The news out of Charleston is horrifying: 9 people have been shot and killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, including state senator Clementa Pinckney, the pastor at the church. As I write this, police are still looking for the suspected shooter, described as “a clean-shaven white male about 21-years-old with sandy blond hair.”
It seems rather likely that the shooting was a racist hate crime.
Please use this thread to discuss the news as well as to post any updates or additional information you find.
I know some commenters here have also been discussing another horrifying story in the news: On Tuesday, as NJ.com reports, “a recently divorced … police officer shot and killed his former wife in broad daylight … in front of their daughter on an Asbury Park [New Jersey] street, authorities said.” Please use this thread to discuss this story as well.
Also I’ll bet dollars to donuts that this guy was a Stormfront or VNN member. They often are.
Oh shit. Again?
I can’t even raise any tears at the moment. It’s just too horrible to let any normal emotions through — I think I’m still in the frozen stage.
Suspect’s been ID’d as 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof, and Facebook pictures show him wearing a jacket with the flags of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe):
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/06/18/3671167/church-shooting-suspect-identified-dylan-storm-roof/
The little racist f*** also has sexual issues (and is likely a misogynist of the very familiar kind):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3129109/Multiple-people-injured-South-Carolina-church-shooting.html#ixzz3dQVJ3Y1f
Unfortunately(?) I missed a fair portion of it because we had a combustible gas detector go off during the segment. From what I saw, they were interviewing a sheriff who had recently drawn attention from local atheists for preaching while in uniform. The lead in was directly from the Charleston coverage and the anchor said something about attacks on religion.
“IF this indeed, and this has been classified as a hate crime, and if this is about faith, you yourself have recently come under fire for giving speeches about faith…”
Link here
May the victims in S.C. RIP. My heart is heavy for them and their families.
Oh, this makes my heart hurt. Those poor families.
WTF? Most of the victims were elderly women.
Funny how that sounds a lot like Donald Trump’s recent characterization of Mexicans:
“They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Remember, this is a guy who’s running for President, who feels perfectly comfortable saying that sort of thing on national TV. This isn’t an isolated, nonmainstream opinion held by a few violent basement-dwelling bigots. This is a belief system that permeates the culture and the airwaves, day after day after day, from the top down, from Fox News and the NRA and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to Stormfront, Freepers, and the cuck-obsessed corners of the manosphere. It’s a belief system that tells insecure, underemployed white men what they want to hear: they’re automatically at the top of the pyramid simply for having been born, the scary ooga-booga minorities are coming to take “their” jobs and “their” women and “their” country away, and they need to be prepared to defend “their” turf with violence. (Cue NRA gun sales pitch.)
And then they have the chutzpah to disavow all responsibility/affiliation with the monsters who listen to them, then take up a gun. And the further chutzpah to blame it on Obama, or liberals, or video games, or rap music. OH LOOK OVER THERE, FAR AWAY FROM MY HATE-FILLED GARBAGE TALK SHOW: A SHINY OBJECT.
I don’t understand this “white guys are under siege” mentality. I really don’t. They live in the one of the most free, privileged societies in all of history, as one of the most privileged demograhics within that society. Yet they’re walking balls of resentment and fury. I guess the resentment is understandable in a predatory capitalist society, but it’s directed at the wrong targets.
Also, that phrase “our women” makes me want to throw up. The powers that be don’t view rape as much of an issue when white men do it, but when a black man rapes a white woman suddenly it’s a huge problem. Not because it hurts and traumatizes the woman and it’s a terrible thing to do, but because they’ve taken property that doesn’t belong to them.
News reports are saying he’s been caught..?
@ Oliver, I did not see that, but he has been identified http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/18/dylann-roof-21-identified-charleston-shooting-susp/
The story says that his Facebook photo shows he is wearing on his jacket a couple of apartheid decals. This adds to the theory that this is purely a hate crime.
Is this the right wing talking point or something? Somebody on Gawker was saying to me that just because it’s being investigated as a hate crime, doesn’t mean it’s racism. Maybe it’s an atheist who hates religion. But I doubt that. It’s entirely possible that he was an atheist, but the motive was certainly racism. If it was just about being anti-Christianity he would have probably picked a predominantly white church. Most violent crime is intraracial. A white person doesn’t commit mass murder in a black church that was historically involved in anti-slavery activism unless the main motive is racism.
@Bazia
Supposedly he was captured in Shelby, North Carolina:
http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article24842710.html
According to this, the suspect Dylann Roof has been arrested:
http://whnt.com/2015/06/18/dylann-storm-roof-arrested-in-north-carolina-according-to-report/
Ninja’d by the news that he was caught. Good!
As a white woman, I really don’t need white men committing hate crimes and claiming it’s on my behalf. I’d rather these guys do their part to stop rape culture instead. If they actually are concerned about rape.
But of course “our women” implies that the message was more “these are white men’s sex objects to rape, not yours!”
They’ve arrested Dylann Roof. I just read what he said to the people he was murdering:
“You rape our women and you’re taking over our country — and you have to go,”
What’s the bet every white supremacist organization publicly disowns him, while applauding him on their discussion forums?
I hope he gets nine life sentences, to be served concurrently.
Thank you, Miss Andry, the article says he was given a gun by his father in April for his 21st birthday.
Oh ugh, people are already excusing his crimes by saying he’s mentally ill.* I hate it when mass-murdering white guys are given a pass for supposedly being “crazy” while mental illness is used to stigmatize others. Of course this is a way of silencing the discussion on racism and gun control.
*Note: I am not diagnosing him over the internet, nor using mental illness as an insult.
