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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   36241 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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The man who murdered 3 girls and wounded countless others at a dance class in the UK, triggering the riots last summer has been jailed for 52 years.

The backstory, having been previously been withheld by government diktat (I wonder how many months the papers were collectively sitting on that mugshot, itching for the chance to print it) has now been published and we have learned some very interesting things, namely that:

  • Despite suggestions the contrary, he had been defacto known to the authorities and was referred to Prevent several times. For reference, Nigel Farage was reprimanded for hinting in the months after the incident. *

  • He had been caught with knives on 10 separate occasions.

  • He had previously been expelled by his school for violent behaviour, but later attempted to return to commit a rampage with a knife about 3 weeks before he would commit the atrocity described above. He was indirectly stopped by his father, who pleaded with the taxi not to take him to his destination. His father then seemingly took no action after this.

  • He had obtained the materials required to make ricin and terrorist literature from organisations from Al-Qaeda.

However, no terror related charges were passed against him. Upon conclusion of the trial, the immediate reaction from the government once this information has come out has been to redirect heat away from the government. Instead, the public is now to think of terrorists as "loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom" and to pass judgement against Amazon, so mentioned because he bought the knife used to commit the deed from Amazon.

I think this particular arc has come to its resolution, but the effects on the culture will be long lasting - the phrase "two tier" is now embedded in the public conscious, and the man in the street now has the perfect phrase to describe the observed worldview of the centre and left of centre (the Oppressed/Oppressor dichotomy) and their handling of disputes.

Co-incidentally, the man who called for "the throats of protestors to be slit", has had his trial delayed until later this year.

*Your definition of "known to the security services" may vary!

jailed for 52 years.

Actually life with 52 years before eligibility for parole. The judge's sentencing remarks say it would have been life without parole if he had been over 18 at the time of the offence.

He had obtained the materials required to make ricin and terrorist literature from organisations from Al-Qaeda.

This is incorrect. He had a copy of the Al-Qaeda training manual. This was found by the police in Manchester in 2000 as part of the investigation into the 1998 Al-Qaeda embassy bombings, and English translations have been circulating online ever since. It has become the Millenial version of the Anarchists' Cookbook.

With most of the facts now public after the guilty plea and sentencing, the guy sure looks like the standard school shooter personality type but without access to guns.

However, no terror related charges were passed against him.

SOP in the UK going back to the IRA is to charge substantive crimes (here murder, attempted murder, making ricin, and illegal possession of a knife) in preference to terrorism-specific ones. (In this case, he was charged with a minor terrorism-related offence for possessing the Al Quaeda manual, so the claim that no terrorism charges were made is technically false). If you can convict for murder, then adding "being a terrorist" to the charge list doesn't affect the outcome.

I mean, I acknowledge that the optics of this are bad. But Britain is still a liberal society with rule of law, where even obvious ne'er do wells have rights. You can't just grab people off the streets because they're sketchy.

There was a case in America where a school shooter's parents were charged and imprisoned for not stopping him. I suppose that rule should apply here, but at the end of the day, I don't want to live in the society where people are scooped up for being concerning. I suspect you don't either. Britain will instead make noises about banning knives because it's Britain.

After the expulsion for violence isn't some compulsory mental health follow-up and involuntary admission appropriate?

I know this can be challenging in the US since the 60's and 70's for civil liberties reasons but if this is the alternative I'm unconvinced.

It seems like every mass shooter in the US was giving warning signs ahead of time- how many of them get caught and prevented? This is clearly harder than you're making it seem.

In this particular incident he goes from homicidal ideation at 13 to a narrowly averted attack at his prior school and the successful attack at the dance school at 17.

In between there was an expulsion from school for violence and admitting carrying a knife to school to 'Use it', an out of school attack on a student with a hockey stick on which he'd written his intended victims names. This attack sees him barred from from his new school's campus and he receives instruction online, with home visits from tutors sometimes with the police. There's a gap between the expulsion and new school due to an alleged incident at his home.

The reporting on his choice of reading materials is just noise. His behavior should be the focus, if he's murderous for Al Queda or Islamic reasons or murderous nutjob reasons.

What is the argument for not having residential / custodial schools for 'juvenile delinquents' or sending kids like this to them?

How long have the state schools (closed residential / custodial schools) been closed? This fact pattern or less in many circumstances would have seen you sent to one.

