Some of the idiots who have been harassing the Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis uploaded a video of their behavior. They posted a video of themselves waving a gun and engaging in racist banter. That’s so incredibly blatant — it mean either that they’re really stupid thugs, or that they have so much support that they think they can get away with it, or both. Most likely both.
Above are the dudes Black Lives Matter protesters say came to their Minneapolis police demonstration — and shot them. They identify themselves as “Saiga Marine” and “Blight Power Ranger.”
“We’re gonna go see what these dindus are up to,” they say, and you excuse yourself real quick to look up “dindu” on the Internet and find that it means an “innocent African American who din du nothin’,” haw haw haw, great one, 4chan assholes!
That’s right, it’s 4chan. They were planning the harassment in chatter on 4chan. Look, if you’re on 4chan at all, you’re too stupid to bear.
White supremacists have discussed various strategies online for sparking confrontation at the demonstration, which they described as a “chimpout.”
“Do you know if the BLM n*****s are planning to protest again tomorrow, and if so, at what time?” one white supremacist asked in an email chain.
They agreed to wear camouflage clothing and display a four of clubs to identify each other, and the white supremacist agitators argued over whether they should carry guns or wear Guy Fawkes masks.
The white supremacist mocked “social justice warriors” and other anti-racist whites, who they described in psychosexual terms.
“Best to act as much like a beta white cuck as much as you can,” one the racists said.
All the racist and MRA slang blurs together so well, don’t you think? I’m finding it increasingly difficult to tell those guys apart.
The connections between the dorky jerks in the video and the actual shooters are weak right now — there were shooters, and there were harassers who were flaunting their racism but maybe not shooting, and there are freakin’ hordes of pretentious nasty typers on 4chan who’d brag but never do anything. But in this case, the police have made arrests. I hope they’ve also seized computers and are busily connecting the dots.
Minneapolis police said Tuesday that they have arrested three men in connection with the shooting. Allen Lawrence “Lance” Scarsella III, 23, was arrested in Bloomington. Sources said Nathan Gustavsson, 21, of Hermantown, and Daniel Macey, 26, of Pine City, were taken into custody after they turned themselves in. All three suspects are white. Earlier Tuesday, police arrested a 32-year-old Hispanic man in south Minneapolis, but he was later released because, police said, he was not at the scene of the shooting.
Authorities are weighing whether to treat Monday’s shooting as a hate crime, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
If they are at all connected to the video or the email, then this was definitely a hate crime. Actually, even if they did it without gloating on the internet, going to a protest by black people, shouting racial slurs, and opening fire on the crowd ought to be considered a hate crime.
So is the FBI monitoring 4chan chatter to know when there is an increased risk of white terrorists attacking? Because they seem tob e a greater threat than radical Islamists, at least in the US.
I somehow doubt this is the case. Not until someone with some power of them directs them to do it. Wasn’t their response to the shooting lacking? I don’t think this is the type of law enforcement that, you know, actually cares.
As for 4chan, there really are pretty good indications that this was either inspired by, or planned on, the /pol/ board.
They were planning the harassment in chatter on 4chan.
The reason the NSA has so diligently suborned service providers all over the internet is so that they can catch that kind of stuff.
As long as it’s being done by nonwhites.
Of course, they appear to be pretty incompetent. In spite of having phone calls, texts, metadata, and data from gmail, facebook, etc, etc — they can use the data to put together a pretty good picture of General Petraeus’ extra marital affairs a year after the fact, but … not so good at actually doing what they are supposedly doing: stopping bad things from happening. It appears almost as if the national security state isn’t really interested in protecting people as much as it’s interested in sniffing people’s underwear. And getting paid $50bn/year to do it.
I expect they’ll have a wonderful time in prison.
God these people are simultaneously pathetic and terrifying. They are so desperate to believe themselves alpha males — despite the copious evidence that human societies don’t organise themselves in the same way as wolf packs, and even wolf packs don’t follow the clichéd pattern — that they will talk up their desire to shoot unarmed, peaceful protestors. It’s like some magic spell — make a blood sacrifice (other people’s, naturally) to make themselves alpha males. But, logically, shouldn’t there be only one alpha male in their group? They can’t all be alphas.
And even if their fantasy about alpha-male dynamics was true, how is hiding your face and shooting unarmed people a sign of strength? It’s bloody weak and cowardly.
I beg your pardon, “Authorities”, but does this really require careful consideration?
Oy. Vey.
PZ: “going to a protest by black people, shouting racial slurs, and opening fire on the crowd ought to be considered a hate crime”
Agreed. If this doesn’t qualify for a “hate crime” charge, then what does?
