at their command.

I don’t know if this was GRRM's intention, but from my perspective as a Black woman, Rhaenyra is just another reflection of that painful history. She’s not someone I can project onto and see myself in even though she’s a woman. She’s still very much just a part of the machine(just in a feminine form).

Before anyone comes for me, it’s perfectly fine if you like Rhaenyra. Again she’s fictional, but not acknowledging what she represents and how she’s both oppressed and an oppressor means that you don’t acknowledge her victims or see the importance of characters like Nettles.

And if you have a hard time acknowledging and understanding how a fictional Black woman is being victimized by a white woman I doubt you’ll have a much easier time dealing with real life victims of racial violence.

Not to mention the fact that it’s incredibly offensive to see things like Nettles should be cut because there are five other Black-ish people in a mostly white cast and she’s unimportant and people only like her because she’s Black and yet have people swear up and down they don’t have a racist bone in their body.

This isn’t even getting into the people who have literally used the n-word compared Black characters to animals, and mocked Black hair and features. Just know you guys are the same cause racism isn’t limited to spewing out slurs.

Those statements(which are solely focused on her race) are very much rooted in anti-Blackness. Those statements are the epitome of reducing someone down to just their skin color and dismissing them because of that. Nettles may be fictional, but you are using racist tropes that have been pushed on Black(that we somehow aren’t deserving of our positions in life and are only where we are because of quotas and wokeness) to trash her character.

Nettles is an incredibly interesting character. Hell, even George finds her fascinating.

Of all the secondary characters in F&B she’s the one who he wanted to write a novella about. Her story has all the tropes that people usually like. Girl from nothing who despite all odds makes it and thrives. She’s there to teach a lesson, but they don’t see her worth because she’s Black. All they see is a Black face who they think doesn’t belong since she’s not a walking stereotype.

I’m not exactly shocked by this behavior, but it’s still stlrange asf to see people who scream up and down about misogyny(which is valid) then go on and perpetuate misogynoir without blinking an eye.

[dailyanarchistposts]

SAFETY AS ILLUSION- DANGER AS FRACTURE

1. Connected to the maintenance of life as living death is the second promise of the walls of civilization, the promise of safety.

2. Safety is always illusionary, as the countless attentats, and ever changing airport security protocols reveal- yet its impositions are very solid. Take the traditional wall around a town or settlement (which offers the promise of 'protection from the outside threat- the barbarian); the wall can be undermined, scaled, even broken to pieces if one has time and motivation, it crumbles with age and without constant maintenance and can be bypassed simply by seducing the one who guards it. Yet, to the individual inside the wall, the towering mass of bricks seems both impenetrable and inescapable, and represents a very material disconnect from that which is outside (one cannot for example even see what is outside the walls).

3. Thus the illusion of safety, is stripped bare, not as a form of protection, but as a form of containment; only those who live inside the walls can be convinced of safeties impenetrability- anyone with will enough to exist beyond the walls can see the paper tiger for what it really is- a trap to prevent escape and not a defense against entry.

4. Todays walls are much more diffuse; produced on and in the psychic level in the schools and social relations, the walls are built up inside the minds of individuals who for so many generations have lived inside of them and now no longer need not to see the outside in order to be afraid of it.

5. The illusion of safety has permeated every aspect of daily life, what 'safety' means is never concretely defined; aside from the columns of foot-soldiers patrolling the streets and CCTV at every corner, there is no discursive definition of what it might mean to be 'safe' and no concrete description of what the danger really is.

6. Even radical milieus have adopted these logics, with demands for 'safe space', policies defining safety, and the imagining that one can create places or communities free from the 'dangers' of the outside world.

7. Safety is always premised in imaginary dangers- usually the dangers of the outside, the 'other', or most often mortality. In the name of being kept alive any number of repressive measures become normalized.

8. To assist or allow suicide is still illegal in most of the world[4], the cages of the mental hospitals and prisons are filled with individuals who present a 'danger' to the life of themselves or others.

9. The demand for safety, always walks hand in hand with the forces of domination. Be that tradition of Radical Feminism which demanded 'safer streets' for women against masked and racialized attackers (and resulted in huge police incursions into poor and racialized communities), or the push by LGBT charities for hate crime legislation to protect individuals from street harassment/harm (and which has been used as a 'catchall legislation' that sees vast increases in incarceration and penal punishments for as little as saying 'fuck' in a public space).[5]

10. A fitting example of the anthropocentric obsession with safety is the 'house cat'; a being for whom the entirety of its existence is passed within the confined walls of an apartment. Premised on the idea that the dangers of the outside world; getting lost, starving to death, being run over by a car- are so terrifying (from the human captors point of view) as to justify the ultimate cruelty and curtailment of freedom. The cat is kept entirely 'safe', in a sterile environment which cannot harm her; and yet can one say honestly that a being for whom long nights, restless hunts, a shrugging disregard for humanity are normal character traits- the four walls of a human made prison will bring her happiness?

11. The 'house cat' also serves as fitting analogy for our own lives- the masters of domination keep us safely contained in the cities, the workplace, the homes; and we may wriggle a little, excited by the promise of the gym or the swimming pool- but to go outside, truly outside of their world is not only forbidden but now impossible. We welcome the crushing wheels of the car or the neighbors dog to carry us away- danger signifies freedom.

