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Attackers Shouted “This is a Christian Country”
…before the ten of them started beating up a group of Jews on the Q train in New York City.
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21 Responses to “Attackers Shouted “This is a Christian Country””
And the point of this post is?
Right-wing authoritarianism, as manifested by the religious right, and anti-semitism go hand in hand. They try hard to hide it, but back at the local bar they open up and talk about the “ACL-Jew.”
So we know what this War on Christmas shit is about, even if you people are too chickenshit to admit the only reason you’re not the flaming anti-semites your ancestors were in Ireland is because you’re even more scared of brown people than Jews.
Crazy attitude and scummy behavior of some blacks in NYC toward Jews there is used to connote “evil Religious Right nation-wide” — i.e., opportunistic dishonest propaganda if not outright delusion
Variation B:
Skinheads beating up on Jews and blacks is used to connote “evil Religious Right nation-wide” — i.e., opportunistic dishonest propaganda if not outright delusion
Who knows, maybe some really are heading into psychotic territory (or deeper into it) with the rise of Huckabee in Iowa prior to the caucus.
Nazi or KKK BS illustrates the psychotic aspect.
David, not sure if it’s being widely reported beyond the NYC media, but it’s interesting to note that the guy who intervened to break up the attack was a young Muslim man.
NY Daily News story here.
NY Post story here
Looks like one of the guys arrested is soon to be spending 6 months in jail after pleading guilty to beating the crap out of four black guys in Brooklyn two years ago.
The media is having a field day with the Muslim-Jew-thug trifecta, but the bottom line is that more-often-than-not people can be counted on to just be good people without first filtering through the lens of tribalism.
DLS, what the heck are you going on about, man?
Idiosyncrat: That’s interesting (and heartening) information — I’ve updated my post accordingly.
Chilling. Nail hit squarely on the head, David.
DLS is just putting on his hood. Now this story would be bigger if it happened in Europe. Arab disenfranchisement and anti-Semitism are bigger over there. You don’t hear about riots in Deabornistan.
[sigh] “This is a Christian country” is said by others, not just skinheads, and obviously they and those skinheads have nothing in common otherwise, even though the opposite might be sought to be implied.
I say “skinhead” in one posting and after describing another problem NYC has (in LA, it’s with Koreans) and I see this?
What I wrote should not have been so intellectually defeating you “needed” to make up junk like this!
[sigh]
That’s normality, including, yes, in NYC.
Purdy much sounds ta me as ifn these guys were just crusin fer a fight and dey found it wid some jewish young fellahs.
Id hardly say these thugs were representatives of the Religious Right but then thats just me.
Let me go find my hood and join DLS in the clan rally.
So here’s a question for y’all, including David:
Hate crimes laws. They might come into play here. Good, bad or indifferent?
I’m inclined to be against them, which sometimes puts me at odds with my fellow non-Beaverton jewboys. I just tend to think that motivation is a factor to be considered during sentencing and the family of a loved one killed for his or her Beemer doesn’t deserve any less justice than someone killed because he or she was black/jewish/etc. I’ve heard some pretty strong arguments in favor of society making a specific statement about certain behaviors and motivations, but I dunno…
I wrote my “definitive” post on hate crimes here, but I’ll reprise my main thoughts on the topic, which lead me to be provisionally in favor.
1) If I’m going to support a hate crime law, it has to protect people regardless of social position (e.g., not just minorities or majorities). Most hate crime laws are written like this, in fact, so while anti-Black violence is a “hate crime”, so would be someone who goes on a shooting spree looking to mow down all the White folk. Indeed, I would characterize the Colorado church shooting, in which the gunman was described as hating Christianity, as a prime candidate for hate crime designation.
2) The “free speech” argument doesn’t hold. The primary objection I’ve heard to hate crimes laws is that they punish people based on state of mind. The problem is we do that all the time, and it’s not really considered controversial. We punish the killer who planned and executed the murder for the victim’s money more than the one who killed a bar mate in a drunken passion more than the one who killed his abusive father in self-defense. Mindset and motivation matter.
