Sometimes the judicial system works against white racist violence

As this federal court case fro Mississippi illustrates, sometimes the judicial system works against white racist violence: Therese Apel, Women get maximum sentences in hate crime death Clariom-Ledger 04/10/2015.

But that doesn't mean that the system always works, much less that it's free from white racist bias. That's a conclusion that defenders of racial discrimination in the justice system love to use cases like this to make.

And it certainly doesn't mean that there was nothing racial about the crime. In fact, these two defendants pleaded guilty to a federal hate crime in this case.

The partner of the man murdered in this case addressed the defendants at sentencing:

[James Craig] Anderson's partner, James Bradfield was emotional as he reiterated to the court how much different life is without Anderson.

"The days are never the same. Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries... On a sunny day, all I can see is Craig out there working in the yard, trying to do everything he could for his family, and you took his life for no reason," he said. "And you didn't want to turn yourself in. You thought you'd get away with it."

He also let Richardson and Graves know he holds them just as responsible as Dedmon.

"You texted everyone that night, but you couldn't call 911? You are as much to blame as if you'd been behind the wheel," he said. "You're babies yourselves, but I don't feel sorry for you. You knew what you were doing."

Both women have admitted to riding in the truck with Dedmon when Anderson was killed. They also admitted to enlisting others to go with them to Jackson, which they called "Jafrica," to assault African Americans.

Confedederate "Heritage" Month 2012, April 17: the Tulsa murder and racial terror

Even if it's largely a matter of more sophisticated PR, I've been struck by the contrast between the official handling of the Trayvon Martin case and the Tulsa serial-killing case from a couple of weeks ago. From this Tulsa World article, I take it that the Tulsa PD is going all-out to convey to the public that they were all over the case from the get-go: Jerry Wofford, Tension ruled Tulsa for two days 04/15/2012.

Now, parts of this article read like a police department PR release written by somebody trying to make it sound like the plot from a TV police "procedural". And I'm guessing that Tulsa cops and politicians were telling each other early on, "we can't let this become another Trayvon Martin deal."

It strikes me that if the Sanford FL police had been more diligent in their intial investigation with interviewing witnesses and so on, and had more clearly publicized what they had done (confiscating Zimmerman's clothes, taking him into custody for five hours, etc.), they might have at least mitigated the negative image they got from the case.

Just to be clear, based on the publicly available information I've seen in following the Martin case, it looks to me like this was a racially-motivated murder, at the very best a case where George Zimmerman provoked a confrontation with no good reason in which he wound up killing Trayvon with a bullet to the chest. And it certainly looks to me like the Sanford police department handled the initial investigation with considerable sloppiness. We can certainly hope that the legal proceedings will produce definitive information. Though the initial probable cause affidavit has given Emptywheel contributor Bmaz pause as to the competency of the prosecution in this case, as he explains in Zimmerman: Anatomy Of A Deficient Probable Cause Affidavit 04/14/2012.

What I want to focus on in this post is the description that Wofford gives of the effects in the African-American neighborhood of Tulsa where the murders to which Jake England and Alvin Watts have confessed were taking place. It's give a very contemporary image of how racial vigilante violence spreads a feeling of vulnerability and terror beyond the immediate victims and their families.

But there were immediate victims:

Police learned later they likely were. Dannaer Fields, 49, Bobby Clark, 54, and William Allen, 31, were dead. David Hall, 46, and Deon Tucker, 44, were in critical condition with gunshot wounds. All had been shot within a three-mile radius in the span of a few hours early April 6, Good Friday.

Here is Wofford's description of the atmosphere it created:

A white man shooting black victims seemingly at random in north Tulsa.

"So it doesn't take rocket science to say that it's a possible connection that somebody was targeting black (people)," Evans said.

City Councilor Jack Henderson represents the district where all the victims were found. He also was kept informed as the situation progressed and knew there was a possibility that black residents in his district were being targeted.