I'm not immediately aware of mass shooters in the US with as much prior contact with law enforcement and various programs and referrals, though they plausibly exist.

In this instance and I suspect many others a more custodial environment would have produced a better outcome.

My mother was sent to a state residential / custodial school for girls in the 60's for much less.

The thing it's easy to miss when you read about eye-popping crimes in the news every few days is they're still very rare. Disaffected youth who've been expelled, people who've posted online that they kind of want to shoot up school/congress/whatever else, outnumber people who'll actually do that by like a thousand to one (I don't have a legible source for this, but I think it's intuitive). This isn't like shoplifting or selling drugs, where most of the crimes are committed by people who commit many crimes, and 'round them all up' is an effective approach - to actually prevent random incidents like this, you'd have to involuntarily commit a lot of people. And I don't think the tradeoff is worth it, especially since dying from terrorism-ish homicide or school shooting is much rarer than "normal" homicide, or getting hit by a car, or the many other reasons people die.

His behavior from 13 - 17 is the concern, not internet posting or reading material.

They occasionally do this, but psychiatrists don't like it because they see it as schools pawning off their disciplinary problems on doctors rather than solving them themselves. I can't find it, but the local news did a story a few years back after one of the school shootings about how some local districts had adopted zero tolerance policies and were sending any kids who exhibited violent tendencies to Western Psych at the drop of a hat. The doctors they interviewed basically said that the ED is there for people who have acute mental health crises and not kids who got into fights. So what was happening was the kids were waiting for hours at the bottom of the triage list and when the doctor concluded they didn't meet the criteria for admission they were sent home. But the school got to say they referred him to psych immediately and didn't take any chances.

The upshot of what the one doctor was saying was that long-term behavior problems are the kind of thing that needs to be dealt with over the course of months or even years, and that psychiatric hospitals aren't equipped for that. He said that if the schools were concerned they needed to hire their own mental health staff that could work with students and parents to resolve the problems. I can tell you right now that this isn't going to happen because the incentives are aligned against it. If a school hires its own counselors and starts its own program for troubled youth then it's going to cost a lot of money and if one of those kids ends up doing something terrible the program is going to be put under a microscope and probably won't come out looking good. If they say "we sent him to Western Psych after we saw the red flags" then their insurance will pay for it and Western Psych can explain to the media why the treatment didn't work.

Realistically, though, the doctors were right: Not all problems are mental health problems. If a guy keeps getting into fistfights at bars that don't cause any serious injury we don't send him to the nuthouse. It's a criminal matter. And realistically we don't even do that much in a situation like that; while misdemeanor battery has around a five year max in most jurisdictions, first offense you can likely plead down to disorderly conduct. After that you'll get a combination of fines, probation, and suspended jail sentences until you either get into a fight while on probation or the judge looks at the rap sheet and simply loses patience. The most you might get in the way of treatment is court-ordered anger management classes (I know three people who have completed these and they all say it works). I've never heard of anyone going to Western over a barfight unless there are obvious extenuating circumstances.

What I'm looking for is more a custodial / residential school or reform school.

I think you can go too far in that direction though. This guy was getting material to make chemical weapons, literature from a terrorist organization, was caught numerous times carrying weapons, and had been expelled from school for violence. How many bright red flags need to be waved before the government is allowed to do something about this guy? Or does “rule of law” mean we have to let people openly plan terrorist acts and let them kill people and terrorize the public, because to do otherwise violates procedures? I think even if you had to make up an excuse for a 48 hold for psychiatric evaluation, it probably would have allowed the police to investigate and find evidence.

I’m of the school of thought that without Justice and safety, nothing else matters. We’re so deep into anarchy-tyranny that the public is now being trained on how to behave when Theres a mass casualty event in a public place. We’re chewing through what’s left of the high trust society we used to have as more and more things get locked up because of theft and people are more worried about security when going out in public. The government only seems to be able to act when the usually law-abiding citizens complain or try to do something about it. If such things continue down this path, there won’t be a society to protect. King Charles’ grandkids might well rule over a country full of uncontrolled knife gangs. America might be full of cartels and mafiosi. Unless crime is actually to be curbed, by law or by the police simply taking control, you might end up there.

Sure, 'planning a terrorist attack' should be a crime, and probably is(especially in Britain). Did this guy have probable cause on it, though? Like he'd been caught for carrying weapons, but I'm imagining that minor knife violations are mostly associated with people who live in the ghetto, not Al Qaeda. Was he caught with ricin and terrorist materials or did that stuff get found after he was searched, later?

