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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24468 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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I don’t know if this is too post worthy, but many black activists have called the cancellation of Jason Arday and the resulting suicide a lynching. It makes me believe they don’t understand why many people found lynching to be bad.

The classic case is Emmet Till. He was accused of raping a white woman but didn’t. Less people would be worried about the irregular justice of lynch mobs if they accurately hung rapists and Till wouldn’t be martyr if he actually raped the white woman. It was his innocence that really made the lynching galling.

In the Arday context, no one argues he isn’t guilty of the charges. Instead, they claim accurately castigating Arday repeatedly for his crime is a modern day lynching. So either they believe any criticism of blacks is per se illegitimate and blacks are naturally innocent regardless of their actions or they are trying to use powerful iconography to prevent criticism of blacks. But that’s destroying their seed capital.

Emmet Till

Even back then, the media would selectively highlight certain events to make the public pattern-match for a narrative that doesn’t exist. They arbitrarily created a negative valence around “White racism”, which naturally resulted in negative valence around White people and their civilization. This is the sort of thing you can easily prove in a lab: gather a bunch of people to read something every day for a week, and variably present them with stories such that when they see the word X it is often immediately associated with something aversive or else it predicts something aversive. The former is called evaluative conditioning and it’s resilient to counter-conditioning; when the progressive college student in 2020 would scroll headlines and quickly read “White cop shoots Black woman in Chicago”, “why White privilege is worse than you think”, I mean the headlines were so over-the-top I can’t even recreate them with skill, they were essentially being brainwashed in a scientifically predictable fashion. Staats & Staats (1958) trivially conditioned positive and negative emotions onto nationality words in this way (which probably used evaluative conditioning more than Pavlovian conditioning). The problem was heightened when people trusted the news and entered a trance state when consuming the news. It’s simply that the wrong people were in charge of the media, which is effectively a conditioning device for the masses, and whoever was controlling the media really wanted to instill a reflexive dislike of White people and their things. Virtually all of the problems are downstream from media conditioning (academics also really like absorbing media and are perhaps a bit more gullible than the average bear).

[Just regarding Till specifically: if you were to go into the hood and grab the hand of someone’s girlfriend (not even wife), and then chase her to grab her waist, there’s a good chance you will be shot and killed. This was always a non-story, and note that the media would never report on the phenomena that nearly all cross-race rapes between Whites and Blacks involve a White female victim. This is because they’re not interested in telling you a horrible fact of reality, they are trying to condition you in a certain manner.]

Just regarding Till specifically: if you were to go into the hood and grab the hand of someone’s girlfriend (not even wife), and then chase her to grab her waist, there’s a good chance you will be shot and killed.

I’d argue this applied to any (White) Italian/Polish/Irish etc. ethnic enclave/neighborhood in any major American city back then.

negative valence

This is the most important phrase to know when consuming any sort of media. The facts don't matter nearly so much as, what sort of emotion are they creating around it? That will lead the public to mimic that emotion, no matter what it is.

nearly all cross-race rapes between Whites and Blacks involve a White female victim.

Note that this may simply be because rapists do, in fact, want to have sex with their victims- and white women are generally vastly more attractive than black women. It doesn't necessarily mean that blacks are more violent(there is another set of statistics you'd need to use to make that argument).

Dating website stats (like OkCupid's stats from a decade or so ago) also suggest that black women would be far more willing to have sex with a white man than white women would be willing to with a black man.

note that the media would never report on the phenomena that nearly all cross-race rapes between Whites and Blacks involve a White female victim.

The perpetrator chooses the victim. If the perpetrator chooses randomly, it is much more likely that a perpetrator in a small group would choose someone from a large group than a perpetrator in a large group would choose someone from a small group. And whites are a larger group. So it is statistically expected that cross-race rapes usually involve black perpetrators, and it does not mean that black people are more violent or more prone to rape the other race. It just means that since there are more whites, they have more oppopsite race targets.

Let the Black/White population proportions be P_B + P_W = 1, and assume groups have base rate r_B and r_W, and assume offenders victimise from the population at random (so no racial segregation, equal female sexual desirability for both races, etc)

So number of [race X] on [race Y] rapes = P_X * r_X * P_Y

So (# black on white rapes) / (# white on black rapes) = r_B / r_W

I claim this is the only reasonable reading of what @coffee_enjoyer said "nearly all cross-race rapes between Whites and Blacks involve a White female victim" and what you said "[with equal base rates] cross-race rapes [should irregardless] usually involve black perpetrators":

  • If you were given an unbiased feed of rapes and decided to focus in on the interracial cases (i.e. condition that victim race != perp race), the odds ratio you intuit will correspond to (1) - and indeed (1) should be 1 : 1 if B/W had equal rape rates (r_B / r_W = 1)
  • You guys phrase it sort of weirdly, talking about "[IR rape] involving a White female victim" and "[IR rape] involving a Black perpetrator", but once we've conditioned on the crime being interracial, both of those are the same and are referring exclusively to Black on White rape.

