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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   30312 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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vigilante justice

Was it though? A sane account of the event is that the guy was out of his brain, drugs likely involved, and he may have had an OD related cardiac event while he was being restrained. Guy was even still alive when the cops got there, and they refuses to touch him to try to save his life because he was so filthy they were afraid they'd catch something. I'm not sure preventing someone from harming others with a fundamentally nonviolent hold (Neely wasn't bruised, broken or bleeding) and then handing them over to police who allow him to OD to death counts as "vigilante justice" in the same way Batman or The Punisher conjures up.

Vigilantism isn't just when someone ends up dead. Spiderman is still a vigilante when he leaves perps bound and webbed for the cops to find (fits the legal definitions of battery and false imprisonment).

Unless Penny set out that particular day to detain someone on the subway, he was not a vigilante. Defending yourself or others is not vigilantism, it is defence.

Spiderman is a vigilante because he seeks out crime to stop. Penny is a guy who had an assault nearly happen in front of his eyes. He finds himself in this situation again I'll have questions. But we can't just expand the definition of vigilante to "Anybody who's not a police officer who makes a criminals life harder in any way, shape or form." And it's especially egregious in a self defense situation. Makes it sound like you are obligated to allow yourself to be victimized, which I know the tribal "restorative justice" types actually believe, but all the same, no.

Is blood vengeance vigilantism? It's not exactly seeking out crimes to stop, after all.

I agree. I just wanted to say that vigilantism isn't just limited to extrajudicial killing.

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