#racially motivated crimes

[superreader30]

This case is from Durham, North Carolina 1988, which was featured on Unsolved Mysteries. It is about the racially motivated murder of Kenneth Dungee at the hands of a white couple.

Credit: @truecrimerer

[santaclaushohoho1]

sex offender registry is a really good idea in theory but if you think about it the guy who kidnapped, raped, and murdered Jacob Wetterling in 1989 was NEVER on any registry until they found child pornography in his bedroom and a 14 year old who sent a dick pic consensually to his girlfriend at the time is on the registry for life

[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."

[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

[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

[themilkcrate]

Ron DeSantis has always been "Mask Off"

This isn't a new thing. It's a pattern of behavior.

That pattern of behavior is what led us here. Gun violence is a human problem. Human problems have human solutions. The first mass shooting in America happened in 1966. Human solutions includes good policy. You can make as many policies based on mental health that you want, but racism isn't a mental illness.

Ron DeSantis has blood on his hands.

Photo/Pie Chart Credit: New York Times

[letsalldegenerate]

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

[jewishvitya]

[This post was originally written in response to someone tagging me and claiming that a free Palestine would mean all Israeli Jews will be kicked out and where will I go, and how they can't understand why I'm so against Israel being our ethnostate. OP blocked me, so I'm reposting with a few edits, because I already wrote this and I might as well.]

Look. I understand your mentality. We're traumatized by a history of violence against us. We were shown that so many in the world want us dead, and so many others won't stop them. I get it. But I refuse to let myself silently become the face of similar oppression for other people.

Israel benefits from antisemitism and maintains myths that got Jewish people killed in the past, like double loyalty. It weaponizes it for propaganda reasons. It's supported by antisemitic Christian zionist organizations with terrifying motivations. It started out with violence not only against Palestinians but against Jews too. Israel isn't motivated by our safety, it abuses that idea. It manipulates and weaponizes our trauma to make us feel justified in causing so much suffering to innocent people.

You're right that I'll have nowhere to go if I'm kicked out of here. This is where I was born. My parents come from other countries that I won't feel safe in. But all of this is hypothetical. The ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians is not hypothetical, it's REALITY. It's happening RIGHT NOW. And I don't understand how, as a Jewish person who knows what this kind of suffering and loss of life means, you seem unable to prioritize that. I tell you I'm witnessing a genocide happening right next to me and you keep telling me "but what if they hurt you instead."

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

And I'm calling it an assumption because I'm not willing to pull from the Hamas charter that they've since replaced. Hamas isn't Palestinians. The only reason they became this powerful is Israeli funding, and Israeli violence giving Hamas free PR as the only ones who will stand up to the state that will keep them trapped and dying.

We control every aspect of their lives. Israel created a place that breeds radicalization. No group of people, living under the conditions forced on Palestinians, would be peaceful. They would fight back. Because peaceful attempts to have the human rights that Israel denies them got nothing. We stomped on every single one. We blocked all other routes and left them with only violence, which Israeli politicians have been using as an excuse for over 15 years to make a show of force with military campaigns whenever they wanted a boost in popularity. We created living conditions with such low life expectancy that half of the population is children because so few adults survive. They don't deserve this. No one deserves this.

Palestine was a land with people living in it. One plot of land can create multiple groups of people, especially when we've been separated for 2000 years. Our connection to this land does not cancel out theirs. Removing them to create our own country could never be right. It's not an argument saying that our connection to Israel gives us the right to move here to live ALONGSIDE Palestinians. That's not what we wanted. We wanted a country that enforces Jewish majority and legally prioritizes Jews. You're justifying this when I repeatedly state that the only way for it to exist is through ethnic cleansing and genocide. There's no way to make this concept into a reality without killing, displacing, and oppressing whoever's left in various different ways, from apartheid to other kinds of discrimination.

I'm not against safety for us. I want to be safe. I want my children to grow in a safe world where we can be openly and joyfully Jewish. I'm not willing to pay for that with the lives and freedoms of other people.

So I will be loud about this: Palestinians deserve to be free in every part of their homeland, even if it's our ancestral homeland too.

If safety for us means we're the ones committing the genocide, maybe we should rethink what safety looks like.

I'm terrified for the lives of millions of people in Gaza. Right now, all I can think about is this, and it baffles me to see people so willing to transfer the horrors of our history to other people.

I had a lovely conversation in DMs in response to the first post, about how zionism encourages us to isolate rather than build bridges in the places where we live all over the world. We can't ignore the way antisemitism saturates culture, but we should also remember the places where Jewish communities thrived for centuries, the places where our neighbors protected us. We're hated, and we're loved. Each form of oppression is unique, so no other group experiences what Jewish people do exactly, but we're not alone. We have a long and rich history of solidarity with other marginalized communities and involvement in liberation movements. We're actively working to make the world safer, and we have people fighting with us. I'm just participating in this fight where I am. The struggle for liberation is a human struggle. You can't use the trauma of antisemitism to silence me about other kinds of bigotry.

Never again. To ANYONE.

[kattmeithmath]

adding this reply from the comments

They're trying so hard to make this a culture war thing instead of a class consciousness moment.

[v-risalab]

I watched "The Man with 1000 Kids" documentary on netflix, and it's staunch refusal to engage with the white supremacist core of the issue is frankly astounding.

This Dutch guy went around the world donating sperm under different names, and the documentary followed mostly families from the netherlands that recieved sperm from him.

These families picked this man out of everyone else because of his blonde hair and blue eyes, paying thousands of dollars to have kids with those traits. Because yes, apparently you can shop for the whitest man when you need sperm.