To be maximally charitable, I guess cross-racial ratios in isolation are not enough to say Blacks are more sexually dangerous than Whites, because White women are also more beautiful than Black women, so you should genuinely expect there to be a > 1:1 odds of an interracial rape being Black on White even with equal base rates.

Damn, are we even breaking arithmetic and/or algebra to carry water for blacks now?

Suppose 4,000 white men, 1,000 black men, with equal respective population sizes of women. Further suppose we live in a DESPITE-free alternative universe and the propensity to rape of both white and black men are the same, at 10% of the male populations being a rapist. So 400 white male rapists, 100 black male rapists.

Say each rapist only rapes once. If they choose their victims randomly, the expected number of white and black victims from the white male rapists is 320 and 80, respectively. The expected number of white and black victims from black male rapists is 80 and 20, respectively. Note that the white and black men have the same number of interracial rapes, both at 80. The greater probability of black men selecting white women based on random chance is balanced out by the greater number of white men.

However, we don’t live in such a bizarro DESPITE-free universe, so if we do observe that black-men-on-white-women rapes are more common than white-men-on-black-women rapes, that does mean that black men are more prone to committing rape than white men and/or are more likely to commit interracial rape.

Damn, are we even breaking arithmetic and/or algebra to carry water for blacks now?

FWIW I agree that @Jiro's math is nonsensical. It doesn't matter what the relative population sizes are, because a smaller population size means fewer potential rapists and fewer potential victims, which should precisely balance out (assuming even distribution of criminality and random victim selection).

that does mean that black men are more prone to committing rape than white men and/or are more likely to commit interracial rape.

Part of the issue, which came out during the Duke Lacrosse hoax, is that white on black rape is so rare as to be practically unheard of. This is a fact which causes liberals to freak out almost as much as other, more talked-about, racial disparities. And probably it's part of the reason why hoaxes like Duke Lacrosse can get so much traction.

I've heard unsourced claims that the black-white interracial rape gap is on the order of 100-1. Which seems just impossibly large. But I don't think its impossible. This is not because black people are 100x as criminal as white people. That would indeed be absurd.

Instead several individual factors combine to create an enormous disparity.

We can't only consider the differences between black and white men, we also have to consider the differences between black and white women, of which there are many. Perhaps the most salient is that the average African-American woman weighs 189 pounds. Even adjusted for weight, black women are perceived as less desirable than white women. A rapist has his choice of targets, and will choose one that he both desires and thinks is possible to subdue.

I've heard unsourced claims that the black-white interracial rape gap is on the order of 100-1. Which seems just impossibly large. But I don't think its impossible. This is not because black people are 100x as criminal as white people. That would indeed be absurd.

ven adjusted for weight, black women are perceived as less desirable than white women.

Well there are a few issues floating around. Is the disparity in crime uniform across different types of crime? (I tend to doubt it.) Is white on black rape so rare that it's difficult to get statistically significant numbers? (Possibly.) And yeah, it's very common for white men to find black women to be sexually unattractive.

That suggests that potential victims are equally distributed amongst the population. But if races are somewhat segregated, then it doesn’t follow that rape victims are randomly selected.

and it does not mean that black people are more violent or more prone to rape the other race.

Yes, it does.

Imagine a 80:20 split with equal propensity. The small group does 16 cross-group offenses and 4 in-group offenses. The large group does 16 cross-group offenses and 64 in-group offenses. The smaller target pool is perfectly balanced by the smaller perpetrator pool.

If that balance isn't maintained in reality, then why not?

I read "nearly all" to be a statement about ratios, not absolute numbers. What you (and Sloot above) said applies to absolute numbers.

Perhaps what you are trying to argue is that all things equal a larger amount of black crime would be interracial compared to white crime?

I agree that would be true as a matter of logic. As a matter of fact, though, all things are not equal.

Perhaps what you are trying to argue is that all things equal a larger amount of black crime would be interracial compared to white crime?

It seems to me that this would apply equally to both perpetration and victimization, so @Jiro 's point still doesn't make any sense.

So for example, suppose there are 100 blacks and 100,000,000 whites in society. If crime is randomly distributed, one would expect that if a black person is involved in a crime, almost certainly the other participant is white (while at the same time, if a white person is involved in a crime, almost certainly the other participant is NOT black).

But critically, this point applies equally to both black perpetrators AND black victims. So that if one looks only at interracial crimes, the ratio should still be equal.

Here's the point that was being responded to:

nearly all cross-race rapes between Whites and Blacks involve a White female victim

The argument that @Jiro made -- about relative sizes of populations -- doesn't explain this at all.

Perhaps what you are trying to argue is that all things equal a larger amount of black crime would be interracial compared to white crime?

Thank you.

I'm missing something. My model showed 16:16 total, or a 1:1 ratio. What did you mean?

Gesturing toward “nearly all” or “ratios” doesn’t salvage whatever point you were trying to make, it only further illustrates how the real world rejects the null hypothesis that black and white men are equally likely to commit rape/interracial rape.