"At this point, fear had set in, and everyone is asking me what they should do," Henderson said. "We needed to start making sure people don't start taking things in their own hands."

Warren Blakney, president of Tulsa's NAACP chapter and the minister of the North Peoria Church of Christ, was headed back from a revival in Texarkana when he heard about the shootings. He and Henderson started working with the north Tulsa community to balance the anger about the situation with a call for safety and awareness.

"I decided to get some folks together and said let's meet Friday night and inform this community they could be in danger," Blakney said. "I didn't want anybody else hurt."

Henderson said he was telling people to stay indoors and not put themselves in dangerous situations.

Theo Ballard hadn't heard those calls from community leaders but heard enough from a neighbor. He lives about a block from where Clark was shot near Denver Avenue and 63rd Street North.

"He said I better watch it, sitting on the porch," Ballard said. "I stayed inside and secured the door real good."

Ballard, 84, and his wife, Ann Ballard, 75, both stayed inside. They liked sitting on their porch in the evening, enjoying the twilight, the weather, their flower garden and their neighbors. But the threat of a random shooter kept them inside Friday night.

"I was beginning to suspect anybody," Ann Ballard said. "I wasn't ruling anything out. ... I'd just shoot anybody that came up here."

Police were anxious, too. Extra patrols roamed the streets across the city, not just on the north side.

Also from the Tulsa World on the case: Zack Stoycoff, Jake England was shaped by tragedy, responsibility, desperation 04/15/2012; Bill Sherman, Jesse Jackson comes to Tulsa with message of healing 04/14/2012

Tags: confederate heritage month 2012, lynching, tulsa murders 2012, white racism

Confessed Tulsa murder's father's death: killed by a black man acting in self-defense (under Oklahoma law)

It pays to check out the local news in cases like the multiple murders in Tulsa. Jake England, the 19-year-old who confessed along with an accomplice to the random murders of African-Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma, leaving three dead and two wounded, wrote on Facebook last Thursday, "Today is two years that my dad has been gone shot by a f------ n----- it's hard not to go off between that and sheran I'm gone in the head." Sheran was his girlfriend.

As Amanda Bland reports for the Tulsa World, England's father was indeed killed by an African-American man (DA: Father of suspect arrested in shooting spree was killed in self-defense in 2010 case 04/09/2012):

"The Tulsa County District Attorney’s office ruled the April 5, 2010, shooting death of Carl England justifiable homicide and declined to file homicide charges against Pernell Demond Jefferson," said Susan Witt with the district attorney’s office in a news release Tuesday.

England and Jefferson got into an altercation at the Comanche Park Apartments the day England was killed, police told the Tulsa World following the incident. England’s daughter reportedly called him for help after her boyfriend and Jefferson got into a fight.

Police said the boyfriend hit Jefferson with a baseball bat and Jefferson left to retrieve a gun before England arrived and was shot in the chest.

Jefferson is charged with attempted first-degree burglary and possession of a firearm after a former felony conviction in the case. A jury trail is scheduled for May 7.

The World also provides a link to Jake's testimony (the confessed killer) at Jefferson's trial on the other charges.

Bland also reports on Jake England's girlfriend, "Sheran Hart Wilde, Jake England’s girlfriend, committed suicide in January." The two of them had a son, who is about seven months old now. He will be left with no conscious memories of his mother, and may well know his father as a man in prison for life for murder.

Ironically, Jefferson may have escaped murder charges because of Oklahoma's 2006 "Stand Your Ground"/Kill At Will law. Tommy Christopher writes in Possible Motive In Tulsa Shooting And Oklahoma's 'Stand Your Ground' Law Mediaite 04/09/2012:

Oklahoma enacted a "Stand Your Ground" law in 2006, without which Pernell Jefferson probably would have been charged for the shooting. Rather than shooting England, Jefferson could have run away, called the police, fired a warning shot, or simply brandished the weapon at him. Under Stand Your Ground, though, he had "no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."