But Britain is still a liberal society with rule of law,

I always thought sicking the police on people for "hate speech" goes against liberal principles, so I think it's only the "rule of law" bit that they can possibly lay claim to. And I'm not sure I believe that claim either.

Britain has some very dystopian speech laws from what I understand, but it's still a very liberal society compared to Russia or, going more extreme, North Korea. Maybe this is damning with faint praise, but it's true. There are plenty of places in the world where free speech is more dangerous than it is in Britain. I wish that Britain adopted more US-like attitudes to free speech, but I don't think it's fair to claim that Britain has virtually no liberal rule of law.

Russia arrests less people for speech on the Internet than UK.

How many North Koreans do you think get arrested for speech?

You are wrong. Those data points are out-of-context and do not reflect the realities of speaking out in Russia.

The report discussed by Newsweek – authored by Agora, a Russian human rights group – found that 411 criminal cases were brought against internet users in Russia in 2017. The article does not give a figure for arrests.

In 2017 The Times made a Freedom of Information request which found 3,395 arrests had been made by 29 UK police forces for “section 127” offences, which is used for cases of online abuse. According to the article, 1,696 people were subsequently charged. Section 127 offences cover harassment that takes place via an “electronic communications network”, and is not limited to social media posts – harassment via email or other forms of online communication can also fall under this definition.

This stat is half cherry-picked and half lied about. Comparing UK and Russia, two fundamentally different societies with different levels of censorship online is intellectually dishonest.

What are the non-cherrypicked numbers then? Accounting for population Uk is still probably ahead.

I don't think you can realistically compare the two countries in question because it doesn't take in consideration outside factors. There are two variables:

  1. How often are people getting arrested for something they say online.
  2. How often do people say something online that they can get arrested for.

My argument is that in Russia, due to the chilling effects of propaganda, astroturfing, arrests, assassinations, difference in treatment in prisons, general depoliticization of society, people in Russia are less likely to say something that attracts the attention of the government, especially using their real name. This isn't the free speech as you conceive of it in more liberal societies. This likely accounts for #2 being lower per capita in Russia than in UK in general - people know that you shouldn't speak out in a way that can attract unwanted attention.

Additionally, specifically due to section 127 including harassment, I'd argue that you'd need to go through each case to determine whether the government was punishing someone for exercising their right to free speech. This likely accounts for #1 being lower than reported in the original tweet for UK. I don't have modern data, I'd expect with the riots this would be higher than in 2017.

So do raw numbers really matter? My answer is: "No, they don't. The two cultures, social norms and political situations are fundamentally different".

Chilling effects apply in UK too, obviously. Major point of these laws is to get people to shut up.

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Perhaps, but there is a difference. In Russia, you can criticize the government online if you want to. You can talk shit about Muslims or browns or whatever if you want to, you can call for Russia to be Russian. Some kinds of criticizing the government and some kinds of racial/nativist speech are technically illegal, but this is rarely prosecuted. However, if you do these things and you obtain a significant following, there is a pretty good chance that you will be killed or, at best, just jailed for many years. The UK might be dystopian in many ways, and people get jailed there for speech, but I've never heard of anyone there being literally killed for speech.

The guy who left a bacon sandwich in front of a mosque or something did die in prison, but that's the closest I can think of so far.

While he didn't die, if you saw the before and after pics of Tommy Robinson, it's clear they put him through quite an ordeal.

Was that Peterborough Prison?

From Wikipedia it looks like there are about 7000 referrals to Prevent every year, and about 13% of them are followed up with by a 'Channel Panel'. It's also voluntary. I suppose the police could 'watch' him but it seems like you'd need a lot of surveillance to stop a guy from committing a very simple knife attack.

And yet they somehow find the time in their busy schedule to chastise rape gang victims for offending rapists, or threaten women with arrest for loudly asserting that trans women aren't women.

Its all about who is given cover that makes it easy to arrest. Arresting white people for mean tweets is easy because white people don't have dedicated activists eager to assist them in order to grift the community. For all of Tommy Robinsons screeching, there hasn't been any fund raised to fight for rioters to be released from jail or sympathetic journalists flooding the media environment with intellectual brainpower devoted to expatiating their crimes. Contra that with Islamists and LGBT+ (really just trannies) who get the entire editorial staff of the Guardian and the Mirror running cover for mass islamist gang rape or demanding unlimited trans representation. Thats not to mention the endless armies of lawyers in London who plaster buses with their ads for migrant or tranny legal advisory services.