In the hypothetical example I described—where by construction black and white men had equal propensity for rape and chose their victims randomly—the expected ratio of black-men-on-white-women to white-men-on-black-women rapes was 1:1. That is, white women were 50% of interracial rapes in the hypothetical, unlike “the [real world] phenomena that nearly all cross-race rapes between Whites and Blacks involve a White female victim” that @coffee_enjoyer mentioned.

I read "nearly all" to be a statement about ratios, not absolute numbers

Even so, your math is completely wrong. In a hypothetical world where (1) blacks and whites are equally likely to be rapists; and (2) victims are chosen at random, one would expect the ratio to be 1:1 as between black on white rape and white on black rape.

[Just regarding Till specifically: if you were to go into the hood and grab the hand of someone’s girlfriend (not even wife), and then chase her to grab her waist, there’s a good chance you will be shot and killed.

"The hood" is a social pathology that probably didn't exist in Till's time.

There were totally poor, racially segregated areas with high interpersonal violence in Till's time. That interpersonal violence is what killed him, after all.

This is only tangentially related but I remember reading the view once that Jim Crow laws in the South practically applied to the middle and upper classes only; poor Blacks and Whites were typically rural and lived in the same areas instead of being segregated.

Jim Crow was segregation of public and open-to-the-public facilities, not neighborhoods. The old joke went that a Northern racist was OK with a black man getting 'uppity' if he didn't live next door, and a Southern Racist was OK with a black man living next store so long as he didn't get 'uppity'.

I remember reading the view once that Jim Crow laws in the South practically applied to the middle and upper classes only

Exactly the same as they do now. It's almost like the "racism" was itself just laundering a certain kind of class interest.

(What benefit did white-supremacy ever bring to the average poor white? I suspect it's about as much benefit as opposite-day-white-supremacy now brings to the average poor black.)

"opposite-day-white-supremacy"?

Yeah, the every-other-supremacy thing progressives do, in the standard "reversed stupidity is intelligence" way.

I'm pretty sure economically depressed high violence slums have been around as long as human history, even if the current ones have particular racial connotations and drugs involved.

I think "the hood" as it exists today is a product of the Great Migration and later the crack epidemic. Till himself may have come from "the hood" (he was from Chicago), but he wasn't killed there, but rather rural Mississippi.

I mean sure but 'area with poor people who have lower standards for violent retribution' is like most of human history.

And how often do you hear about blacks killing other blacks today, in the hood, over disputes about their girlfriends being mildly sexually assaulted? How often do you hear about an all-black jury letting a violent offender go free? When the academic studies came out showing that black juries discriminate against white defendants and vice versa doesn’t happen, did you even read that anywhere? Was it reported nationally by NYT? In any case, in 1955 the black homicide rate was 10x higher than the White, and if you looked at how they lived you’d probably categorize it as a ghetto colloquially.

The idea that the American mainstream media in 1955 was trying to indoctrinate people in some sort of anti-white feeling is so evidently ludicrous that it ought to cause you to doubt everything else in coffee_enjoyer's post.

  • -10

It's not called the "long march through the institutions" for nothing.

There were already communist influences in the press and investigations on this in 1955, the NYTimes alone getting dozens of subpoenas, the same newspaper that immediately started reporting on Till:

https://time.com/archive/6799287/the-press-eastland-v-the-times/

Communists in 1955 had specific plans to agitate about the Emmet Till case:

https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/research/online-documents/civil-rights-emmett-till-case/1955-11-22-hoover-to-anderson.pdf

https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/research/online-documents/civil-rights-emmett-till-case/1955-09-29-memo-re-lynching.pdf

Their plan in 1954 was to agitate Blacks against the anti-communists: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/political-affairs/1954-10-33-10-political-affairs.pdf

Literal communists in 1955:

Negro press have sounded the alarm. If this important struggle is to be won, however, the Communist Party, and the American Left, in the first place, must be fully mobilized

Now, in 1955, it’s possible that their explicit intention was not to be anti-white as much as to rile up Blacks in a way that makes them hate White people. But who knows?

This is a bait-and-switch. You posited a specifically anti-white agenda, and now you're presenting evidence that communists supported the case.

But obviously communism is a different issue to anti-whiteness.

You posited a specifically anti-white agenda, and now you're presenting evidence that communists supported the case.

Are you assuming that communists can only pursue one agenda: communism? I'm not seeing a logical problem with communists stirring up anti-white sentiment. That goes double if we're talking about members/supporters of a specific political party instead of believers in the ideology.

That's not what he said. His argument is that they were trying to indoctrinate people against white racism and the indoctrination escaped containment over the years and ended up becoming indoctrination against whiteness.

If so, it's a bit odd that he immeditely bit the bullet, isn't it?

In the Arday context, no one argues he isn’t guilty of the charges. Instead, they claim accurately castigating Arday repeatedly for his crime is a modern day lynching.

Who is "they" here? Like two influencers posting rage bait? Or was there a poll done where 40% of progressives say this was a lynching?

Who is "they" here? Like two influencers posting rage bait?

