Self-appointed Ubermensch Craig Hicks and the three victims of his misplaced murderous rage.
I am planning a longer post on this topic, but I want to get out the word right now about two 6:00 p.m. vigils to be held for the three promising and idealistic young Muslims college and graduate students killed yesterday in an execution-style murder in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The first will take place tonight at Cal State Fullerton, 800 North State College Boulevard, Fullerton, CA 92831, east of the Titan Bookstore. Tomorrow’s will be held at the corner of Barranca and Jamboree at the corner of Barranca and Jamboree in Irvine, 92606.
For now, having just found out about the Fullerton vigil starting in about an hour as I write, I’m going to just post something that I wrote for Facebook this afternoon:
I would like to focus on the victims of yesterday’s heinous act. I hesitate to focus on their cowardly murderer as well — but he seems to be a slightly unusual type of politically driven wacko, and some of what does and doesn’t make him different is worth note.
(1) He hated all sorts of religions and apparently oppressive political movements of various stripes.
(2) He loved guns in a fetishistic way.
(3) Put those together and you have the potential for violence.
(4) But — and I don’t consider this an accident — when his rage finally erupted it was NOT at the Christian right (which is quite powerful in North Carolina) or at Jews or at Mitt Romney-style predatory capitalists or even at Muslims who were calling for support of jihadist violence.
It was at a tall young dental student and two women right around 20 — his wife and her sister — both in identifiably Muslim modest dress, and meek enough that we was able to shoot each of them in the head.
For all of his pumped up rage, he chose to murder mostly defenseless members of a largely publicly reviled minority group — the easiest possible target. Let’s remember of him, foremost, as being a coward. All that firepower for a coward who picked targets that even his twisted political belief system could not have justified — because they were relatively safe to murder.
We live in a society now where the most admirable young Muslims are the easiest prey for cowardly hunters like this — and we had better not leave those targets to fend for themselves. The ring of public condemnation must be loud and relentless and must come from every quarter, because these are OUR Americans, OUR sons and daughters, that this coward killed.
I hope to see some of you at one or both of the vigils.
“The ring of public condemnation must be loud and relentless and must come from every quarter, because these are OUR Americans, OUR sons and daughters, that this coward killed.”
That statement could apply the other way as well.
I don’t understand. Please explain.
“The ring of public condemnation (by the peaceful Muslim community) must be loud and relentless and must come from every quarter, because these are OUR Americans, OUR sons and daughters, that (these radical Islamist beasts) killed.”
Clear enough?
No. I don’t see the connection at all. Please develop your point.
Tread lightly, David. You don’t know whether he’s armed.
I will hopefully be at the Irvine Vigil, family commitments allowing.
I’ll be the guy with the big American flag.
(Tolerance is an American Virtue. Can’t let people forget that.
sadly, family commitments don’t allow.
I won’t be there.
darn.
the cops say that it was a dispute over a parking space, the wife says it was a dispute over a parking space…everything is not racially motivated
Yeah, that guy probably settled all his disputes with a gun.
Diamond & Zenger, along with the MSM, seem frustrated that they are not able to tie this murderer to a right-wing Christian motivation. Though they are making efforts in that direction.
I tie it to no motivations. Nobody asked me to and I didn’t.
What I did do is ask you what your rather odd comment had to do with this post. You still haven’t explained even though I asked nicely.
It has to do with Diamond’s call for the “ring of public condemnation” of this heinous act of murder – which is appropriate. I feel we should hear a similar clarion call of condemnation from the Muslim community for the many heinous acts of murder committed by radical Islamist beasts around the world. I catch snippets of that here & there – but certainly no clarion “ring of public condemnation” from that community.
“I catch snippets of that here & there – but certainly no clarion “ring of public condemnation” from that community.”
The post was about the outrage over the murder of some Muslim people. The argument that they were not killed because their religion and appearance may be germane to the post.
Somehow linking American righteous anger over this killing to your perceived lack of similar sympathy from Muslims over outrages perpetrated by terrorists doesn’t make any sense.
“I catch snippets…”
That’s because the news sources you turn to only offer snippets, if that. The expressions of outrage and condemnation after, say, the Charlie Hebdo massacre were loud and many, if you’d care to dig into it a little deeper. But then that would shatter your little canard now, wouldn’t it?
skally,
you are absolutely right, sometimes an asshole simply goes out and does an assholean thing, not because he is racially motivated or because he is anti-islam but because some other asshole pissed him off by parking in his spot and he over reacted
bingo.
This is worth keeping in mind. The Gabrielle Giffords shooting wasn’t a political attack, either.
My motivation is different.
9/11 wasn’t just a day of national tragedy, it was also opening day for Irvine’s Muslim Day school.
The Irvine police sent a cruiser to their parking lot not because they were under threat — the full city council had openly embraced the school with broad support from the community — but so the parent’s would know exactly where Irvine stood in relation to this minority community. I personally reached out to muslim friends and a Sikh family that day for similar reasons.
To me, the Irvine vigil is a statement that, whatever the motivation of the murderous A-hole might have been, you are a valued member of MY community. Even you, Skallywag 😉
The man was anti-religion. Last I checked, Islam was one of those. And the women who were shot had visible displays of their faith.
