This afternoon, a 21-year-old white man named Robert Aaron Long allegedly went on a shooting rampage at three massage parlors in the Atlanta, Georgia area. He reportedly killed eight people, six of them Asian women. He was arrested after a car chase.
This gives off the distinct whiff of an incel shooting, though at this point that’s just speculation. Obviously racism may have played a role as well.
Please post any reliable information on the shootings you run across.
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I’m so pissed off that this “sex addiction” thing is being used to dismiss the racism aspect. As if viewing Asian women as objects of temptation isn’t racist.
His Facebook page was all about how he hates China and the Chinese, but it’s pure coincidence that 6 out of 8 victims were Asian? (At least some were of Korean descent but somehow I don’t that the killer would know or care about the difference.)
OT: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2270342-anti-feminist-youtube-and-reddit-content-is-a-gateway-to-the-alt-right/ I subscribe – I hope it’s not behind a paywall for normal people.
@Sheila : korean descent is asian descent no ?
And yes, all flags are that it’s racially motivated. The police jsut agree with his choice of target and want to put him under the rug. He did his job of “putting the chinese in their place” I guess.
I am just as furious as WWTH about that transparent bullshit on his motivation.
@@Sheila : korean descent is asian descent no ?
Yes, but that’s not even the ethnicity the shooter professed to be hunting; that adds yet another dismissive layer of All Them Asians Look Alike.
A Cherokee County, Georgia, Sheriff’s Office spokesperson came under fire Wednesday afternoon for pinning the deadly Tuesday shooting rampage that left eight dead—including six Asian women—on a 21-year-old white man’s “very bad day.”
“Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did,” Jay Baker said during the joint news conference with the Atlanta Police Department about 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long.
But it seems the same spokesperson shared racist content online, including pointing the finger at China for the ongoing coronavirus pandemic—the same vitriol advocates say has fueled a horrific surge in violence against Asian Americans.
Source
@LindsayIrene
I literally heard that same thing just now and was coming to link it. There is absolutely nothing a white man can do to women of color that won’t be excused and explained away by another white man, it seems.
With sadly ironic timing, this has just been declassified. Report from US Intelligence community. Says, you perhaps won’t be surprised to hear, racially motivated terrorism biggest threat.
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/UnclassSummaryofDVEAssessment-17MAR21.pdf
I saw the press conference clip as well. Of course the cops excuse a murderous white man. Of course.
I can also guarantee that the reason they didn’t kill him is because he’s white. If a man of any other race did anything like this, the cops would have shot him.
It is sad in and of itself, of course.
But it’s also sad that I wasn’t even surprised.
He also blamed the women for the impulses he couldn’t control, so it’s the inevitable collision of incel, racism, white privilege/fragility, fundamentalist Christianity, online hate groups, and too many guns.
It’s another crime that they took him in without any damage IMO.
As a white guy myself I’ve had plenty of bad days and not once have I felt the compulsion to shoot anybody. Maybe occasionally the urge to punch someone in the face, but never the urge to shoot them.
Any truth to the claim he drove past several strip clubs?
if you’re driving through Atlanta, you’re probably passing a strip club at some point.
Uh-oh.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/17/jay-baker-bad-day/
Uh-oh.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/17/jay-baker-bad-day/
https://mobile.twitter.com/C_Stroop/status/1372222665855889410
Thread with some context on the religious angle
https://nymag.com/strategist/article/where-to-donate-to-help-asian-communities-2021.html
Hard to believe this shooter, the son of a youth pastor no less, is so bad at Christian-ing. /s
Is it possible that they skipped the sermon on the mount in their bible studies? You know, that thing where Jesus said something like: If your right eye causes you to sin, then pluck it out and throw it away. Not to strike down what or who that eye is looking at. I know this because I went and looked it up. That particular section is even all about adultery!
I guess if you’re having a terrible, no good, very bad day, it’s an easy thing to forget. :/ Good thing there’s another nice, white guy (who peddles anti-Asian tee shirts) to let everyone know it’s not a hate crime. >:(
@Ohlmann
Yes. He’s hates China so he kills women of Korean descent. Like the man who hated Muslims so he murdered Sikhs.
Not that it greatly matters which ethnic group for most purposes- the average Chinese American has as much influence on Chinese foreign policy as the average Korean American or indeed the average rock, but he couldn’t even follow his own terrible logic.
@Hambeast: very few white Christians in the US (and I include myself in this) are good at acting Christ-like. Reconciling ‘woe to you who are rich’ with being members of one of the wealthiest nations in the history of the world requires the sort of mental gymnastics that neuters most of the Gospel of its redemptive, revolutionary power.
@rv97
I believe that, too.
@Titanium
“I don’t think so. Pretty sure he’s a virgin who most likely got rejected by an Asian woman. The Incel is strong on this one.”
Abuse isn’t always sexual.
We can’t really say if he’s a virgin or not, and it doesn’t matter the schematics.
@Jokester
“being members of one of the wealthiest nations in the history of the world”
Are you implying the USA is one of the wealthiest nations in the history of the world?
Because that’s a bit presumptuous.
@Mouse Sparrow- I did say ‘one of the wealthiest’- there are certainly nations richer than the US is, but the US is definitely in the top 20 currently, and I’d argue the top 100 historically.
The basic cognitive dissonance faced by US Christians is White Americans have far more in common with the villains of any story in our scriptures than we do with the people who wrote them. We’re more similar to the Egyptians of Exodus, or the Assyrians and Babylon in the latter Old Testament, or the Roman Empire in the New Testament than we do with the ancient Jews or the early Christian Church. Avoiding facing up to the obvious conclusion- that US Christians are commanded to oppose many of the policies of our own nation- requires us to twist our scriptures beyond recognition.
The Black Church, incidentally, does not face this problem. Which is why the Black Church gives us people like Senator Warnock. White Christians need to start paying more attention to our Black kindred if we’re ever going to get back to being truly Christ-like.
@Mouse Sparrow- and to be clear, I don’t mean to imply that being a wealthy nation makes the US great or good. From a Christian perspective, it’s just the opposite. Consistently throughout our history, when White Americans have been given the choice between God and Mammon, we’ve chosen Mammon.
@joekster
This is not the thread to be going on about how people need Jesus, or about the glories of the bible. Really, no thread is the right one for that, but this one reallyisn’t.
@Dalilama : I only see Joekster lamenting about how mainstream christian don’t follow the actually quite radical (compared to the average conservative at least) attitude of Jesus, not saying people need him.
I don’t quite care from where the morality of someone come, even if it’s probably better if they don’t need the threat of eternal damnation to not be complete assholes.
@Dalilama: my sincere apologies for appearing to prosyletize- I’m trying to dissect the contradiction between what white Christians claim to believe and how we often act. I hesitated to even get into it because I know many of the regular commentators have been hurt by people claiming the name of Jesus
@Ohlman: I do think many Christians, both in the US today and throughout history, have done and continue to do considerable damage to the Gospel (not to mention the world) through our own hypocrisy, and that this atrocity is a prime example.
And perhaps my comments are only making it worse.