“I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country and you have to go.”
Dylann Roof, Suspect in Charleston Shooting, Flew the Flags of White Power
We have violence and intimidation at a historically Black institution. We have a gunman who is extremely dialed into a movement that glorifies the extermination of people of color. His message is clear: he is a racist who wants who wants to take “his” country back from Black Americans.
He may also be a sick young man. He is obviously also a lone wolf. But first and foremost, he is a student of white supremacy, an agent of an organized system of hatred and bigotry that we have ignored far too long in this country, and he is a mass murdering terrorist.
We need to cut the crap. America is a hypocritical nation, we know that more than anybody. But this War on Terror bullshit is so obviously rotten at this point that it’s fucking laughable. The idea that we’re wasting young lives abroad for a symbolic effort against something we can’t even get a handle on here at home is disgraceful.
I can understand how a damaged young bigot could look at the news today and think it’s perfectly alright to shoot a Black person. What the fuck is our news coverage about all the time these days? It’s basically a rolling highlight reel of violence against Black and Brown people that never really seems to be prosecuted, or to have anything done about it. It’s a lot of “fair and balanced” reporting on how dangerous we are, therefore how justified a normal guy would be in shooting someone like us. Because we don’t get to be the normal guys. Normal guys are white guys. Regular old lone wolf terrorists fighting the good fight, unloading round after round into somebody not-normal’s grandma.
This never was an isolated incident. Don’t let anyone act like it ever could have been.