12. Individuals oscillate between captor and captive as they internalize and reproduce the logic of safety. From the cop on the street corner, to the parent warning its children of the dangers of pedophiles, to the liberal queer askewing violent or confrontational action and enforcing passivity in the name of 'inclusivity'.

13. Individuals of this epoch must face the fact that nowhere is 'safe', and that anyone promising to provide safety is in fact only (re)producing captivity.

14. When entangled with the enforcers of safety- (the police or their representatives) one soon becomes aware, that the illusion of safety is not some absolute safety from harm, but some imagined parameter of safety defined by the apparatchiks and algorithms of domination.

15. When falling fowl of the enforces of safety, one quickly realities that their version of 'keeping you safe' in fact means keeping you under control, or more often saving you from imagined danger so that they can inflict their own very real harm upon you.

16. One can for example be stopped for driving the car too fast, for passing a red light too early, for trying to jump from a bridge, for exploring and abandoned warehouse, or for engaging in a physical confrontation, in all the examples the behavior will first been defined as 'dangerous' and the narrative usually follows "we are here to protect you". Naturally the moment one is in the hands of those enforcers of safety, she can expect to be beaten, tortured, confined in a cage, sexually assaulted, humiliated, bullied and harmed in any myriad of unnameable ways.

17. "Keeping you safe" is synonymous with maintaining the monopoly of danger, harm and violence.

18. It benefits domination to have as many imaginary dangers as possible at play in any given moment. The more, and scarier the dangers, the greater the playground for imagining ways to ensure 'safety'.

19. The ever increasing number of dangers which the civilized order is happy to integrate into its logic- be that the threat of terrorism, ecological disaster, petty crime, homophobia, gendered violence or racism justifies an ever increasing number of punishments, containments and cages.

20. In many 'liberal democracies' we see how the response to popular awareness of structural oppression has been to criminalize any individuals who are accused of perpetuating it (ignoring the reality that the state is always the biggest perpetrator). From hate crime legislation protecting 'oppressed minorities' to attempts to ban networks like tor (because thats where terrorists live) we see time and time again that the promise to keep us free from danger, warped into the very real application of harm.

21. The illusion of safety rests on a very fluid understanding or what and who represent danger. In the logic of domination, we are presented daily with the idea, that a heavily armed gang, enshrined with the right to murder, kidnap, rape, and torture (the police) are 'safe' and that some kid running a red light or walking whilst black represents danger.

22. This is further complicated by status's awarded to individuals based on presumed compliance/non compliance- the refugee is 'safe' the illegal immigrant is dangerous, the steel worker is 'safe' the sex worker is dangerous, the law abiding citizen is 'safe' the criminal is dangerous. The arbitrary awarding of the right to safety is in fact the real danger.

23. Such arbitrary awarding, mean that In the name of safety we have armed hooligans patrolling the streets with assault rifles- and one can go to jail for carrying a kitchen knife from store to homestead.

24. Anyone who believes, we are safe inside the walls is delusional at best and more likely suicidal.

25. Some 'good citizens' (white, rich, cis, hetro, law abiding) might be able to uphold the lie that they are safe inside the walls (even if they discount the toxic fumes and radio waves slowly annihilating them); but even they will be forced to admit their mistake when in the name of 'safety' they cannot leave their home cage except to go their (re)productive one.

26. More than all of this though, why do we need to be safe? Why have we allowed a fear of danger to incubate inside our minds and proliferate in our praxis? Do we even really know what we mean when we say we want to be safe? We are trapped in illusions curated by tyrants.

27. Safety might be illusionary, but danger can be very real. Not the imaginary dangers domination feeds its subjects in order to keep them servile- but the danger which domination itself lives in constant fear of.

28. To break from captivity, is to accept danger into ones life- not the false dangers which preclude safety; but the real dangers of active confrontation with those who claim to provide it (safety). Accepting real danger, means arming conflictuality against the state, the police, technology, pacifistic ideologues, and perhaps even oneself- it is the realization that even if nothing is worth dying/going to jail for, these possibilities are perhaps less terrifying than remaining safe (i.e. captive).

29. To perpetuate the illusion of safety, into every aspect of life is always the goal of domination, every time one arms conflictuality, imbues danger, creates fracture; safety will rush to plug the breach. Just as one has almost no chance of destroying civilization, there is little hope of destroying safety in its totality; one can chip away, and expand ruptures but one must always be prepared that the ruptures will create new forms, and enforcements of safety- the battle will be an endless one.

30. The fight against safety in and of itself, creates danger for the one who pursues it.

31. If one is to truly realize the illusion of safety, and from this realization act in order to destroy it; she must first welcome danger as a constant friend and companion.

32. Through the process of becoming dangerous, she must face the very real dangers inside the walls (repression, assault, murder), and open her heart to all the possible imaginary ones outside of them.

33. Domination will be at every door when one opens herself fully to danger. It will close tight ranks all around and try to force safety at any cost on the one who seeks it.

34. Danger must embody all the fear of the unknown, all the visceral terror of the lands outside the walls, it must plunge deep into the darkness and never shine a light.

35. If danger spreads, 'safety' will wither.