This guy's nickname was Viking. He uploaded youtube videos about how white privilege is not real and how traditional living is superior in every way. His partners in crime did this in Kenya with him in order to, and i'm quoting, "bleach africa". This had 0 attention drawn to it.

White supremacy permeated every minute of this documentary, how clear was that this guy was obsessed with racial purity and wanted to spread his aryan genes though the world. And how clear it also was that the families had the exact same interests in keeping the purity of their genes.

The documentary mumbled something about the guy wanting to have a legacy through his youtube channel, and ended claiming it all ended well because he got forbidden from donating more sperm and all the affected families are now a big happy family. This was said while showing images of the children playing together in some playground in the netherlands, of course all white.

At first I could not believe not a single minute was given to discuss what was actually going on. But then I thought that if these families had to confront his real motivations, they would also have to confront how fucked shopping for the whitest kid is. And that would never happen of course, after all this was just one bad guy and not a symptom of a fucked up system and set of values.

If anything, it is a great look into the lengths the families, the mass donor, and the documentary creators will go to avoid any sort of introspection or challenge to their violently racist beliefs. But it all ended well, right?

[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.

[kindaorangey]

AND another thing about madeleine. she's tried as a deviant in society in a similar way to louis and claudia - it's mob rule that leads the audience to cry for her death - and it runs a direct parallel to when she was publically tried and shaved for horizontal collaboration.

and the thing about her being forcibly shaved, and later being harassed and assaulted, is that it's less of a judgment on how she might feel about fascism and more of a judgment of her as a woman - that she performed a sexual act with an invading soldier is an insult to the nation's dignity. the way her community ostracises her is misogynistic more than it is anti-fascist (and, then, with the intimate framing of her turning, she is being tried for the same crime of sexuality during the show trial in ep7)

but she is also spared. she isn't at the mercy of mob rule in the same way that louis and claudia are, she's awarded the chance to join the coven. and with how racially charged santiago's usurping armand in the coven is, i think it's fair to interpret this offer as something she's only privy to because she's white (even if, on a character/vampire law level, that's not all that motivates santiago to do this, it still functions as a metaphorical representation of white privilege)

tl;dr they're all tried as deviants, madeleine, louis and claudia. their crimes might ostensibly be written into the great laws but under the surface their crime is simply existing in white heterosexual society. and there's clear gradation to their deviancy in how madeleine is tried vs. how claudia and louis are tried.

[woodohwanedandproud]

@applestorms #yes yes absolutely #idk to some degree generally i try to approach stories on their own basis at least initially #e.g. focusing on DN in terms of characters rather than distinct questions of ethics like whether or not light is actually doing good etc #but. recently i think i’ve been questioning that a bit #it’s just hard to separate it out entirely even if unintentional y’know #also it drives me nuts when people do the ‘uhuhuhuh um acktually. 🤓👆light was right’ schtick #no he was fucking not!! #it is core to DN imo that light very rarely has to actually interact with his victims #to see them for their humanity or personal mindsets or lives #the ways in which they might’ve been pushed to crime one way or another through the circumstances of their lives #idk it just falls into that classic mindset of seeing criminals as ‘doing evil for evil’s sake’ #and refusing to see the very real human motivations that exist behind every crime #ultimately light is completely unwilling to engage with any moral quandaries because of the nature of his mindset surrounding KIRA in the #first place & the selfish motivations he personally holds #ironically he sees himself in the exact way he refuses to see any of the people he passes judgement on #sighh idk. is any of that coherent #again yeah it’s hard to piece this out fully w/o good context of the japanese justice system #but also like… i mean light is killing american criminals too. by proxy he is almost undoubtedly falling for the same racist bias inherent #to the american justice system #and any other biases racial or otherwise present in justice systems worldwide #or even outside of those justice systems i mean yeah he does some ‘research’ or whatever for most kills #and only tries to target the worst of the worst at least initially #but c’mon #they say it in series— the crime rate starts dropping incredibly once KIRA is well known to the world #how low do you think light ends up dropping his standards? esp once mikami gets involved #note that his reaction to mikami’s claims is never ‘that’s wrong’ but always ‘that’s too soon’ #he WAS planning on getting rid of all the so-called lazy and useless parts of society at some point #there are flaws inherent to light’s approach yes but he’s also kind of fucking terrible regardless #he does not respect or connect with the rest of humanity in the slightest #light sees himself as being above the rest of humanity, as the peak ideal that everyone should strive to be. once you start getting rid of the most egregious offenders, how soon does the mindset transform? when you start killing off everyone that isn’t like you? it’s a blessing, frankly, that light only reigned for 6 years. i cannot imagine what the world would’ve looked like if he had a full lifetime of that kind of power @moonlarked (OP) read your tags and you’re absolutely right! tbf death note is super fucking vague about what light “counts” as criminality…I dunno if he researched the American prison system or whatever when killing Americans but death note doesn’t seem to know either! like yeah he absolutely killed war criminals corrupt politicians evil rich people etc etc but i think the sense of dehumanization is really important here

yeah death note is very much not interested in breaking the status quo at all or meaningfully criticizing the police system for obvious reasons (it’s a crime thriller that has no interest in being anything but entertaining) but i think it’s interesting to expand on the implications of the characters with the ideas of totalitarianism and state sanctioned violence in a death of the author kind of way

(obviously i am coming from a western viewpoint, if anyone familiar with the japanese criminal justice system wants to go more in depth with this feel free to, I’ve definitely heard interesting ideas in that regard)