I’m faced with an uncomfortable dilemma here.
As any fule kno, when it comes to anti-Semitism, I’m with the Semites — lock, stock and barrel (if necessary). I don’t think I have to prove that to anyone.
I am also steadfastly against the legal practice of attributing mindset and attitude (animus) towards crime: murdering someone in cold blood is terrible; whether the murderer shouts “Die, you Jewish bastard!” or “Bye bye, Jew bitch!” while committing the crime is in my mind irrelevant. There’s no such thing as doubleplusterrible, in other words. The crime should be sufficiently punished according to its severity. (In the second example, are we going to add years onto the sentence for both misogyny and anti-Semitism? Trebleplusterrible?)
Which is why this situation makes me profoundly uneasy:
Federal prosecutors have charged a man from the Bronx with hate crime offenses alleging he assaulted a security guard and a congregant in a racially motivated attack at a Manhattan synagogue last week.
Larry Montes was arrested following the alleged attack at Central Synagogue on Friday and was charged by New York State.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department charged him with two counts of committing hate crimes, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment, and one count of damage to religious property resulting in bodily injury, which carries a maximum 20 years’ imprisonment.
I don’t know whether “damage to religious property resulting in bodily injury” carries a heavier sentence in NYfC than does “damage to [any] property resulting in bodily injury” — I’ll leave that for my Powdered Wig Readers to establish — but it shouldn’t.
Once again, I’m going to restate that my personal inclination is to offer additional protection to, say, synagogues; but I’m not so sure that it should be legal policy.
But given the above, I am also curious to know whether the murder of a White person by a Black person shouting, “Die, cracker!” is punished with the same severity as that of a White person murdering a Black person while shouting “Die, nigger!”
See where all this leads?
Hence my discomfort with the whole issue.
I’m surprised the perp didn’t get a medal and a job from Mandani.
But no doubt he’ll not be receiving more than a slap on the wrist, not in New York.
Now had he attacked a mosque things would of course have gone different. He’d be hunted down and shot dead by “New York’s finest”.
A man committing a crime will always get a heavier sentence than a woman for the same crime. If she killed a man and shouted “Die you pig!” she would likely be completely exonerated.
Maybe the DA, frustrated at not being able to prescribe a blindfold and a last cigarette for Mr. Montes, heaped on charge upon charge. I’m only surprised there was no parking violation.
Off to court to defend my people this morning, so I’ll make it quick.
I have always really disliked the idea of hate crimes. But, that said, we have decided as a society that intent matters, and it is an integral part of our legal system.
That is, we penalize an intentional killing, a heat of passion killing, a reckless killing, and a negligent killing very differently; the difference on the spectrum being death to probation, and almost all of that difference turns on the intent of the actor, not the outcome.
So, knowing that, there isn’t a credible legal argument for opposing it. Plenty of social, public policy, and moral arguments, sure, but not legal. We decided to punish this differently as a society because we feel that different intent warrants different consequences.
I’m 100% in favor of “different intent warrants different consequences”. Someone who runs over a little old lady in the crosswalk after losing control of their car when the dropped a coffee in their lap should absolutely be treated differently than a person who wakes up one day and decides it’s time to cross off “kill a [whomever]” from the old to-do list.
I see Hate Crime charges filling two roles. One is as an aggravating factor, countering mitigating factors, in sentencing. The other is as extra incentive to not commit the crime to begin with. Honestly, I’m not convinced there’s ever been a crime short-circuited by anybody thinking, “Ya know, I was going to kill George but because he’s black that would be a hate crime, so maybe I’d better not.”, but society does keep trying that tactic.
Yep. I don’t believe in deterrence. Most crime isn’t committed as the result of a rational thought process where the actor compares cost/benefit and weighing of probabilities.
I refuse to accept “stare decis” as a substitute for morality.
100% correct.
As they say, some animals are more equal than others. I look at the hate crime bullshit in reverse fashion – i.e. those laws show which animals are more equal and which animals are less equal. As a White man, straight, conservative, and Christian, I am absolutely bottom of the totem pole. I’m the least equal of all the animals and everyone else has more protection from the state than I do. My only recourse is to turn gay which ain’t happening.
Jews have apparently clawed their way up several rungs of the ladder with the recent introduction of various antisemitism laws being passed around the country. Whether that is necessary or warranted is another question. I am solidly against all hate crime laws. My (lack of) White privilege drives my opinion here.
The “Hate Crime” game has not only been a one way street as you said, but to me, it infers a degree of mind reading on the part of the prosecutors, which can’t be proven with evidence. The crime is the murder, not the thought. We can attribute intent, passion of the moment, or negligence to the crime with evidence and witnesses, but none can say what the perp was thinking.
I see an Antifa creep coming down the street, with the usual black outfit, backpack and goofy hair, carrying an open umbrella. I shoot him dead. I despise Antifa and all the things they do, but I didn’t hate him; rather, I shot him to save him from being ridiculed for his appearance and later being beaten by the cops. I loved him, so it’s not a Hate Crime.
C’mon, guys, Hate Crime is a descendant of Thought Crime right out of 1984.
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I’m not a fan of enhancements like “hate-crime” because of who gets to decide the scope of it, not necessarily the thing itself.
Its scoped and interpreted to favor one set of people over the other, hence your “Die Cracker Die” would just be another Friday night in Baton Rouge, where “Die Nigger Die” in Red Redstick, would be a hate crime.
As far as Anti-Semitism…..ugh. I’m an unapologetic Zionist, I appreciate the fact that the Hebe’s have been very successfull in this country (which is why the Blacks hate them so much, because it consistently points out Black failure). But we’re starting to get into FFS territory with some of this Anti-Semitism tar/feathering. Mark Levin & Ben Shapiro (people who I genuinely like/liked before) seem to be playing this card a lot lately. There may be a kernel of truth to it, and it was a yuuuuuge fecking mistake for our country to ever allow Islam on its shores, but someone asking whether or not we should be providing the bombs to blow Gaza to hell, or dragged into ANOTHER foreign adventure (Iran) seemingly at the behest of Israel, is far from anti-semitic. But then I listen to the fuckwads like Nick Shirley…..and I can certainly see some truth in the concern.
IDK it feels like we’re living in Kansas/Missouri during the US Civil War, where the bastards are going to make SURE you take a side, you don’t get the option to be left alone, and minding your own business is going to be viewed as collaborating with the demons, and the self-proclaimed angels will show up at night to burn you out.
Correction: Nick Fuentes, not Nick Shirley.
Apologies Mr. Shirley. You’re doing God’s (or Brigham Young’s) work.
None of the previous comments are in any way wrong.
This is NYFC. What’s the practical expectation here? The crime was “allegedly” committed against Jewish targets. I can reliably predict that first, the story itself will sink below the waves in Teh Media without a trace, and second, that the NYFC’s District Attorney’s Office will find a way to bury the whole thing by, for instance, botching chain-of-custody evidence oversight, blowing discovery requirements and/or committing other (intentionally) egregious legal blunders, thereby opening the door for a minimally-competent defense attorney to get the whole thing disappeared.
Hell, I know almost nothing about the law, but I’m comfortably sure Wonder Boy will order his DAs to open that door wide open for anyone with a brain.
I remember on your Nation of Riflemen T Shirts (of which I own two), that you say you want not just the Second Amendment, but the whole thing. I view this Hate Crime business as being the opposite of the laws during Jim Crow, when someone who murdered a black man would get a greatly reduced sentence, if he got convicted at all.