For some reason, crazy people with unstopped pathways towards violence finally committing that violence isn’t a satisfying enough explanation for why crazy people with unstopped pathways towards violence finally commit acts of violence. So they look for scapegoats. Here are 5 bad ones. The 21 year old murderer who killed 9 people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church made a series of conscious decisions stemming from a mix of ignorance, hate, feelings of victomhood, and chemical imbalance.
Here are 5 things not responsible for the massacre:
1- BLACK PEOPLE / ANY BLACK INDIVIDUAL
This is a different dynamic than the previous deaths of black individuals that were falsely attributed by race-hustlers and well meaning but brainwashed and ignorant hippies as being murders. The massacre in Charleston was an unprovoked, unjustifiable, unnecessary, murder of completely and totally innocent human beings. It’s an important note for contemporary and long-term history, especially given the misreporting and continued ignorance of previous high-profile deaths of black individuals amidst criminal activity.
This was not Treyvon Martin attacking a neighborhood watchman who was following him and then getting a single fatal shot fired through him at close range amidst bloodying the shooters skull into the sidewalk only to be misreported as a case of a peaceful boy getting gunned down just for being black.
This was not Michael Brown being approached by a police officer for walking in the middle of the street after he had assaulted a clerk in a store he stole cigars from and then amidst trying to grab the officers gun, was fatally shot in the scuffle, only to be misreported as a peaceful black man being hassled for no reason and getting gunned down despite putting his hands in the air and saying “don’t shoot” (the most persistent lie of these cases that was most widely believed even after being debunked).
This was nothing like those previous high-profile cases. This was a group of religious Americans exercising their rights and tradition of congregating peacefully, welcoming in a newcomer with open hearts and minds, and then having their loved ones senselessly targeted and slaughtered by him for no reason outside of the killers deranged hateful blood lust.
Yes, there have been previous high-profile instances where people did regrettable things that caused them to get killed and yes a bunch of people became falsely convinced that they were murdered because of racism. This isn’t one of those cases. 9 Americans in Charleston are in the ground for no reason other than one evil sicko premeditated a day of murder fueled by his racism. No one in that church had any culpability in the unjustifiable bloodshed that befell it and no retaliation violence, protests, or hate came in the wave of response (as opposed to the previous 3 dubious examples). Instead, the church members forgave the murderer and asked God to have mercy on him for stealing their loved ones – an act I don’t agree with, but recognize as amazing.
2- A’MURKAN RACISM & GUN CULTURE
The Charleston murderer was a racist – therefore racism is an epidemic problem that requires social upheaval to correct? Some people wish that was the case, but thankfully it isn’t.
Ideology can convince people to commit acts of violence who otherwise wouldn’t and people with a propensity to commit acts of violence can be drawn to or invent ideologies as vehicles to do so. I’m specifically avoiding showing images or using the name of the piece of human debris who pulled the trigger that ended those innocent lives, but if you look at him – the dude looks not-sane. He looks a lot more like the Batman theater murderer than he does a competent sane person driven to kill. But fine, sure, I admit that having a stupid haircut and looking a little bananas isn’t exactly forensic evidence that would stand up in court, proving that a person has lost touch with reality. What I *do* know is that this fruitcake douche was going against the grain of America, not with it.
There are groups in America that make a good living out of making certain classes of people victims and so in order to justify their profit model, they need to perpetuate myths about alleged behemoths you need them to turn the tides against. The truth is that the popular sentiment in white America is that race is unimportant, not that it’s so important that dark skinned individuals need murderinz. Everyone hates this guy. He has no support. The lunatic rantings of the killers hate rants are supported by less than one half of 1% of the population of this country. Fringe freaks exist, its true. They congregate and share propaganda. It’s not an epidemic. American racism against blacks was not the reason 9 people are dead in Charleston.
It’s also not unique to America. Despite President Obama’s claim that “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries” – doubling down to repeat “It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.” – it does. Unless of course he meant “this kind of [low] frequency”. Then he was right… Finland, Slovakia, Israel, Switzerland, and of course Norway (which suffered a massacre of 77 in 2011) all have a higher per capita rate of rampage shootings than the United States, which itself is closely followed by other “advanced countries” like Belgium, Germany, the UK, Canada, and France.
But what is more important than the Presidents slander of his own country vs others is that even without the comparison to others – rampage shootings are not common in America. That’s why they’re such big news items when they occur. Every one is one too many and it’s frustrating that most of the recent high-profile ones could have been prevented with the right actions from those around the killers but it’s still factually false to cite a pandemic or support to these universally condemned shootings. It’s doubly false to blame a culture of anti-black hate.
3- THE CONFEDERATE FLAG
The church murderer had posted a picture of himself with the confederate flag, another picture of him burning the American flag and others still. While this sparked a return to the legitimate debate over the prudence of the possible implications South Carolina’s flying of the Confederate Flag over the State House, it also re-ignited an illegitimate debate over the voodoo powers of the Stars and Bars, which had no culpability in this church murder.