Axel was black, which makes it impossible for any overt action to be taken. Arrest him without him having done anything but watch videos and say mean things and say mean things to his father, you have a Racism and the liberal elite will use this as an example of the fundamental racism infesting the police. To fix the UK the first thing to do must be ignoring all the liberals eager to give unlimited cover for criminal minorities. How to ignore them is an exercise for the UK to decide.

Each of those actions probably took about five minutes, maybe a few hours tops. And they could have been having a slow night. When you put someone under surveillance you don't get to watch them at your convenience.

Each of those actions probably took about five minutes, maybe a few hours tops. And they could have been having a slow night.

So? The police has no business going after victims of rape gangs, or recognizers of basic biology. It's a thing that should have never happened, no matter how slow the night is.

When you put someone under surveillance you don't get to watch them at your convenience.

If you can threaten someone with arrest for mean tweets, you can do a "hey, we're watching you!" to someone who's actually scaring people.

Some observations:

-The many failings prior to the murders took place under the Tory government

-Prevent is an anti-terror team focused on ideological violence not 'lone spree killing' type violence. However Starmer (who has been in office less than a year) has now changed its remit to include lone spree killing as well. Obviously this killer 'fell through the cracks' as they say (code for 'an overworked team didn't want to help because he was outside their remit') but why did the cracks exist? The previous, Tory government, in power throughout the entirety of the killer's young adult life and his encounters with authorities.

-He came from a Christian family.

-The 'terrorist' material he had in his possession was a CIA agent's commentary about Al Qaeda's methods

-I'm aware of no evidence at all he converted to Islam, but we do know that he was very interested in genocides through history, and in violence and revenge against his bullies.

So I am unsure exactly what your point is. Do you want to claim he was actually a Muslim extremist and Al Qaeda operative? Or that he acted partly or primarily in sympathy with Al Qaeda? Perhaps you could help me understand how any of this supports the two-tier characterisation.

He was the son of two recent african migrants to the UK, and thus absolutely falls into the oppressed side of the oppressed/oppressor dichotomy which the two tier accusation is describing. It is crudely (but correctly) recognised that if he was a white anglo the state would not have reacted in the way it did during the initial time after the killing and during the unrest.

The Tories are not meaningfully different from Labour when it comes to the overarching governance of Britain. Both defacto support growth hindering policies and the vast burdens on state spending. The only meaningful difference is that Labour is the natural home of those who believe in the current view on fairness/equality and the Tories might be the home of those who disagree, but are utterly incapable/uninterested of moving against it.

defacto support growth hindering policies

This is a pretty preposterous thing to say days after Labour just announced major reforms to judicial review in order to prevent infrastructure projects being delayed and blocked, something the Tories only ever made worse - see also their support just expressed for airport expansion, which prompted much wailing and gnashing of teeth from Tories, Greens etc. They need to go much further which these types of structural reform, but they now finally appear to be getting moving on the right track.

But how did the state favour him at all? If he was white anglo, and killed kids, and white rioters were targeting asylum seekers and burned down a hotel, the state would obviously have denied that he was an asylum seeker at that point to defuse the riot? Or do you mean if he was white anglo, and immigrant rioters had targeted white people, the state would have called him a terrorist rather than a spree killer (I'm not sure to what end)? Or do you mean that Prevent would have intervened successfully if he was white?

Maybe I'm confused but I realise I actually don't know what you're referring to at all.

I don't think the state did favor him as they gave him a very long prison sentence.

But let's be real. If this was a white man who had stabbed 3 black girls in a racially motivated attack, this would have been considered the Crime of the Century™. The government and the media would have shouted the identity of the attacker to the heavens. The resulting riots would have been described as "fiery but mostly peaceful", and all the usual suspects would be calling for a national conversation on white racism.

So while you're right to narrowly question the OP's claims, I think we're still left with a situation in which there is two tier justice system in the UK. In the UK, white lives have less value, and yeah, that happened under the Tories as well.

this would have been considered the Crime of the Century™. The government and the media would have shouted the identity of the attacker to the heavens. The resulting riots would have been described as "fiery but mostly peaceful", and all the usual suspects would be calling for a national conversation on white racism.