Who knows, Jake England and his confessed accomplice in the murder, Alvin Watts, may wind up walking on these murders, too, under the Kill At Will law.

Tags: lynching, tulsa murders 2012, white racism

The Tulsa murders

ABC News reports that the two white guys arrested on suspicion of gunning down black people at random in Tulsa have confessed. How many times now are we going to have to hear that race had nothing to do with it?

I haven't checked on the FOX News scripts yet. But I'm guessing there and from other white "conservatives" we'll hear the stock lynch-murder apologies on the model:

1. This particular crime is bad and terrible, etc.
2. But it has nothing to do with race.
3. And, now, I don't have anything against the colored people or anything, BUT ... (fill in with criticism of civil rights leaders, blacks killing other blacks, yadda, yadda, yadda)

The ABC story is here, Christina Ng and Pierre Thomas, Tulsa Shooting Suspects Said to Confess 04/09/2012:

Two Oklahoma men accused of a deadly shooting spree last week that apparently targeted black people at random along Tulsa, Okla.'s streets have confessed to the shootings, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Jake England, 19, confessed to shooting three people, the AP reported. Alvin Watts, 32, confessed to shooting two.

The rampage left three people dead, and two more were seriously wounded. Watts is believed to have shot two of the three who died, according to the documents.

All of the victims are black. England and Watts, who police describe as white, have not been charged with hate crimes.

As in all crimes of this sort, it's always worth remembering that when a case like this goes through the legal process, it can always come out looking different. Even false confessions do happen. Ken Burns' daughter Sarah Burns has a book about a notorious case in which five defendents actually confessed to a crime they didn't commit, The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding (2011).

The victims had names:

Police identified the deceased victims as Bobby Clark, 54, and William Allen, 31, and Dannaer Fields, 49, the only woman among the victims. There was no connection between the suspects and victims, police said at a news conference on Sunday.

Two males were critically wounded in the shooting spree. All of the victims were targeted while they were out walking, and apparently did not know each other.

Another sad case of how our press covers these things is no doubt in process already. There's a more than marginal chance, I'm guessing, that these guys had some kind of times to extremist rightwing groups of some kind, possibly with some kind of crackpot Christian Reconstruction ideology. But the press will not call them "terrorists", even though randomly shooting black people is standard segregationist terror. If and when their ties to far-right groups are discovered, the press will mostly ignore it and treat them as "lone nuts". Even though there are two of them. And the press will certainly not call them "Christian terrorists".

On the other hand, if they should turn out to be Muslim, well, you know what the difference would be. Although if it's white guys murdering blacks, then maybe even being Muslim wouldn't be enough for the press to call them "terrorists".

This is also in the ABC News report:

On Thursday at 4:04 p.m., England wrote, "Today is two years that my dad has been gone shot by a f------ n----- it's hard not to go off between that and sheran I'm gone in the head."

According to England's Facebook page, his girlfriend, Sheran Hart Wilde, recently died.

But I'm sure that some people will argue with a straight face that race had nothing to do with this. The ABC report didn't give any further information about the facts of the guy's father's death, or even if the father and the girlfriend are actually dead.

How long before conservative ministers start saying the Tulsa murders are a matter of "social justice" and therefore not about race? No, it doesn't make jack for sense. But that's what Franklin Graham and other Christian Right types were saying about the Trayvon Martin murder.

And, of course, it would be "shrill" to suggest that the widespread excuses and defenses from so many white people for George Zimmerman, who also admits to having shot and killed Trayvon Martin, had anything to do with creating a climate that might encourage two white guys to just go start randomly shooting black people in Tulsa.

Tags: lynching, tulsa murders 2012, white racism

Conservative "Christian Post" on the Trayvon Martin murder

It looks like the conservative Christian Post is all-in with defending the murder of Trayvon Martin. Check out this article by Paul Stanley Fla. 'Stand Your Ground' Law Under Microscope in Wake of Trayvon Martin Shooting Christian Post 03/26/2012. He provides some rhetorical strategy that white fundamentalists can use to support lynch-murder in a mealy-mouthed way without saying outright, "So, that guy killed one of those 'f***ing coons', so what?"