A quick guide to South African flags.
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/z/za.gif
This is the South African flag, commonly referred to as the “Green Y Fronts.” It is the symbol of the modern racially-integrated state. Racists and ethnic supremacists of various groups dislike it because of that symbolism. People from Vanuatu also dislike it, but that’s because it looks too much like theirs.
If you fly this flag it means you identify as a South African, whatever language you speak.
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/z/za%7Danc-p.gif
This is the flag of the ANC, the ruling party. It’s used nowadays by a) supporters of the ANC, and b) Xhosa nationalists who believe in a distinctively Xhosa state.
If you fly this flag, it means you’re Xhosa and identify with that more than you identify with the unified nation. It can also mean that you’re a supremacist supporter of the ANC.
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/z/za%7Difp.gif
This is the flag of the IFP but is also commonly used by Zulu nationalists who believe in a distinctively Zulu state. Sometimes this is identified with separatism for the KwaZulu region, and sometimes it’s identified with a general Zulu takeover of the country.
If you fly this flag, it means you’re Zulu and identify with that more than you identify with the unified nation.
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/z/za-klvr.gif
This is the Vierkleur, the flag of the old Boer republic of the Transvaal before its conquest by the British. It’s used by Afrikaner nationalists who believe in a distinctively Afrikaner state. Similarly to the IFP flag, this can mean either regional separatism or a general takeover of the country.
If you fly this flag, it means you’re an Afrikaner and identify with that more than you identify with the unified nation.
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/z/za-1928.gif
This is the flag of the old South Africa, commonly referred to as the Orange-Blanje-Blou (orange-white-blue, using an archaic term for white in order to make it rhyme). It is specifically identified with the apartheid period and with no other period in South African history.
If you fly this flag, it means that you are specifically a supporter of the racist police state which carried out the apartheid policy. It is not a white nationalist symbol; they wear the Vierkleur instead.
Mr. Roof chose to wear the Orange-Blanje-Blou rather than the Vierkleur. To a South African this sends a clear message: Given the choice between identifying with white nationalism (which includes some positive aspects of Afrikaner culture) or with a racist police state, he chose the latter. He has no interest in raising white people up: he just wants to keep black people down.
Mr. Roof, fuck you.
His uncle is reported as saying:
‘He said he had told his sister, Roof’s mother, several years ago that Roof was too introverted.
“I said he was like 19 years old, he still didn’t have a job, a driver’s license or anything like that and he just stayed in his room a lot of the time,” Cowles said. ‘
Now obviously there’s nothing inherently wrong with being shy and introverted, but this description does remind me of a number of angry young white men who have gone on to do terrible things. I do wonder what the manosphere is going to do with this, it’s too big a story for them to ignore.
I did check out the RooshVForum this morning, at that point Roof hadn’t been identified or caught yet, and thankfully the general consensus among those guys was to roundly condemn this atrocity. It would be nice if unfolding events could spur some reflection among redpillians and their toxic attitudes towards humanity, but I won’t hold my breath.
“Our women”???? Da-fuck? Sorry, but who is ‘our women’? Southern women? Southern white women? I’m a Southern white (mostly) woman and I sure ain’t his.
Taking over our country? Whose country? I’d be willing to bet that every single one of those people killed were at least 6 generations American. Not that it would matter if they weren’t.
Thanks for the explanation EJ, I was wondering what “apartheid flags” meant.
Is it just me, or is this the worst aspects of Columbine, the Wisconsin Sikh temple massacre, and the murder of Dr. Tiller all rolled in to one?
Snorkmaiden you wonder what the manosphere is gonna do with this? Nothing helpful, that’s for dang sure. They’re not interested in introverted, awkward boys except to poison their minds. Reflection? Not bloody likely. Not even if they were holding a mirror standing in front of one.
Huh. Spellcheck corrected “Oranje” to “Orange.” Weird.
About the cult growing up around the shooter; yeah.
http://gawker.com/dylan-roof-wants-you-to-know-he-is-not-the-charleston-s-1712232970
This guy has an almost identical name as the shooter and apparently lives in the same area and people are mistaking him for the shooter.
This statement “you rape our women”. It needs to be unpacked and be looked at from its societal as well as individual aspects.
As someone says above, “our” women means that whites are the men. “Their” women are possessions of white men, property that is being attacked, he says. So it begins with a view of women as property.
Then, the psychological reversal, when so many black women were raped by slavemasters in American history and in other lands.
Then, the anachronism of this statement, which we hoped had disappeared forever with the Ku Klux Klan and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Then, the source of this belief – when he was holed up in his room, what sites were influencing him to do this?
Then, the scapegoating of women as needing control and protection right up to murdering potential rapists (here, white women only, not unusual). It’s women’s fault though as usual. A badly-advised desire to protect women drove this young man to his crimes, it may be said on certain mensrights sites.
Then, the direct scapegoats for all the young man’s problems – African-Americans. Attacking people who suffer so much injustice daily from white men. Another reversal.
Then, the “introversion” his uncle talks about. The oncoming spin that he is another of the thousands of anomalies. All the young men who kill strangers, like Elliott Rodger, must be mentally ill – meaning it’s the act of a single deranged individual each time, and society once again doesn’t have to look at its own structures and values.
@Bazia,
Agree with your statement but have to point out that it’s not “All the young men who kill strangers, like Elliott Rodger, must be mentally ill”. It’s all the young White men who kill strangers must be mentally ill.
Even victims of White racists are portrayed as thugs. Look at the way Trayvon Martin and other murdered Black young men were turned into dangerous monsters by the media.