Are you saying that atheists should share blame in this?
I’m saying he was anti-religion and he knew that the women were muslim.
Drawing definitive conclusions at this point about what was in this man’s heart and mind is ludicrous. That means it’s equally absurd to rule anything out.
and if I am driving down the harbor blvd with my Korean wife and an Asian driver cuts me off and I get all road raggie on him for cutting me off and pull up next to him and shot the bastard, does that make me a racist
Depends on lots of factors, not the least of which is what went through your mind at the time.
BTW, do you post racist sentiment on your Facebook page in the same way that Mr. Hicks posted anti-religion sentiment on his? If not, you’ve drawn a false equivalency here.
I think of “overreacted” along the lines of “he broke their windshield.” Calling this by that same name is like saying that the Hutu massacres in Rwanda were “overreactions” to favoritism of Tutsis.
me thinks the false equivalency is yours, the sentiments posted by Mr. Hicks were anti religious, not anti islam, and honestly, would we be having this discussion if Mr. Hicks had shot a couple of orthodox jews wearing the hats and dredlocks
Islam is a religion. Are you disputing that?
But he probably wouldn’t have. Nor would he have shot a trio of Mormon missionaries, nor a young Methodist minister and his wife and her sister, nor a similar set of Rastafarians.
His wife has said that Hicks got into disputes with people all of the time. He only snapped — and went to his antagonists’ home and shot them each in the head, execution-style — once. And it was an act taken against Muslims, in the wake of the national news in the area about Duke University “capitulating” to Muslims by allowing them to broadcast the muezzin’s call to prayer on campus like they might with church bells.
Is it just a coincidence that he chose the socially more reviled and therefore politically more acceptable target? It could be, I suppose. Or it could be that he was a product of his society after all, or that something that would have come off as grudgingly endurable hostility from middle-aged white OC males was instead perceived as insolent, and a grievous insult, coming from these young Muslims. So: murders, point blank shots in the head.
I’m sorry, tdm and skally, but while it may (or may not) be impossible to prove that their ethnic identity was a motivation for this crime, there is more than enough basis to charge him with a hate crime and let the court system sort it out. Plenty of Muslims understandably feel targeted today — as I understandably would had the victims been Orthodox Jews (even though I personally am not orthodox myself) — because of the impression from our political debates that it’s more or less “open season on Muslims” just like African-Americans have reason to think that for police it is more or less “open season” on them. If you want to dispel these impressions, then we as a society need to do it loudly, clearly, and convincingly.
“would we be having this discussion if Mr. Hicks had shot a couple of orthodox jews wearing the hats and dredlocks”
Well, given that Judaism is a religion, I certainly would.
greg,
from you argument, you are a good lawyer but sometimes in the real world, shit just happens because two people are in the wrong place at the wrong time, because somebody has had a very bad day and something sets them off or because the lakers are having a shitty season. everything is not interconnected with subtextual reasons and media conspiracies. Mr. Hicks, who we can all agree is an idiot, shot some people that were parking in his spot. why does there have to be more. people interact with me, people interact with you, some like us and some don’t. they do not necessarily dislike us because we are a couple of old fat white guys, maybe they just don’t like us because we are assholes. life can be that simple and direct.
“why does there have to be more.”
It’s not a question of “have to.” The better question is, “Is there…”
To completely dismiss Hick’s anti-religion bias out of hand as a possible factor is lunacy.
Yep, life can sometimes be that complicated.
The original post was incisive. Trouble with rabble rousing, is you have to have the integrity to stand behind it because you lack the paitience and disipline to understand the facts. Typicical liberal viewpoint. I am a gay muslim women Irvine and we can see your kind coming a mile away. We fon’t need your help your sympathy and certainly hhhhgrc.instead maybe youvote the .
This is a day to come together to mark a tragedy, “Hijab Helen,” so I will not reply to you further for now. If you are at the Irvine vigil, I hope that you find it of comfort.
I’m also glad that you found my initial post to be incisive.
Bet you (women?) Would never be able to say or criticize ‘ typical liberals’ in that many places in this world….I should think you will need as much help as you can rouse from us ‘rabble’!
Oh! I think your hijab slipped over your keyboard. Take care…you’re welcome.
Speaking of Duke U. – do you suppose that Muslims would allow Christian church bells to ring from a mosque?
Also, whose dick is bigger?
Well, there you go again. You really seem to need “them” to be just like “us;” or presumably vice versa.
What?
I’m not sure where the muezzin’s call (about which I’d be quite ambivalent except that Duke is a private campus) was to come from, but I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t going to be from a CHURCH!
Your analogy has failed.
Duke can do any damn thing it wants with its bells. Like even tell the time.
It is the chapel bell tower at an institution founded on Methodist and Quaker tradition – close enough. My question stands.
Your question stands off toward the far corner of some vacant lot with some homeless people smoking a doobie.
I was thinking that it stands like the guy in the corner at the end of The Blair Witch Project. Or maybe like the guy in Blue Velvet when he had only been shot once by Dennis Hopper.
mine