I'm sure you're playing dumb on purpose to obfuscate the issue, but the recent vigil held for Arday in London included literal members of Parliament and the House of Lords as well as highly placed academics calling his death a lynching or the result of a witch hunt.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/diane-abbott-cambridge-mps-london-people-b1293737.html

As he addressed the crowd, Lord Woolley described the press coverage of Prof Arday as a “public execution” and a “lynching”, to cheers of approval.

I'm sure you're playing dumb on purpose to obfuscate the issue

Thanks for providing the context but this barb is unnecessary.

My bad if I read your post wrong - I assumed it was a loaded question.

I'm no longer convinced the words "racism", "white supremacy", "sexism", "misogyny", "Islamophobia", "homophobia", "transphobia", "hate", "fascism", "far-right", "genocide" and "lynching" mean anything at all.

It's just spoils and figleaf justifications for them.

Progressives have as many words for "blasphemy" as Eskimo have for "snow".

It's kind of understandable considering their environments. Both groups have so many words that describe the same thing, because if they didn't, it would be much harder for them to extract resources from their respective environments and thus stay alive.

I've heard that eskimos don't actually have many words for snow, but then, it was a progressive who was insisting, so?

Northerners do have a lot of words for it, I can think of sleet, fresh powder, black ice and permafrost off the top of my head.

Ah, my linguistics undergraduate degree is finally useful.

Almost all claims of "Such-and-such language has a hundred words for (culturally important concept)" are false/exaggerated. It's not specifically a progressive thing. More like "This makes for a nice anecdote" which gets blown up into a bit of a tall tale. In Eskimo languages, for example (and indeed in most languages concentrated in far northern climes) there are lots of phrases to describe various snow and ice conditions in useful ways, but they do not literally have a hundred different words for minute differences between types of snow.

As a Canadian who regularly deals with snow, I can absolutely believe this.

First of all, there's powder snow, the kind that skiers love. But if you've ever tried to make a snowman with it, you realize that it doesn't stick together well - it's too 'dry', and doesn't clump.

Then there's your building snow, which is wet enough to clump but dry enough to handle, and feels kind of like rolling a very large cotton ball. You can actually make an igloo out of this stuff: it's solid enough to be worked with wooden tools and can be pulled away and shaped into cubes.

Then there's wet snow, which is soaked through and difficult to work with. It will freeze solid overnight and be unworkable, but you can walk on top of it.

Then there's the well-layered snow, which the accumulated and undisturbed pilings of at least a week. At the bottom is a layer that has been compressed by the weight above it, so it's safe to step on, but you'll leave a trail. Mice can live here.

Then there's compacted snow, run over by cars: it's almost as hard as ice, and often has rocks or pebbles or other detritus in it.

...and that's just off the top of my head, living as a sheltered urbanite. Inuit doubtlessly have far more fine distinctions, working with it as both building material and environmental obstacle.

As I understand it, they describe different types of snow, different conditions and modifiers.

It's all the same substance being talked about. The substance of "racism" and "sexism"- that being "blasphemy"- is the same.

Now sure, you might say that snow is real and blasphemy is all made up. But like all religions, it's real to the people handing out the money, just as nature provides food (provided you can navigate to it, which is what the snow words are for).

As a coastal Californian, I'm not sure this alleged snow thing exists. Blasphemy, on the other hand, is very real and even omnipresent.

Don't forget "accountability."

Accountability is just punishment. The definition has never changed, even if the targets and justifications have.

Yes, everyone's for "accountability" (for other people) but no one wants to be "held to account".

Black activists will compare everything to lynching. So it is safe to ignore them. Same with ADL and SPLC.

It may be safe to ignore their statements if all you care about is finding the truth, but from a practical political standpoint I'm not so sure they can be safely ignored.

I would he interested in seeing a principled defense of why what happened to Arday was a "lynching" whereas the constant hate for Rowling is not, that doesn't try to define it as "only being lynching if it happens to someone of colour."

The principled defense goes something like this: Arday was an extraordinary person who was overly scrutinized for being black. Sure he embellished his achievements and did some light academic misconduct, but not any more than any other successful white person. If you think he doesn't deserve to be a Cambridge professor you clearly haven't met any other Cambridge professors or are a racist. The scrutiny and hatred directed at him for invading a white space was over the top and led to his discrediting, resignation and suicide. He was just guy dealt a tough hand in life who succeeded despite adversity and it made some racists absolutely crazy.

Rowling on the other hand succeeded despite adversity as well, but then after becoming a famous white billionaire, used her position to punch down against a persecuted minority group. She is justly being attacked but is still alive and a billionaire so you can't even complain.

(btw black Cambridge professors exist but why let that get in the way of a story)

Rowling is also at least somewhat guilty. While she is not committing genocide on trans people, she is an anti-trans activist who uses her money to help fund feminist organizations which push for anti-trans laws. That is, laws that don't consider trans-women equal to born women. In the eyes of the far left, this is enough to deserve having her life ruined. So from their POV, this is all fine and deserved. "Lynching" is reserved for situations where this is not the case.