3) This is the ultimate reason for my favorable stance towards hate crime laws: I don’t see a conceptual distinction between “hate crimes” and “terrorism.” In fact, I think they’re largely the same, except for scale. Both, fundamentally, are violent acts meant to send a message to the targeted group as to their political or social standing. We have anti-terrorism laws because we recognize that the 9/11 attacks were not just a case of a 3,000-count homicide. Their impact was considerably greater than that. Hate crimes are the same way. When someone is beaten up because they are gay, every gay person is supposed to take note — “this is what happens to a gay man in my town.” Even when someone is killed for their Bentley, nobody views that as a “message” to other Bentley owners that they are societal unequals or considered “legitimate” targets for violence. Hate crimes and terrorism, by contrast, are explicitly message oriented — the harm extends beyond the immediate victim to every person in the affected group. And, perhaps most importantly, historically persons who commit hate crimes do so convinced that they are speaking for the “silent majority” of their fellow citizens who also want to “purge” the polity of the “undesirables.” This same logic was used to justify lynching in Jim Crow America. And, like with lynching, one of the primary counter-attacks to this source would be democratic legislation that says, loudly and unambiguously, “no, this sort of behavior does not speak for us” (which was why the failure of Congress to pass an anti-lynching law was such a disgrace). Hate crimes legislation deprives the perpetrators of their favored justification for their crimes.
So ultimately, because I’m convinced that hate crimes are just a sub-species of terrorism, I support laws specifically targeted against them for the same reason I support anti-terrorism laws.
David, thanks for recapping your thoughts.
No arguments here. But why can’t we do this within the context of standard laws? Murder vs. manslaughter, 1st degree, 2nd degree, etc — and then actual sentence handed down upon conviction? It’s the special hate crimes legislation that I just see as self-righteous hand-wringing more than anything else…
Not sure I agree with the terrorism linkage as I think any random crime is a form of terror and you bet your bippy that scale does count, but:
Now this… This line of thinking is what gives me pause. When there is historic precedent of behavior that specifically needs correcting, yeah, maybe we do need something on the books that specifically addresses that behavior. Maybe…
ack, i messed up the block quotes above. 1st and last paragraph in the block quote are david’s the rest are mine.
Bring yer hay-ownd dawg, Sumbuddy. You can sic ‘im or ‘er on them ignernt, intuh-lektually challenged gawwwd-day-am lib’r'ls!
It’s quite possible that the jews involved in this did say, “we killed Jesus”. Sounds like they were out boozin’ and maybe said something stupid at the wrong time of year. If they did, they deserved it.
December 12, 2007 — A Brooklyn man whose “Happy Hanukkah” greeting landed him in the hospital said he was saved from a gang of Jew-bashing goons aboard a packed Q train by a total stranger – a modest Muslim from Bangladesh.
Walter Adler was touched that Hassan Askari jumped to his aid while a group of thugs allegedly pummeled and taunted him and his three friends. So Adler has invited his new friend over to celebrate the Festival of Lights.
The two new pals – Adler, 23, with a broken nose and a fat lip, and Askari, 20, with two black eyes – broke bread together and laughed off the bruises the night after the fisticuffs.
“A random Muslim guy jumped in and helped a Jewish guy on Hanukkah – that’s a miracle,” said Adler, an honors student at Hunter College.
“He’s basically a hero. Hassan jumped in to help us.”
But Askari, who is studying to be an accountant, shrugged off the praise.
“I just did what I had to do,” he recalled. “My parents raised me that way.”
Ten people were arrested in the underground attack on Friday night – including two men who have been arrested for race crimes before.
None of the suspects had been charged with a hate crime in the Q train attack as of last night, but the Brooklyn DA’s Civil Rights Bureau is handling the case.
It all began when Adler, his girlfriend, Maria Parsheva, and two other pals boarded the subway at Canal Street bound for Brooklyn and someone in another group wished them “Merry Christmas.”
Adler and his pal Angelica Krischanovich responded: “Happy Hanukkah.”
Apparently, those were fighting words.