Sounds like great evidence for the trial if these are the same guys who shot up the protest.
cervantes
Ha ha, isn’t it hilarious how prisoners get assaulted, raped and murdered? You’re better than that.
PZ Myers:
Well, if that’s not considered a hate crime, is there ANYTHING that can be considered a hate crime?
#4 cervantes:
I think I reached the point where I think that the police will be utterly and honestly unable to comprehend what exactly is wrong with shooting in a crowd of black people.
By “have a wonderful time in prison”, I assume you mean they’ll find the Aryan Nation gang and fit right in.
Assuming they go there at all, that is. :-/
qwints, I feel like you have to read pretty far into that comment to pull out that meaning.
Where was it mentioned that they fired into the crowd? All the reports I’ve read, from accounts of the BLM protesters themselves, they say that the shooters fired at the people chasing them off.
They made arrests, sure, after two of the three turned themselves in. Why would they do that? Because they trust the police to do the Right Thing?
(from Rawstory)
According to demonstrators, masked white guys have been harassing them and videotaping their faces for days, while police did nothing to move the harassers away or identify them. Then when the protesters’ own security volunteers herded the masked guys away, they retreated down an alley (where there were no cameras) and then turned and shot the volunteers.
Rawstory again:
PZ linked previously to this Star-Tribune article: (link) Note the title – “gunfire erupts”, “people were shot”.
Here’s more extensive witness remarks via Thandisizwe Chimurenga at Daily Kos: (link)
Rawstory summary of Raeisha Williams speaking to CNN: (link)
There have been comments saying 15-20 minutes isn’t that bad a response time. Let’s recall that the protesters were encamped at the police station.
throwaway #12 – I haven’t seen a direct statement that the white guys fired “into the crowd”, however depending on where they fired at the protesters following them (a half block away?) they may have been firing back towards the massed protesters behind the six or so they aimed at.
Here’s the video, Pteryxx.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVgpfvwNEwg
I guess it’s just a verbal nitpick. A ‘crowd’ could be ‘chasing’, I suppose. But I think it’s important to get all the facts straight.
In the video they said that the terrorists went around a corner. That typically means whatever angles were involved wouldn’t relate to firing into a massed crowd, unless it encompassed the whole block (which it might have, but judging by the numbers in the pre-shooting part, that doesn’t seem likely.)
OK, so I messed up, just rewatched that same video, they went down about a block or so and then opened fire at their pursuers.
That’s still quite a bit different than simply “firing into a crowd.”
fwiw, the planning chatter is clearly an email chain, and labeled as such as on Rawstory. It wasn’t done on 4chan itself. Probably because 4chan is monitored, both by a portion of users who are antiracist (who are referred to by the racists with some combination of “cancer” “tumblr” and “shills”) and law enforcement.
The dismaying thing is that based on police response, they might actually get away with it. Because what racist assholes need is more encouragement to think of the system as entirely on their side.
Good. For a brief moment I was afraid they would get away with it.
Looks like the guys in the video were the shooters. “Social media offering picture of men who went to protest ‘locked and loaded'”
organise themselves in the same way as wolf packs
I highly recommend Carl Safina’s “Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel” He makes the case that our understanding of other animals’ social structures has been seriously warped by our implicit attempt to preserve specialness for humans. He discusses elephants, orcas, wolves (that’s where I am right now) and some other social birds, as well as the ‘mirror test’ and other interesting things.
Wolf packs aren’t at all what the ‘survival of the fittest’ or MRA types seem to think they are: they are extended families. Elephants, pretty much the same. This is based on extensive observation of major family groups over decades – some of the Yellowstone wolf families have been under constant observation for 20+ years, for example. One thing Safina points out, which ought to be obvious even to the MRAs, is that the ‘alpha’ or matriarch, or leader male, is usually not the biggest and toughest, but rather one of the most successful and knowledgeable. He points out, again, the obvious, that the matriarch of an elephant clan is the one who remembers where the good eating is, and who knows the feeling of the seasons and the weather, and who can guide and avoid. A far cry from the MRA’s stereotypicical “alpha” indeed. Safina writes about one the alphas of one Yellowstone wolf family, who led the family most of his adult life: he was an amazingly successful hunter. They didn’t follow him because he was a manipulative poseur who “negged” the females – they followed him because he served the family successfully and well. Safina illustrates other social animals that show similar behaviors: orcas that learn where the salmon run are not “leaders” of the pod – they’re “the ones everyone follows because they know where the food is.”