Stanley:

The shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin has created an outcry over the state's self-defense statute, commonly known as "Stand Your Ground." What is being debated is whether the law could be used as a viable defense in Martin's death.

Actually, outside the yeehaw-for-lynch-murder world, what's also "being debated" is why the Stanley police department handled the investigation even at the crime scene in such a way as to maximizes the shooter's chances for skating on any legal charges over shooting and killing an unarmed black kid.

He then quotes sections of Florida's kill-a-black-person-with-no-consequences law, aka, "stand your ground" that could be exculpatory, mentioning that it was no less a fine Christian white man than Jeb Bush who signed it into law, then:

It is not entirely clear since details of the shooting death remain sketchy, however, Bush is backing away from the law, saying that it should not be used as a defense in Martin's shooting death and calling the shooting a "tragedy." [my emphasis]

Translation: heck, we don't know what happened, maybe the black kid committed suicide!

This was the most notable part of the article to me:

The gentleman who made the initial 911 call and reportedly shot Martin is George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old mixed race (white and Hispanic) male who has yet to be charged as the Stanford, Fla., Police department are still investigating the incident. [my emphasis]

Of all the reports I've read and heard on this case, this is the first one I recall describing Zimmerman as a "gentleman".

Defenders of lynch murder have eagerly focused on the alleged fact that Zimmerman has one Latino parent. It would take more than one sentence of one- and two-syllable words to explain to Zimmerman's fans about the mixture of race in Latin countries. Stanley obviously doesn't think any of them thar Hispanics is white. Maybe he can't decipher the implications of that phrase "non-Hispanic Caucasian" that appears on pretty much any form that surveys ethnicity these days. I wonder if he thinks Jews are a separate race. How about Yankees?

Outside of the 911 call where Zimmerman described Martin as looking "suspicious" ...

Oh, and, you know, grumbled about "f***ing coons" just before he chased the 17-year-old Trayvon Martin down and shot him to death ...

... but was instructed not to follow Martin and told where he was to meet police, few details of the incident exist. Many are speculating that Zimmerman did pursue Martin and that the young black man got the upper hand prior to Zimmerman shooting the 17-year-old. Since Zimmerman has not yet given his side of the story and Martin is deceased, investigators may never know what really happened. [my emphasis]

I love that "Many are speculating"; classic FOX News type reporting. "Some say ...", "Some people say..." Yes, "investigators may never know what really happened", since the local cops obviously thought Zimmerman had made him a mighty fine kill, and besides, the dead kid was just one of those "f***ing coons", anyway.

Actually, in the real world, we know all the important details, and they aren't really in dispute. Zimmerman was obsessed with fear and hostility toward black teenagers. He saw one walking by armed with iced tea and a bag of Skittles, chased him down, shot him in the chest and killed him. But I suppose those are only a "few details" and, anyhow, the kid was, you know...

But the Feb. 26 shooting has sparked a nationwide outcry led by civil rights activist Al Sharpton and others who are calling for Zimmerman's arrest, although through his attorney he has invoked the "Stand Your Ground" statute as his defense. [my emphasis]

In the segregationist world, "Al Sharpton" is one of those phrases that mean, "Scary black man! Scary black man!"

But Parker provides us with some analytical background:

Florida's law is similar to the ones passed in several other states and are also known by other terms such as "Castle Doctrine," which also allows individuals to defend their home, life or the life of others if they feel they are in immediate danger. ...

Meanwhile, other state legislators who sponsor the bills are maintaining the laws are needed. "I understand it's a tragic case that happened in Florida. I wasn't there. The only two people who were there were the victim and the man who defended himself," Iowa Rep. Matt Windschitl (R-Missouri Valley), who sponsored a "Stand Your Ground" bill that died last year in the Iowa Senate, told the Sioux City Journal.