I have seen it unironically repeated on social media, and taken as Gospel, that "Rowling is paying for trans people to be killed".

So excuse me if I don't swallow the "anti-trans activist pushing for anti-trans laws" stuff. That seems to be "unrepentantly holds that chick with a dick is not the same as cis woman, shouldn't be in cis female spaces, how very dare she not grovel before us".

Rowling is fortunate in that she has enough money to not give a damn about all the little foot-stomping tantrums and cancellation efforts, and the vast majority of people who heard of Harry Potter don't know or care about her alleged trans genocide hobby. Other people are not so fortunate, ask the women sued by Jessica Yaniv in Canada back when this whole snowball started rolling down the hill, when Yaniv tried to weaponise the Canadian human rights apparatus to serve what they hoped would be a profitable little con (until reality caught up with them and the bureaucrats). And even then, an activist lawyer was happy to pop up with "Yaniv was badly advised" not "Yaniv is a mentally ill individual dragging down real trans people":

During the hearings, Yaniv was on social media commenting on the case and making racist remarks against immigrants, things any lawyer would have prevented Yaniv from doing, says Smith. Smith also says, as waxing services are important to trans women, the community would had been better served had a different waxing case been put forward. The case had “unfortunate facts,” was “poorly thought out” and Yaniv wasn’t advised on how to behave properly, they say.

"Rowling is paying for trans people to be killed"

This is based on a very creative interpretation of her actions. She gives money to organizations ran by TERFs. Those organizations push for anti-trans laws and stigmatize being trans. This then legitimizes discrimination against trans people, which makes them more likely targets for violence. Thus, by this line of thinking, Rowling is indirectly causing trans people to be killed.

While the final conclusion is certainly a stretch, the thing that leftists want her punished for is supporting anti-trans legislation. This is something she actually does. The trans murder thing is stretching the truth in order to garner public support.

It's still a stretch, though. The "anti-trans" legislation she pushes for is generally "Trans women cannot be housed in women's prisons, trans women cannot demand to be taken in at women's shelters, trans women should not compete with men in women's sports," etc. That's "anti-trans" in the sense that it denies trans people the right to have everything they want (being considered 100% the sex they say they are in every context), but it's phrased as if this "anti-trans" legislation is meant to literally cause them harm or deny them their civil rights, like people are trying to pass bills making it illegal to be trans. Rowling (and to my knowledge, all so-called TERF organizations) has never tried to deny trans people the right to call themselves trans and live as their self-identified gender.

But isn't some of the complaint that even aside from plagiarism and outright lies, Arday's actual function was to be the guy who gave cover for the "destroy whiteness" or "Britain has always had black people" lines of thought that make it harder for anti-immigration people and white Britons to remain equal in their own society?

Was that his actual function? His papers were mostly qualitative claims about black people facing discrimination in higher education. Although that's a cousin of more radical racial claims, it's also unambiguously softer and provides no evidence for them.

My take on his function is more cynical: no one expected his research output to convince anyone of anything, inside or outside the field. His function was to be a kind of totem for white academics to dance around and prostrate themselves before. His work could be revolutionary or completely derivative, well-argued or drivel, original or entirely plagiarized: none of that mattered. He probably didn't even need to write any papers at all; Cofnas may have been the first person to give his papers a close reading. His role was to be the Black Cambridge Professor, nothing more and nothing less.

And a totem itself has a lifecycle, and its fall isn't something to be mourned, for it creates the chance for new revelries and festivals to strengthen community bonds.

I mean, strictly speaking, Rowling didn't die, so it wouldn't count as a lynching, so a principled steelman isn't that difficult.

However, I doubt that if hypothetically Rowling were to commit suicide, anyone would call that a lynching.

It's not like anyone called the death of Jeffrey Epstein a lynching.

It isn’t even purely about race. If someone kidnapped and hanged Clarence Thomas, many of the people who are currently crying about the lynching of Arday would be downright jubilant. As Sloot said, it’s all who/whom.

Who/whom; it’s like talking about doxxing men vs. women or “are we dating the same man?” groups vs. the inverse.

Rowling was being held accountable; Arday was being harassed and threatened.

Something something JK Rowling "preached hate" against a vulnerable minority group, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences blah blah blah

no one argues he isn’t guilty of the charges

Many do, in fact, argue he isn't guilty of the charges. I've spent long hours remonstrating with these people, but they refuse to listen.

One example:

Arday’s grad-school alma mater, Liverpool John Moores University, which first received direct complaints about the dissertation last fall, did its own investigation and cleared Arday of wrongdoing.

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/08/jason-arday-cambridge-academic-memoir-resignation/688206/

IRL or online?

That’s no longer a distinction worth anything - the online discourse becomes mainstream in months.

Online, certainly. The only people I've spoken to about it in person have been people who agreed with me that he was a fraud, or people who'd never heard of the case before. On Substack I've been videos of people giving public speeches insisting he'd been falsely accused of plagiarism.