That's obviously nonsense though because right-wing murders/terror attacks absolutely have happened in the last decade in Britain and they all fell out of the news eventually just like this will. An asylum seeker was stabbed in April last year over the small boats crisis and nobody cared - people even forgot about Jo Cox pretty quickly.

Maybe it's not fair to bring up a US case, but... Dylan Roof killed nine black people in a racially-motivated attack ten years ago and he is, by and large, forgotten now. I had to do some Googling to even remember his name. It was a big story at the time, but in no way shape or form did it get the sort of reaction that you could characterize as "the Crime of the Century".

Even Breivik, who killed 77 people including a bunch of kids in a politically motivated attack in a very "progressive"-leaning country, is barely remembered now. Ted Kaczynski is better remembered than Breivik, despite having killed many fewer people, simply because Kaczynski wrote a more interesting manifesto and thus it's easier to characterize him as the sort of "intelligent killer" that many people love reading about (see all the crime books and shows about smart killers), rather than just characterizing him as a mentally ill loser. Even Elliot Rodger, a deranged non-entity whose incel spree was stopped by a simple door, is better remembered than either Roof or Breivik, because he happened to write an interesting manifesto and was so socially inept that he became easy comedic material.

A white guy killing 3 black girls for racial reasons is not "Crime of the Century" material. It is more like "media talks about it for a few weeks" material. I think that this is probably nearly as true for the UK as it is for the US.

Dylan Roof

Remembered a couple weeks ago as unlike the other murders that had their federal death sentences commuted by Biden, he did not.

The big difference between cases like Roof, Breivik, or the Christchurch guy, is that when it all happened we had all the media authorities wring their hands over how horrible the ideologies that pushed them to this are, and forcing anyone adjacent to them to go through struggle sessions of disavowal. The same thing needs to happen here.

the Christchurch guy

Brenton Tarrant.

What is the evidence that the Southport killer was driven mainly by ideology, instead of being yet another random nutcase?

If the Al-Qaeda instruction manual doesn't do it for you, I don't understand why you think Roof, Breivik, or the Christchurch guy get to be blamed on an ideology.

Also the assailant being directly motivated by an ideology is not necessary. In some of these cases people were blaming the broader culture of racism and islamophobia. Again, something analogous needs to happen here.

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Maybe it's not fair to bring up a US case, but... Dylan Roof killed nine black people in a racially-motivated attack ten years ago and he is, by and large, forgotten now. I had to do some Googling to even remember his name.

I disagree strongly with this. You might be correct that many Americans would struggle to recall his name, but that’s because normal people are terrible in general at remembering names. In progressive circles, though, Roof is still routinely brought up all the time in discussions of race and policing. “If you’re a black man in America, police can murder you for minor infractions, or even for just disrespecting them. Meanwhile, if you’re a white guy who murders a bunch of black churchgoers, the police will non-violently arrest you and buy you Burger King.” Roughly a decade ago I performed the lead role in a play inspired directly by Roof — oddly, a humanizing account showing how a dumb and impressionable young kid from a broken home could be lured into extremist beliefs by a makeshift father figure showing him love and acceptance for the first time in his life. (Leave aside the fact that this doesn’t, as far as I’m aware, accurately describe Roof’s actual life or the manner of his radicalization.) So, I do think that Roof has made a lasting impact on public consciousness.

Even Breivik, who killed 77 people including a bunch of kids in a politically motivated attack in a very "progressive"-leaning country, is barely remembered now. Ted Kaczynski is better remembered than Breivik, despite having killed many fewer people, simply because Kaczynski wrote a more interesting manifesto and thus it's easier to characterize him as the sort of "intelligent killer" that many people love reading about.

I think that if Breivik did what he did in America, rather than in Norway, he would be far more remember and talked about here. I don’t know to what extent Breivik is still discussed in Europe, but given how American media drives so much of the political discussion worldwide, I have to wonder whether Breivik would even be more remembered in Europe had he done the same crime, but in America. (The same is true of Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch mosque shooter in New Zealand.)

So, I do think that Roof has made a lasting impact on public consciousness.

Don't forget setting off a hyperstitious cascade against Confederate symbols....

I see your point that in progressive circles, Roof is frequently brought up. However, progressive circles are a small subset of the West's population. I have literally never heard anyone bring Roof's name up in conversation, not even ten years ago right after he killed those people. And it's not like I interact entirely with politically apathetic people or with right-wingers or something. I've interacted with plenty of progressives in the last ten years, and those murders just never came up.