"Nobody can tell you what happened besides those people. I think Iowans have a right to defend themselves where they have a right to be present. To require an Iowan to retreat when they feel threatened, I think, that's an asinine proposal," added Windschitl. [my emphasis]

Yes, "the victim and the man who defended himself" are the only ones who can say anything meaningful about his. And one of them is unfortunately dead. (And, besides, he was just a ...)

So, there you have it. A model of how good Christian white folks can defend a "gentleman" like George Zimmerman, "the man who defended himself", without having to actually say that you're glad he killt him one of them "f***ing coons".

If you're curious about more of this perspective, have some Pepto-Bismol and check out some of the Christian Post's other articles on the topic, like Churches Call for Justice in Trayvon Martin Slaying While Disputing Racial Overtones 03/23/2012.

The publicly-respectable white fundamentalist defense of the lynch-murder is to call vaguely for "justice" but to argue that its a matter of "social justice" but not race, oh no, definitely not race, race had nothing at all to do with it, certainly not white racism. Zimmerman is half-Hispanic, don't you know? (Of course, the kid was wearing a hoodie so he probably hated white people, nudge-nudge wink-wink.) The latter articles is by Luiza Oleszczuk:

Florida churches and prominent evangelical Christian leaders from across the nation are joining the calls for justice for slain teenager Trayvon Martin, with the issue of race dominating discussions about the African-American student's fatal shooting at the hands of a white Hispanic male. However, some Christians say the case is more about social justice than it is race. [my emphasis]

Adn she gives us a specific example:

Alan Brumback, senior pastor of Central Baptist Church in Sanford, ... whose church is about 30 percent black and 10 percent Hispanic, believes the Martin-Zimmerman case is an issue of social justice and not a "racial issue."

"There is a definite desire of all Christian churches in the city of Sanford to be involved, because there is a race aspect to this, even though I don't see it as a racial issue, I see it more as a Gospel and social justice issue," he told CP. "Some pastors of some denominations pray for it but they are not being overly involved. A lot of it is just because there's some division in town. As a pastor of a Southern Baptist church – we have been actively praying for them [the family]."

The pastor noted, however, that he was not "trying to get involved in 'political wrangling'" of the case as much as "to be there to share a word of comfort to the family," and to "speak a word of the Gospel to bring reconciliation to the community."

"I think the only thing that's going to really resolve [the disagreements over the nature of the tragedy] and bring reconciliation in Sanford, it's going to have to be the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If there is one person who can understand losing a son in a very unjust way, it's God the father. He spared his son for us," he told CP.

"This is not a black-white issue, but this is an issue of the Gospel; it's the issue of sin" he added. [my emphasis]

Just to be clear: in the fundamentalist world, especially for leaders, "social justice" is about protecting those precious unborn babies from those disgusting sluts carrying them around in their wombs when they should have kept their legs closed, so that some white Christian family can adopt their baby. As you see here, the term social justice is specifically meant to exclude any discussion of, much less confrontation with, white racism.

Tags: lynching, trayvon martin, white racism

Trayvon Martin case is also a test for Obama

President Obama on Friday made a public statement on the Trayvon Martin lynch-murder case: a painfully careful one that modeled sympathy and sorrow over Trayvon's killing, but not anger or outrage. Think Progress has the video, Obama Speaks Out On Trayvon Martin 03/23/2012:



Now the Republicans are going after him, accusing Obama of racism, hoping to push him into pepper-spraying his own (fairly tepid) statement on the case. Amanda Terkel reports in Newt Gingrich's Trayvon Martin Comments Were 'Reprehensible,' David Plouffe Says Huffington Post 03/25/2012:

"If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," Obama said, underscoring how the issue affected him on a personal level. "I think [Trayvon's parents] are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened."

Gingrich took exception with Obama's comments during a radio interview later on Friday, saying they were "disgraceful."