Can you ping your online correspondents and ask them why Arday was singled out for lynching while Cambridge has other black professors who seem to have perfectly normal academic careers?

Oh I have, believe me.

I mean plenty of people in the Western system will still be anti-lynching without due process even if somebody is clearly guilty/literally caught in the act.

Sure but that’s primarily because they are concerned that the lunch mob will “get it wrong.” That is, it is a prudential concern.

I don’t know if this is too post worthy

The bar for what’s worthy of a top post can be quite low when it comes to effort and erudtion, so based on recent precedent you should be in the clear.

So either they believe any criticism of blacks is per se illegitimate and blacks are naturally innocent regardless of their actions

first_time.jpg?

They are indeed taking the usual route of claiming that Arday was a good boy who did not do nothing. Until one day, a Nazi pseudoscientist went on a witchhunt and sicced an angry racist mob upon him.

My understanding is that the thing that made the Emmet Till case bad was that we will never know if he did or didn't do the thing, and that is because he was denied due process of law, and that is the principle problem with vigilante justice.

Now accusing a prominent liar of lying is not vigilante justice.

My understanding is that the thing that made the Emmet Till case bad was that we will never know if he did or didn't do the thing, and that is because he was denied due process of law, and that is the principle problem with vigilante justice.

This is a distinctly right-wing, anti-democratic, and western-chauvinist view of the case which is of course "the problem".

That’s not why lynching was bad though. Most people who were lynched were guilty of atrocious crimes. Lynching is bad because it denies due process rights. Of course that has nothing to do with Arday.

That’s not why lynching was bad though.

Lynching is bad because it denies due process rights.

The point of due process is not to have due process; "due process rights" are a particular way of achieving other ends, not an end in themselves. The primary purpose of due process rights is that due process is more likely to get it right than summary justice. Hence, your attempted distinction collapses; due process reduces to (probabilistic) correctness.

Lynching does have an additional problem, unrelated to due process, which is that it is not canonical. That is, a lynchmob does not need a monopoly on force, which means that there can be multiple lynchmobs in the same area enforcing different standards, which has a tendency to get a lot of people killed unnecessarily (with or without a slide into civil war). But this isn't related to due process; a monarch who rules by fiat is not engaging in "due process" any more than a lynchmob is, but his capricious declarations are nonetheless canonical.

Yes, you are right. Due process is not an end in itself. But it creates a sense of fairness which allows its decisions to be accepted by the mob, and sometimes even by clan of the guilty party as well (YMMV). This goes beyond just being "canonical". The diktats of a dictator are canonical, but they are not necessarily believed to be fair.

A good system of justice is one that

A) arrives at the correct outcome but also B) maintains the appearance of fairness

A is more important than B, but B is nonetheless important. Lynch mobs failed at B even if they got A right most of the time. And, as you point out, there is also the further problem of not having a canonical decision.

The classic case is Emmet Till. He was accused of raping a white woman but didn’t.

That's not my understanding of that specific case; my understanding is that he was accused of sexually harassing a white woman and it's disputed whether he did or not (some claim that the accuser admitted years later to making it up, but this claim itself seems to have been fabricated) but it doesn't matter much because it's not an offense that anyone sane thinks merits capital punishment.

You are right! Somehow I had always heard it as rape whereas it seems he was accused of sexual harassment. I also had heard the alleged victim recanted which appears spurious.

I guess at minimum it seems Till’s guilt was uncertain and the punishment didn’t meet the potential crime.

Arday being pushed out of Cambridge for his academic crimes was entirely proportionate AND proven. So again, radically different from Till.

IIRC it was Emmet Till's father Louis who was executed for rape/murder of Italian civilians during WWII.

There is an entire Wiki article on him.

I don’t mean to laugh - but I did laugh reading your post.

I’ve always sort of known history is ‘ fake ‘ but the more I know, the more fake it becomes.

Out of curiosity, what about the post you're responding to has prompted your response here? Do you doubt its veracity? Or is it that this is new information to you and you feel it has been previously hidden from you, and thus a narrative of some sort has been thrust upon you regarding something about Till's history without your having the facts?

New fact … I always had a thought that anything that happened yesterday is a myth. The longer ago it was from right this second, the less true anything about it becomes.

Add in importance of any kind and the more important it was the less factual information about it can be trusted.

What I learned about the Till case in school and what I’ve grown to know about it is maybe not earth shattering but it’s another data point on a long list of ‘ history isn’t real ‘ data points.

But a myth is different from a lie, or a vacuum. You wouldn't, presumably, argue that nothing at all happened yesterday. My point is that it may not be particularly helpful (or, indeed, possible) to wave away anything not immediately historically verifiable (by whatever means would be satisfying, and I use this term 'historically verifiable' to substitute for your word true. Not that I have an issue with the word true but because its meaning is fluid unless we mean factual and not subject to interpretation. In other words fact vs narrative--and nor am I saying narrative is a dirty word ). Nor is it constructive to dismiss myth as irrelevant (or outright harmful) to the living of life.

I sympathize with your general point regarding the bona fides of a lot of what many of us were taught as facts in school.

