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.
@Buttercup: Because it’s a sympathetic talking point that sounds plausible until you begin to really dig into the data.
FYI: I found this site because I’d run into several (people who I now assume to have been) MRAs who talked about men’s rights using their more mainstream-friendly issues.
Non-medical, elective circumcision of male infants?
Yeah, that is pretty messed up. (1)
Men are denied custody when they want it? And how often?
Wow, yeah…that’s not OK… (2)
And, yeah, I agree that it’s not cool that boys are disproportionately overmedicated in the US school system. (3)
But then I went to look at the sites where this stuff was being discussed, and great googliemooglie – the amount of vile, knee-jerk misogyny was breathtaking. Even the posts and articles that weren’t necessarily so had comment sections filled with just awfulness.
Hint to lurking MRAs: No amount of goodwill off-site interaction will negate the impact of your comment sections – otherwise known as: seeing what MRAs actually say, write, and believe.
But, thank goodness, I found this site, so now I can keep tabs on them without having to interact with them 🙂
(1) I still think that it’s messed up. The funny thing is that MRAs rail against feminists re: it…when it’s something that most feminists either oppose or are ambivalent about.
(2) Like I said, the story changes when you dig down in the stats, at least contemporary ones. Does that change the fact that an alarming number of people who take their custody cases out of mediation and into court use their children as fodder? No, no it does not. However, it really seems to cut both ways. That, and the vast majority of blatantly one-sided – as in, no or only supervised visitation – court-decided custody cases that I’ve encountered seem to be that way for a reason: Breathtaking incompetence or ill-intent on the part of the parent denied custody. Otherwise, yes, primary custody is usually awarded to the parent who has done the majority of the child-rearing, especially when 50/50 physical custody would take a child in and out of a school district. I don’t think it’s feminism that they want to blame for the fact that most stay-at-home or more lightly employed parents are women.
(3) I do think boys are overmedicated in the US school system, in large part due to the fact that they’re more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD (the hyperactive form more likely to be disruptive than the inattentive form). But I also think that our system of schooling is generally more suited to an industrial system than a post-industrial one; that education paths for the trades more often than not abysmal; that teachers are under-valued, under-paid, and are given neither the respect nor the latitude needed to act as trusted professionals; and that more experiential, collaborative, and integrative modes of learning would probably do a hell of a lot to alleviate some feel for education AND would do quite a bit to more adequately prepare students both for further education and for the modern workforce.
*for the trades are
*to alleviate the dred some students feel for education
@proxieme
I want you to type those bottom three things into a MRA comment section and see what happens.
@sunny: I’m pretty sure I can guess:
They’ll blow up, call me awful things (especially if they know that I’m a woman), and will post self-referential links (or to articles/studies that actually contradict their talking points) as “proof” of their arguments.
The last is what usually happens when they brigade the FB comments section of NPR and PBS articles (the closest I’ll now get to dealing with them).
“No! You’re wrong! And this article posted on AVFM (or *shudder* RoK) proves it!
or
“You’re so mistaken that it would be hilarious if it weren’t so pitiful. Here, educate yourself: http://someactualstudy.edu.”
*prox actually reads the study*
*prox gets as far as the abstract before she realizes that it directly contradicts the MRA’s argument, realizes that he probably linked to it because he saw what it related to his point and of course would line up with his thinking because science is on his side*
*prox briefly considers replying, decides that bantering with idiots on social media is an awful use of her time…even if her non-reply will most likely lead the MRA-warrior to conclude that he’s “won”*
*prox decides that having another cup of coffee before her kids wake up would be much more fruitful than worrying about that*
@buttercup I’m really surprised by that 91% childless stat.
@prox! It is hysterical when you follow the link and read the abstract and it’s really bloody clear that it concludes exactly opposite of the original linker claims. I think your extra cuppa policy is spot on.
BTW does anyone know if the NRA is a ‘democratic’ organisation. I mean could I pay dues along with a lot of other people who favour gun control and get the organisation to change its mission? Risky approach sure, but is it even possible?
I’ve been watching CNN all morning, I’m not American so I’m not familiar with other news outlets, but I heard his parents are divorced.
Watch for the “feminists are to blame because feminism destroys families” and “women are to blame because women initiate divorce more often than men” rhetoric.
It’s a manufacturers’ lobbying group. It gets its funding from gun manufacturers, not from membership subs. Look up issues like ammunition malfunction lawsuits: the NRA has a stance which is already counter to that of its membership and doesn’t care.
@rugbyyogi – Yes, anybody can join the NRA. You don’t even need to own a gun. All you need is $35.