This stuff ought to be intuitively obvious but it’s not because we humans are so desperate to see ourselves as different and better from the other animals (who are certainly different, but when you stack their social skills, parenting skills, and hunting skills up against humans… um…) Once again the MRAs and survivalists manage to show that they’re not tough and strong and smart – they’re ignorant and poorly educated. PS to any MRAs that read this: Ayn Rand wasn’t a philosopher, either. And Nietzsche was a philologist.
Peptron@#9
Well, if that’s not considered a hate crime, is there ANYTHING that can be considered a hate crime?
Well, people have criticized Richard Dawkins. That is a hate crime.
throwaway: you’re picking a straw nit. In a densely inhabited area, near a large crowd, people opened fire at a group of a half-dozen people. Then the police refused to respond to the shooting. Not a big extrapolation to imagine the police wouldn’t care about someone shooting into a crowd.
numerobis
I don’t think it’s made of straw at all.
The way the events transpired according to eye-witnesses on the protester’s side of things, they didn’t simply arrive and fire into the main crowd. They fired into a group which splintered off from the main crowd after they were assaulted and chased by that splinter group.
I’m not denying they were deliberately agitating for a confrontation, as the planning of this, coupled with their expectation that there would be a confrontation as evidenced by them carrying weapons and body-freaking-armor, does show that their intention was to spur exactly this type of conflict, and should play a part in their trial.
But the circumstance of them being on the retreat from prior assaults muddies the waters legally. While I wholeheartedly condemn them as terrorizing brown shirt wannabes, I don’t expect they will see any prison time. Not as the facts are right now.
Throwaway @23: So, having donned combat gear and armour, and gone up to a crowd to start a fight, and gotten that fight, when they run away and are pursued, they’re justified in shooting at their pursuers? How does that make any legal sense at all?
NelC @24: In Florida it makes perfect legal sense.
@NelC and throwaway, since unsourced legal discussion bother me, here’s the Minnesota standard for when a person can use force in self-defense. Note that generally disengaging and retreating after an initial altercation in sufficient for the first prong, but I haven’t examined Minnesota law sufficiently to say for sure.
State v. Basting, 572 N.W.2d 281 (Minn. 1997)
Marcus@20: thanks for putting that so well. Essentially the alpha male theory held by MRAs/PUAs is a malicious fantasy.
Oh, and I doubt any of the alphas in the wolf packs/elephant herds/orca pods mentioned above got to that status by drawing their groups into unnecessary violent conflict for no gain other than self-aggrandisement.
But yeah, let’s keep Syrians away, ’cause Muslims are dangerous, irrational thugs, and White Christians would never do such a thing.
NelC @24
Some aspects aren’t clear. Were they running away or being coralled away? What exactly transpired prior to the initial assaults the witness reports, aside from the supremacists visibly recording everyone and refusing to remove their masks? Is it also true that they were part of a group that instigated the group several nights in a row?
I mean, those facts, if we get them, will help to convict them of something. I don’t honestly know what it would be. I just don’t hold high hopes that it will be near enough to what they deserve.
throwaway, are you reading what anyone here has *actually* written? Forget nits, you’re tilting at giant windmills of straw now.
The entire thread is about how we’re all hoping that justice is served, and worried that the authorities might find a way not to really pursue this.
You’re trying to point out to us how you’re not sure because maybe there’s a way to not really pursue this because it’s not as bad a crime as what nobody here has argued it is.
numerobis, I’m reading throwaway’s comments as speculation about what arguments will be raised in court, not that the supremacists are innocent or justified if they aren’t convicted.
Please note how they treat their 2nd Amendment “rights” – the same way as everyone else do – as a joke and an excuse for the privileged to prey upon others, those who the majority sees as exploitable.
The only ones who don’t get the punchline are nine assholes in black robes, but then that’s why those assholes are paid the big bucks, it takes real effort to ignore the plainly obvious.
This a half step away from luring the BLM protesters into an ambush. This is why stand your ground laws are asinine.
numerobis @31
The nit I’m picking is that when PZ says “and opening fire on the crowd” as part of his hoping that we’d get a hate-crime charge, I don’t think it will be quite so easy to get such a charge. They didn’t just show up and start firing. I think this is important to get that right.
However, I do believe they provoked a confrontation, if the behavior exhibited in previous videos is to be believed. This may play a part in what is pursued, but I don’t look forward to seeing what the jury decides, especially given the most recent experiences of juries with regard to crimes like this. The eyewitness video stating that they were assaulted first and then chased will be enough to convince the Average Joe Sixpack that, even if they brought the, weapons they may have done so for “self defense” because ‘Murica and freedumz, and didn’t start using them until after assaulted and pursued. Which is pretty awful way of seeing things, but I honestly can’t see it happening any other way unless we get more facts about the terrorists.