Also, lynching people is wrong even if they did do something that deserved the death penalty. It deprives the lynched of due process, it is true, but it also deprives the injured of having their injury validated and redressed. Lynchings forever throw doubt on the validity of the victim's injury.

I will entertain arguments for vigilante justice in a circumstances where there is no lawful way to achieve redress but that wasn't the case with Till (and really the vast majority of vigilante justice) so there's no point in reaching that argument at all.

Also, lynching people is wrong even if they did do something that deserved the death penalty. It deprives the lynched of due process, it is true, but it also deprives the injured of having their injury validated and redressed. Lynchings forever throw doubt on the validity of the victim's injury.

I won't comment on lynchings in the South specifically since that has a bunch of complicated factors, but when it comes to vigilante justice generally, it's one of the places where I agree with Hlynka that there is a "Leviathan-shaped hole". If the state shows itself consistently unable or unwilling to enforce order, then they no longer have the right to rule, and the right to power falls to whoever can and will enforce it. The "consistently" part here being key, even the best rulers will make occasional mistakes or have occasional failures, and I would not find vigilante justice justified here.

This is why things like two tier policing, revolving doors in the courthouse where a judge lets a career criminal out on bond for the 50th time, etc. are so dangerous. They undermine the legitimacy of the current state, and give greater legitimacy to any challengers, whether lone vigilantes or more organized opposition.

If the state shows itself consistently unable or unwilling to enforce order, then they no longer have the right to rule, and the right to power falls to whoever can and will enforce it.

Right, I think this would be a case where "there is no lawful way to achieve redress" and in the extremity you describe there is arguably a duty to enforce justice and create a new justice system with other people of goodwill who share your moral commitments.

They undermine the legitimacy of the current state, and give greater legitimacy to any challengers, wherher lone vigilantes or more organized opposition.

Yes, I 100% agree. A very underrated argument for harsh criminal penalties is precisely so that those who would take matters into their own hands feel no need to do so.

I will entertain arguments for vigilante justice in a circumstances where there is no lawful way to achieve redress

I lean towards supporting vigilante justice only in cases where the vigilante then turns themselves in and pleads guilty to a hostile court. If you believe an injustice has been done and must be redressed outside of the law, very well, but it must then end with justice done within the law, to its fullest extent.

Still gameable, and still has issues, but better than many alternatives.

I lean towards supporting vigilante justice only in cases where the vigilante then turns themselves in and pleads guilty to a hostile court.

"Why, Gary? Gary, why?"

Honestly as a case I have mixed feelings about it, but I'm not convinced Gary was completely in the wrong.

Gary Plauche didn't give the law a chance. If we suppose some counterfactual where Douchet was guilty as hell but the court lets him off because the judge has a soft spot for child molesters, it would make no sense to condition the morality of similar vigilante action on subjecting oneself to the (counterfactual) child-molestor-loving legal system.

To be fair, Plauche’s own statements characterize it entirely as an emotional reaction of a wronged father, and he never tried to make the argument that it was about the insufficiency of the justice system.

Gary is a "there but for the grace of God go I" situation. What he did was in clear contravention of the law. Philosophically, I accept that the state is supposed to have a monopoly on legitimate use of force, extreme circumstances excepted (which does not describe Gary's circumstances). Does the foregoing mean I wouldn't have done the exact same thing in his shoes? Sadly, I don't think so.

I lean towards supporting vigilante justice only in cases where the vigilante then turns themselves in and pleads guilty to a hostile court.

This is just self-sabotaging. If vigilante justice is the right thing to do, then it is also right that the vigilante not be punished for it.

Thinking about it, maybe there should be a difference between breaking a law that is itself unjust (or imposed in an unjust manner), which should face no punishment, and breaking a just law in service of some other cause, which should face punishment. Activists blocking traffic don't claim that laws against blocking traffic are a bad thing, or even that the government selectively prosecutes traffic blockers.

This is just self-sabotaging. If vigilante justice is the right thing to do, then it is also right that the vigilante not be punished for it.

I disagree. I think that it is possible for an act to be both "necessary" and "evil", and that an act being "justified" or "understandable" does not necessarily make it "good".

Which, in fact, is one of the central tropes associated with vigilantism in fiction. The violent man who has no place in the peaceful world his violence creates. The book has to end with Shane riding away. Regardless of his heroism, once the dirty work is done, he cannot remain in the valley.

For obvious reasons "well I needed to break the law to achieve the greater good" is a massive slippery slope. I have an easier time believing that the claim is genuine if the person making it is willing to face the music afterwards, and it puts some sandpaper on the slide, too.

I have an easier time believing that the claim is genuine if the person making it is willing to face the music afterwards, and it puts some sandpaper on the slide, too.

The State that would make vigilantism justifiable is the State that would brutally punish the vigilante regardless of the merit of their claim. The common term for this is "anarcho-tyranny".

The logic I am talking about here also applies to state officials who would seek to break the law in the course of their duties to achieve some greater good, which is an issue ~everywhere.