“They just came at us so fast. The first thing that came into my mind was, ‘Yeah, this is going to be violent,’ ” said Parsheva, 20.
One of the group immediately hiked up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of Christ.
“He said, ‘Happy Hanukkah, that’s when the Jews killed Jesus,’ ” said Adler.
The group of about 14 men and women then allegedly began taunting Adler and his pals as “dirty Jews” and “Jew bitches.”
Amid a huge scrum, Askari jumped in.
“I’m bleeding all over the place, there’s lots of people, they’re fighting with Hassan still, and I’m like, why isn’t anyone else doing anything?” Adler said.
He pulled the emergency brake right before entering the DeKalb Avenue station.
Police came aboard and arrested 10 people, charging six with assault and four with unlawful assembly.
One of those collared straphangers yesterday denied making anti-Semitic taunts and said his mother is Jewish.
Joseph Jirovec, 19 – the son of a city firefighter who is currently serving in Iraq – has pleaded guilty to a 2005 bias crime against blacks.
“We are not racist against Jewish people. That whole hate-crime thing is ridiculous,” the Brooklyn man said.
He claims Adler’s group was drunk and taunted his group, and one yelled, “We killed Jesus.”
Jirovec will soon begin serving six months for his role in the attack against four men in Gerritsen Beach.
“I’m trying to stay out of trouble,” he said. “When I get out, I want to go into the military.”
Additional reporting by Sandra Hurley and Tatiana Deligiannakis
jennifer.fermino@nypost.com
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Dear Idiosyncrat, I fixed your comment #14 for you.
That stuff happens all the time to all of us. Once my
entire article came up in blue italics on TMV and Joe rescued me and fixed it.
lol
dr.e
This is a topic that we debated back in May of this year, and since I don’t think I can outdo the comprehensive argument that I made at the time, I’ll simply refer to the Hate Crimes Legislation post at my blog.
The incident described above most certainly was a hate crime, and it’s the kind of story that infuriates me. But I continue to oppose hate crimes laws (for the reason’s I’ve previously stated).
Nick: I read through your comment on the May post, and while I appreciate the effort you put in, I’m not swayed.
Most of the comment is spent going through a variety of reasons for hate crimes laws (do the deter, do they “send a message”, etc.), and saying why you don’t think they apply. To that, I reiterate my terrorism analogy, which I think adequately shows why hate crimes are harmful in a qualitatively different way than a “normal” assault, just as it would be a serious mischaracterization to call the 9/11 attacks a 3,000 count homicide case. I admire your consistency in saying we need to repeal all hate crimes laws, but I think to truly keep your argument coherent, you need to advocate repealing all anti-terrorism laws (replacing them with pre-existing bars on murder, assault, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit the above, etc.). But I think that’d be a bad idea, because terrorism isn’t just murder, and I don’t think people view it as such.
The one “offensive” argument you give against hate crimes is that it criminalizes bigotry. I hardly think this is the case — it merely punishes attacking on a belief in a particular way. Imagine if I kill my parents for no particular reason — I just snapped. That’s [killing + nothing], and I’d be punished harshly, no doubt. But imagine I instead killed them for a very specific reason — to get the family fortune. That’s [killing + avarice], and it is very likely I’d be punished even more severely. Yet it is absurd to say this is “criminalizing avarice.” We use mindset to differentiate criminal culpability all the time, without too much trouble. I fail to see why it’d be a problem here.
I have no inherent problem with hate-crime laws as long as they are implemented fairly. I further think there should be a relatively high bar set and that fairly incontrovertable evidence of intent to target a group.
Two problems I do have, however. First is the name itself: “hate crime” which suggests that other crimes are motivated by hate or that “hate crimes” are always motivated by hate. I can’t think of one right now, but I think a better term that more accurately describes them should be found.
Second is group definition. If I get bad care at a hospital and go on a killing rampage against doctors, is that a hate crime against “doctors” as a group?
Or if I get fired from Boeing and go back to work and murder Boeing employees, is that a hate crime against people who work for Boeing?