"It's not a question of who that young man looked like," he said. "Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified, no matter what the ethnic background. Is the president suggesting that, if it had been a white who'd been shot, that would be OK, because it wouldn't look like him? That's just nonsense."

In an update, she notes that Rick Santorum, that other fine Christian white man, also is pressuring Obama to back off his stance on the lynch-murder.

On CNN's "State of the Union," Plouffe criticized former Sen. Rick Santorum's reaction to Obama's comments on the Martin shooting.

Santorum said on Friday that the president should "not use these types of horrible and tragic individual cases to try to drive a wedge in America."

Plouffe called both Gingrich and Santorum's remarks "irresponsible," adding, "I think those comments were really hard to stomach, really, and I guess trying to appeal to people's worst instincts."

The more substantive issue is whether the Justice Department will prosecute the case and/or keep up the pressure on Florida to make a real prosecution. The Justice Department should also be doing a general investigation of the Sanford FL police department, that has a history of similar misconduct. A local police department that deliberately screws up an investigation in a case like this is effectively collaborating after the fact.

But it's a real question whether the President will stand his ground on this. As Joan Walsh reminds us in "If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon" Salon 03/23/2012, Obama has been known to approached race-related issues in a wobbly and problematic way:

The Obamas handle our nation’s confusion about race with an uncommon grace. When the president said the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" in arresting Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates on his own property, well, he was right. But the right-wing outrage machine protested his wading into a local law-enforcement controversy, and he was forced to "recalibrate" and invite the arresting officer and Gates to the White House for an awkward "beer summit." Just this week, after Robert De Niro introduced Michelle Obama by joking, "Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?" Newt Gingrich squealed in faux outrage (which is rich: Gingrich has done more than Obama to disappoint white women who wanted to be first ladies, his two ex-wives), and the first lady’s office issued an apology, as did De Niro.

On lynch murder, the Republican Party has embraced the position that the segregated South was taking circa 1948, when an anti-lynching plank in the Democratic Party's platform sparked the Dixiecrat rebellion led by future Republican Strom Thurmond.

If Obama can't stand his ground on the Trayvon Martin case, Democrats need to ask again just what kind of President we can count on him to be in a second term. Maybe the Party needs a replay of 1948 at the convention and make a big deal about adding a new anti-lynching plank to the Party platform. If Obama goes wobbly on this, that is one more reason for the Democratic base to make the Party convention something other than a celebration of Obama's Presidency. But since the delegates are elected in primaries and Obama has no opposition to speak of for the nomination, even that would be difficult to pull off.

Tags: lynching, trayvon martin, white racism

Giuliani and torture

I don't want to by Pollyannish about the American record on torture. Torture was a standard feature of slavery. Torture has been used and tolerated in the prison system at various times. Torture by American troops in the Vietnam War was in practice tolerated in places; it was widespread, actually. And through the notorious School for the Americas, American trainers provided police and soldiers from Latin American countries in torture techniques.

The most immediately relevant instance to our current situation was the practice lynching in the segregated South. Racial-based lynching was not limited to the former Confederacy; there was an infamous public lynching in San Jose in 1933. It was a mob action and none of the murderous were tried for the crime. California's Republican Gov. "Sunny Jim" Rolph pledged to pardon anyone convicted of the lynch-murder, declaring, "While the law should have been permitted to take its course, the people by their action have given notice to the entire world that in California kidnapping will not be tolerated."

But in the Deep South, lynching was a long-standing practice, worse at some times than at others. But even though it was illegal, it was officially tolerated. Very often, local officials and law enforcement were very much involved in the practice both before and after the fact. But lynching wasn't about executing black victims solemnly. It was solemn at all. The victims were typically tortured, often severely, before being murdered. Torture or mutilation (i.e., castration) was also a common practice under "lynch law".