A renewal of focus on South Carolina’s flying of the Confederate flag makes sense but it’s legitimacy of display or lack thereof was not a catalyst for the murder of these 9 people. Whether or not the symbol that represented the region of the country involved in the American Civil War who lost the most lives (over 600,000 vs the Norths 100,000+ deaths) is good to display by individual or government is a debate that has nothing to do with this act of violence which was not inspired by, facilitated by, boosted, or in any way aided by the design on that particular piece of Civil War memorabilia. It’s a symbol that’s been used by racists, not an ideology that influences racists to BE racist and/or commit acts of hate, violence, and murder.
Even if the murderer had written manifesto’s on how awesome the Confederate flag is and the history of what it means and why he’s killing in it’s glorious name (he didn’t) and/or how it specifically drove him to kill (it didn’t) – we don’t typically take a crazy murderers motives seriously when they spawn from totems or other objects. Trying to ban a historical symbol because it was co-opted by murderers is only a fraction of a degree crazier than banning dogs because David Berkowitz (aka the “Son of Sam” killer) said he was driven to murder because his neighbor Sam had a demon possessed dog that demanded it from him.
4- LACK OF GUN RESTRICTION LAWS
If you don’t like guns, as I don’t, then it seems too good to pass up to not use mass killings with a gun as examples of why there need to be more restrictive gun laws. Hoever… Nothing about the murders is attributable to gun laws that allowed any of it’s components to happen.
The murderer had a felony (making it illegal for him to poses a firearm), the murder weapon used was a gift – given to the murderer illegally (so improper registration laws can’t be to blame), South Carolina does not have concealed-carry or unconcealed firearm carrying rights without a permit (which the murderer obviously didn’t have with his illegally gifted gun), and you can’t bring a gun legally into a Church in South Carolina anyway.
Lack of gun laws did not facilitate this evil person to get ahold of a gun he could and did use to murder innocent people. They existed and were broken. Creating more laws to be blithely ignored by criminals ignoring the arguably more important law of “don’t murder people” is not the barrier required to stop such acts from happening.
5- FOX NEWS OR SOCIAL COMMENTARY
Just when you thought the goofiest scapegoats had already been pinned, Democratic State Rep Todd Rutherford told CNN that the murderer committed his crime “because he watches things like FOX News” and hears “coded language” that is actually “hate speech”. This is just stupididy that actually is on the level of my previous half-joking example of blaming the dog for the Son of Sam murders. At least the Confederate Flag has actually been used as a symbol of racism by racists, but claiming a cable news channel is secretly broadcasting “coded” advocation of racial murder is fruitcakery that shouldn’t be whispered by dummies in a bar, let alone broadcasted by elected representatives on national television.
Rutherford claimed that the broadcasts on FOX “talk about the president as if he’s not the president. They talk about church-goers as if they are really not church-goers. And that’s what this young man acted on. That’s why he could walk into a church and treat people like animals when they are really human beings.” Somehow the right-wing watchdogs failed to pick up all those reports by FOX about “some guy at the Whitehouse” who isn’t really the president and/or how people don’t go to church and thus it’s totally cool to murder people who go to church. Or something. Wtf? The reality is just the opposite – commentators on FOX are more likely to give President Obama more, not less, power in their analysis of his allegedly criticism worthy actions, and they put too much emphasis on religion in America, not less. In fact the Daily Kos attacked FOX for allowing the commentary of the shooting being an attack on religion (because the Daily Kos wants to keep the discussion focused exclusively on blaming a culture of racism).
When asked by FOX News host Bill O’Reilly about the comments, Rutherfords defense was… not so good. He said that the “not really the president” comments were about the Birth Certificate conspiracy (which FOX News debunked, not endorsed), admitting that he had no evidence that the murderer ever watched FOX News (reiterating that he said “things *like* FOX News”, whatever that means) and continued to claim without example that unnamed outlets *like* FOX (but not specifically FOX I guess?) report on non-news in order to smear black Americans as inherently violent rapists, tacitly condoning murder of anyone with dark skin. I wish I were exaggerating…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEXZZ1w_sHA
These dubious scapegoats are a problem. When people murder for ideological reasons (as opposed to situational motivations such as personal gain or targeted animosity like in mobs and gangs), the ideologies are never to blame unless they were force fed cult-style to the murderer without access to the reality that debunks the hate-propaganda. So unless a murderer is doing their killing spree because of their life teachings in a hate-sect of a Mormon desert (doesn’t happen) compound or one of the Al Quaeda branches or partners (happens), the inspection of the symbols, culture they associated with, and literature they wrote or endorsed are all not causes of the murder (if one is to think of it as a virus we’re discussing in order to stamp out) – they’re symptoms of the murder disease.
These are distractions and damagingly foolish ones at that but have you noticed the pattern? These 5 scapegoats are scapegoating from what?… The individual.