In the logic I'm talking about they are not breaking the law. They are applying it selectively and vindictively. The lowlife murdering rapist is not a challenge to State Power the way a vigilante is. Your logic would hold if the failure to punish criminals were the result of a loss of state capacity. What we're actually suffering IRL is a loss of state will to punish lowlife criminals precisely because they are lowlife criminals. And also racism, etc.

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If it is the right thing to do there should be no music to face. "You can be a vigilante as long as you're willing to be punished by the very state which made your vigilante actions advisable in the first place" is just a long winded way of saying "You can't be a vigilante".

Have you never seen a western? The hero outlaw who dies and/or turns himself in at the end is a pretty classic trope. The vigilante almost never gets to ride off into the sunset. His role is to offer himself as a moral sacrifice on the alter of innocence and civilization. We love the vigilante as a romantic hero, but his story always ends in tragic sacrifice.

Being a vigilante is really fucking cool and sometimes civilizationally necessary, but you don't get a happy ending. That's always been the deal.

Part of that may have been due to the Hays Code....

Have you never seen a western? The hero outlaw who dies and/or turns himself in at the end is a pretty classic trope.

It is, but I claim it is wrong and broken. It is a trope championed in morality plays by a civilized world as a bulwark against vigilantes, and it has no place in a world where vigilantism is actually necessary.

We love the vigilante as a romantic hero, but his story always ends in tragic sacrifice

I would say that's a very culturally contingent reading. How many Batman comics end up with Bruce Wayne asking to be arrested? What about the murderer in the Christie's Orient Express? At the end of the Count of Monte Christo the count gets most but not all of his revenge and goes off east to live in happiness with his cute ex-slavegirl.

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If it is the right thing to do there should be no music to face.

And this is where where David Friedman and Victor Davis Hanson would tell you that there is always music to face.

I'm not familiar with that particular claim from either one. I present as a counterpoint the Battle of Athens. Long story short, a bunch of military veterans disrupted the stealing of an election (by the inumbent machine) by force (including explosives). They won the election and did not take their punishment for the violence in the end.

"You can't be a vigilante."

Well...yeah. You're not supposed to be a vigilante. If you're allowed to do that stuff you're definitionally not a vigilante.

not supposed

That heavily depends on who's doing the supposing, and why.

For instance, I lend zero credence to people who "not suppose" me when they're under conditions of extreme moral hazard, like how I'm "not supposed" to defend myself if the criminal attacking me is a particular color.

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There are, in fact, some who argue that he isn't guilty of the charges, though possibly this is state-supported trolling.

I believe that they believe BOTH that "any criticism of blacks is per se illegitimate" AND that "they are trying to use powerful iconography to prevent criticism of blacks". (probably a few believe "blacks are naturally innocent regardless of their actions" as well). I don't see how this is destroying their "seed capital" though; their argument amounts to yelling "SLAVERY! LYNCHING! JIM CROW!" over and over until their opponents yield or are destroyed, and none of those things will go away.

ETA: Here's a New England Journal of Medicine contributor also supporting Arday's innocense, at least partly (he claims he doesn't care if Arday is innocent, but...): "Besides making the point that his Ph.D. advisor and the university cleared him of any deliberate plagiarism allegations"

Hmm, the first linked thing dug up an article from a real local Bri'ish newspaper dated something 2010 about the guy's intention to do the marathon thing.

I fed the url of that to the Wayback Machine and the first snapshot is from, like, three days ago, which is suspicious.

But then, I don't know what' the Internet Archive's policy for which pages they snapshot and it seems, uh, implausible that some random irrelevant publication would falsify their records to stick it to the chuds.

But then the article has a quote: "He will be setting off on Monday, July 19, and is aiming to complete each marathon in less than six hours." Which means he'd be running them at a rather casual jogging pace. Maybe doing ~40 km per day like that isn't some kind of implausible superhuman achievement.

But the leg fracture thing still sounds like bullshit.

And the article also has this amazing quote in it:

To prepare for the race Mr Arday, who is also studying for a master’s degree in physical education, has been training hard for five months, running 12 miles a day from 4am to 6am and 10pm until midnight, fitting in a strict routine around his teaching and studying.

Yeah, I think gettting less than 4 hours of sleep per day while running a daily marathon split into two parts for several months would be an implausibly superhuman achievement.

So perhaps some of Arday's claims weren't completely made up, but significantly embellished.

(And none of this matters with regards to the plagiarism accusations and the fact that he got kicked out which probably wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a there there.)

Yeah, I think gettting less than 4 hours of sleep per day while running a daily marathon split into two parts for several months would be an implausibly superhuman achievement.

I once knew someone who only required 2-3 hours of sleep per night to function perfectly.

Of course, she was a project manager who was the sort to literally make a schedule space for "spontaneity" when on vacation, and as far as I could tell not very physically active, so I don't know if the physcial part of a body has different sleep/rest requirements than the mental.

though possibly this is state-supported trolling.

Didn't MEE also claim Israel was evaporating the bodies of civilians so they couldn't be counted?

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