What's mortifying about the politics of torture in the US today is that the Republican Party has embraced the practiced and has sought to legalize it. We'd have to say they've partially succeeded in doing so. And now we have Benito Giuliani, one of the leading candidates for President and one of the most highly regarded public figures in the country, blatantly adopted the partial-drowning torture known as water-boarding: When Rudy goes waterboarding by Joe Conason Salon 10/26/07; I can't believe it's not torture! by Joan Walsh Salon 10/26/07; Pop Torture by Digby, Hullabaloo blog 10/25/07. (I'm not positive that some of her graphics get the history precisely right, e.g., the Spanish Inquisition wasn't precisely demanding that people renounce the Christian faith.)

But, as Jimmy Carter reminds us, is not about interrogation technique. It's a state terror technique. That's what it is, that's how it functions.

Having torture officially endorsed by the US government even to the extent that Cheney and Bush have done it has put us over an important red line of social restraint. This is not a "slippery slope" argument. If we need a geological analogy, a broken dike would be a better one. It's not a question of the dike having been breached. It's a question of how far the water spreads and how fast.

As Digby notes in the post linked above, she talks about an argument posed in the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode from this week:

But the show featured something I thought was unique and important: it drew a direct parallel between torturing terrorism suspects and torturing criminal suspects, something I have blogged about many times but which I've rarely seen argued by others.

I've always felt that logic dictates that if you think it's ok to torture terrorism suspects, even if only in a "ticking time bomb" situation, you cannot believe it wouldn't be right to torture a criminal suspect in similar situations. In this show, one of the characters bluntly says that he affirmatively believes in torture because when he was a cop he broke the arm of a suspect in three places to get him to reveal where a kidnapped child was being held and ended up saving her. He is disgusted by the fact that the perpetrator could not be tried because of what he'd done.

We know where this leads when the water (or water-boarding) spreads far enough. And we don't have to look to any foreign examples to see it, either. Here's an account of what the Benito Giuliani vision of the future looks like, from Mississippi: The Closed Society (1966 edition) by James Silver:

A classic example of lynching as a means of social control was reported by the Jackson Daily News in December, 1928. Before escaping from the state penitentiary at Parchman, a Negro lifer named Charley Sheppard murdered the prison carpenter and kidnaped [sic] his 18-year-old daughter, whom he took on a wild 24-hour flight through the swamps. He allegedly raped the girl. Several thousand men, including units of the

National Guard, aided by bloodhounds, failed to catch Sheppard, who finally turned himself in to a woman plantation owner. A mob, skillfully and purposely directed, then seized him. After being displayed in front of a store, Sheppard was taken on a seven-hour tour of the main roads, the cross roads, and the back roads. Several prison camps were visited. As word of the affair spread through the Delta some 3000 cars and 6000 whites, according to the reporter, converged on the scene of the revelry.

Here, with the same methodical precision which had marked all their actions, mob leaders unloaded dried wood for the cremation, built their pyre, bound and strapped the negro and poured upon him gasoline which had been carried along for the occasion.

Before the match was touched to him Sheppard's mouth and nose were partly filled with mud to prevent him from inhaling gas fumes which might cause his instant death.

As the fire blazed up, "a wild-eyed member of the mob, intent on further torture, leaped atop the pile of wood, straddled the negro's body and cut his ears off with a pocket knife." Like a knock-out in the third round, the sacrifice itself took only a few minutes but not before the shrieks of the victim had been mingled with the screams of a hundred female spectators. Sheppard "twisted and rolled in the flames, and finally rolled off the pile of flaming stavewood." He was immediately seized and thrown back, and more gasoline was applied. The orgy finished, a leg bone and the skull were claimed as souvenirs. Later the ears were exhibited at a filling station. The coroner's verdict: "Death from causes unknown."

Let's be clear: whatever crimes the victim may have committed, this was not about law enforcement. It's probably even misleading to call it "social control", as Silver does.

It can't happen here? It has happened here. And today's neosegregationist Republican Party is taking us back in that direction and wants to continue doing so. No kidding.

Tags: authoritarianism, lynching, republican party