Unfortunately, though, the NRA is just an insurance association for shooters. The NRA-ILA is the lobbying arm, and joining the NRA wouldn’t have any effect on that, other than you being pestered to give them money. You’d have to wait five years for voting privileges, and then I don’t think you’d get to nominate board members directly. The most you’d get to do is pick between Ted Nugent and Hank Williams Jr. or some other awful, hateful celebrity.
“you rape our women” said the man who killed mostly elderly women. Not to mention black women are more likely to be raped with impunity by white men than the reverse.
@rugbyyogi: I can’t think of an example in which entryism worked. Last time I saw it happening, a trotskyite student group wanted to change a social democratic party. Never heard from them again, party’s still social democratic as hell.
The whole story is awful. That stuff is why the equation of violence with violence “on both extremes” makes me so angry. Violent left-wing protests damage stores. Violent right-wingers commit massacres. There is no terrorism on the left any more.
Since when have fascists rediscovered Apartheid symbolism? I remember some German Nazis touting the flag of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, but that was at least ten years ago. Creeps me out.
@Bazia @proxieme: what you said. This.
There’s an old Afrikaner joke about that, in fact. “Their movement grew so quickly that they had to cut one of the legs off the swastika in order to fit the symbol in their garage.”
@EJ: 😀 Good one.
Does the AWB even still exist? Surely, after Terreblanches death there isn’t much there anymore?
Of course, German Nazis loved the flag, because the actual Nazi flag is banned, and it was close enough. Nowadays, they use some pseudo-Germanic rune shit.
just a pipe dream, gonna see if I can give money to the Brady Campaign. I’m a US citizen but all my cards are £ denominated so doubt I can give easily.
I’ve been to a HW Jr concert, he was so drunk it was pathetic. I still love that Family Tradition song though – many beers have I consumed to that one.
The AWB is still there. It’s doing less well after Terreblanche’s death, but it’s not like that core of aging racists with Vierkleurs has anything else to do but sit and seethe and hate. They’re kind of becoming irrelevant anyway, as white people become less relevant.
Interesting article about the connections between white supremacists in the US, specifically SC, and the Apartheid regimes in Southern Africa:
http://africasacountry.com/the-connection-between-terrorist-dylann-roof-and-white-supremacist-regimes-in-africa-runs-through-the-heart-of-us-conservatism/
@EJ: I don’t have anything against them seething, as long as it stays that way. Only their land could at last be redistributed. Though I guess as it is now, the majority still wouldn’t profit from that.
(I haven’t said anything yet because I have nothing to say that isn’t a string of random curse words in every language and dialect I know. Will come back later.)
White men and eastern asian men are “mentally ill”.
Blacks and hispanics are “brutes”, “thugs”, “savages”, and similarly dehumanizing terms.
Middle easterners are “muslim extremists” regardless of their actual religion.
Such proclamations say more about society than the people who do awful things.
I wonder why he chose Rhodesia as a symbol for his hate. I know pleanty about the insurgency, the coin and UDI (my first CEO in my first ever job was a former Colonel in the Rhodesian Light Infantry) and the nastiness of it.
It does seem to be a strange one to choose.
This murder hate crime spree is too much to comprehend for me.
@Bernardo Soares thanks for the link it may answer my question as to why roof chose the symbols he did unfortunately the sites not working for me.
@autosoma: yeah, I had problems too. Works now for me.
@Bernardo Soares: “Land redistribution” is a very contentious thing to say in a South African context. If you’re not South African I would stay away from it. I get what you mean, but… the term is a dog-whistle for several different groups and can mean very different things depending on who says it.
@autosoma: I’m guessing he chose Rhodesia as a symbol because he’s ignorant.
@Bernado… Interesting, I didn;t know so many reactionary White Zimbabweans fled to the US, the few that I’ve met in the UK have never come across as racist more like wanting to atone for the shit they caused. Maybe I need to associate more with better quality racists SARCASM
@EJ: you’re right, that was an unreflected use of a contentious term. And I should know better. Sorry.
@autosoma:
To be fair, it wasn’t just the US. There seems to have been several right-wing (often Christian) transnational networks that supported dissidents from the “communist” African countries that surrounded Rhodesia and South Africa. For example, they helped Jonas Savimbi study in Geneva, because some Swiss nationalists who had supported the Nazis still had enough connections to both these international networks and the Swiss police. There was another guy from Tanzania who, after a falling out with Nyerere, went to Europe and was helped to prepare a coup by English and Portuguese right-wingers and a Swiss weapons trader. Christoph Blocher, the head of the awful racist Schweizer Volkspartei (you remember, the guys with the minaret ban), used to head a group of Swiss businessmen supporting the Apartheidregime. He actually had the guts to come on TV after Mandela’s death and say that he was “overrated”.