A federal hate crimes complaint filed against the man who stabbed several Orthodox Jews at a Hanukkah party on Saturday revealed indications that the man held anti-Semitic beliefs.
No way, the guy has dark skin and used a machete, he is a terrorist. He cannot have mental health issues, that’s only for white guys with that use Glocks and AR15s.
So, his defense is that he couldn’t get the Dreidel Song out of his head? (That might work with some Jewish jurors.)
Trump and Barr aren’t going to let this one go. It’s just too good to be true for them and the Faux News state run propaganda machine.
“The white guy was mentally ill” is already becoming part of the narrative being cooked up about the TX church shooting…at least, when they take a breather from yelling “good with a gun saves the day” like mindless automatons.
The dead guys might disagree with the “save the day” part.
Auditory hallucinations? In other words, a Trump speech.
A federal hate crimes complaint filed against the man who stabbed several Orthodox Jews at a Hanukkah party on Saturday revealed indications that the man held anti-Semitic beliefs.
But the attacker’s lawyer and pastor said in a press conference Monday that a history of mental health issues had led to the attack, and that the accused, Grafton Thomas, showed no signs of hatred toward Jews.
Both of these cannot be true. If he expressed anti-Semitic thoughts in his journals, then that’s clearly a sign of hatred towards Jews. One can be both mentally ill and harbor hatred, I suppose. In either case, he’s a clear and present danger to society.
With the Blacks for Trump guy who is frequently featured at his rallies holding his sign has ties to the Yahweh ben Yahweh cult which has been affiliated with the Hebrew Israelites.
Over the weekend I ended up googling some famous hate speech several times. I was working on a post in defense of liberal ideals, and wanted the precise quotation to argue against. I really hope nobody tries to characterize my motives based on my browser history – what I passively consume.
A search for “synagogues in the area” is likely more innocent than it appears. All google searches from mobile devices are submitted as location-based, unless you turn those features off and/or add extra terms to your search query to indicate you’re not seeking the physical establishment for some immediate purpose. That said, it is also entirely possible that the attacker searched for “synagogues closest to me right now (plz use my gps!)”.
I think it’s risky and perhaps irresponsible to describe this portion of his activity that way, unless there are additional details that support the stronger claim over the weaker.
Am I arguing this because I think he is innocent? No. I just don’t want anyone to build a theory of the criminal that is so simple. It’s awfully convenient that even the “demons” in this guy’s head were so well-behaved as to limit their exhortations to property destruction. Perhaps Hell has become more civilized in 40 years?
One question I have about the incident - given the attacker’s history of mental illness, did NY gun control laws have any effect on his choice of weapon?
Did gun control prevent this horrible incident from being even worse?
Republicans have weaponized their Religious Freedom and racial wedge issues. Conservatives don’t care who gets hurt as long as it makes people fear others of different faiths, races and political persuasions to push there white supremacist agenda. It’s a lot easier to commit crimes and destroy democracy when you’re hiding behind the shield of political outrage.
Could be. Could also be the cost, or the gun shop staff recognizing he’s got a problem.
That’s the point I make to the “Good guys with guns” advocates - if they don’t stop the shooter before they open fire, then their “good guys” are failures.
[I also point out that, if they really believed in “good guys with guns” - the NRA and the GOP wouldn’t ban private citizens from packing at their events - only trained professional security personnel are allowed to carry guns.]
Actually, Faux News went so far as to cover that and make sure that everyone understands that the victims are glad that good guys with guns were there to stop the carnage such that they were the only ones who died.
Two things…
a) Compare the incident in NY and the one in Texas, the one in NY involved a machete, no deaths, the one in Texas involved guns three dead.
b) I though shootings only occurred in gun-free places.
It’s also a lot easier to keep the flock in line when they’re terrified that everyone outside it is a hell-bound wretch whose only lasting impact on the world would be if they managed to lure you away from the righteous path during the mortal leg of your journey to the afterlife.
Social conservatives and the Republican party have one thing in common: both are dying out under old modes of propagation. Young people exposed to a global culture are simply leaving this one lifeway behind to experiment with everything else; and the GOP’s intellectual bankruptcy and enduring commitment to white supremacy and rich-on-poor crime have alienated at least 2 generations of new voters.
The Republican party is attempting to avoid their extinction by abridging democratic politics altogether in favor of de facto single-party rule.
But it’s not like the social conservatives can build a wall around their little hamlets, and only watch approved television channels that promise not to expose their children to foreign ideas from a cosmopolitan culture that exudes mass-media. Or, they actually are trying to do precisely that, but this is a matter of life or death for them, so I guess they’re not about to let Jesus take the wheel.
And it won’t be hard. You will never see the prosecutor’s innate extreme dickishness and disregard of their duty to do justice in a more extreme manifestation than that presented when a schizophrenic is accused of murder.
I’m not disagreeing with you, just relaying that they’re already hard at work on the counter-narrative.
He says he thinks there are demons so he attacked jews. Other Americans think that a wooden ark took representatives of each animal and plant to save them from a 40-day worldwide flood. They’ve been attacking a member of the media for not agreeing with what they see as fact. Other than the degree of brutality demonstrated by this man, they all are attacking others to defend their delusional religious beliefs. At what point does “religious freedom” become a license to attack others?