You are, from what I recall you writing before, someone whose social circle is pretty hardcore progressive. The thing is, this actually makes you pretty atypical for a denizen of the West. Or anywhere in the world, for that matter. Progressives are highly represented online, but offline, even in cities where people vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, few people go around talking like the stereotypical Redditor.

I actually agree that Breivik would likely have been more remembered if he had done his murders in America, not just because America is the entire world's media focus, but also because for historical and social reasons, Europe is probably more used to the idea of a militant far-right existing than America is. In America, the idea of there actually being an effective nativist far-right killer is something from TV shows or the wild dreams of Redditors, but we haven't really had one in as long as I can remember. Some people might bring up Timothy McVeigh, but he was more of a libertarian-right mass killer, not a Breivik-style explicitly nativist one.

Regarding the Southport killing, do you know the details? Because it is sick. This is not something that would be forgotten, for the sheer brutality if nothing else.

But, yeah, it's hard to predict what will go viral. The current Crime of the Century involved the death of a violent felon who was high on Fent and Meth at the time of his death.

I don't know the details, but I doubt anything there would make it Crime of the Century material. Maybe if there was a video, it would be. The 2020 events were, I assume, largely triggered by the existence of a video. If there had not been a video, it would probably have been little remarked on.

That's part of my point, really. It's not so much the violent events themselves that make people remember them, unless it's something really unprecedented like 9/11 (I mean unprecedented in the "using planes to collapse skyscrapers" sense, not in the death toll sense, since of course plenty of other events have had higher death tolls). It's other things like videos, manifestos, lurid appeal of the mental illness of the perpetrators, or perhaps a politically divisive motivation like in the case of Luigi Mangione (and even he is being forgotten now after having had a brief few weeks of fame). And even 9/11 would have been much less shocking to the masses without all the videos. Even the Las Vegas shooter is probably better remembered nowadays than Dylan Roof is, despite having had no political motive as far as we know, and it's not just because he killed more people, it's because of the gruesomely cinematic way in which he did it. Breivik would be much more remembered nowadays if he had livestreamed his video like the New Zealand shooter (and I don't even remember the New Zealand shooter's name, which is more evidence for my point) or if he had written an interesting manifesto. But even then it wouldn't really be Crime of the Century material, probably.

The threshold to achieve the Crime of the Century is really high. You might have to do something like kill a bunch of rich people or politicians while livestreaming it, and write a really interesting manifesto, in order to actually get there.

Arguing from counterfactuals like this is a bit tricky. I guess it can maybe work to make one reflect, but in this case I don't think my intuitions match yours. It seems to me this crime was massively reported on and is regarded as one of the worst crimes in recent memory – just look at all the papers at the moment. I don't think the exact same crime with a race swap would have been seen as more outrageous or less.

Actually, a killer who stabbed a random immigrant and said he wanted to exterminate all asylum seekers was sentenced just last week and has attracted no press attention at all as far as I am aware: https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/neo-nazi-who-stabbed-victim-twice-jailed-life

Prevent may actually be a scam that is meant to look like its doing something in order to appease voters but is not very effective in practice. I think even in the UK with some of our crazy laws its very difficult to punish pre-crime and stop people from committing crimes before they carry out the crimes.

Completely. People's expectations are high over the elimination of child murder as a risk, and understandably so, but 24-hour surveillance of every 'weird kid at the back of the class' is a tall order.

After you've been expelled for violence wouldn't a period in a residential facility / hospital / school / borstal be appropriate?

For sure, sounds like a good idea. Don't know that that would have helped here (he already wasn't engaging with multiple services as I understand it), but nonetheless.

Absent a custodial setting where is engagement could be better monitored.

Historically there were institutions to house juvenile delinquents.

its crazy that Amazon is getting the blame. i think the primary agent responsible here is Alex. but if there is a third party to blame I think the schools should bear a little. the tax payer shells out good money to fund the school system and i feel like they are not doing a good job in instilling proper values into young children. the state has a lot of control over kids. they should really be propagandising them to not do this kind of shit. it could even be the state is doing the opposite and propagandising them into hating society which i don't think is very productive.

Some are more prone to violence. Although his specific parents may not be, there's like to be regression to the mean of a population.

Uh, no, the third party to blame is his parents.

No, whoever let them immigrate.

Oh please. 'Ugandans will have kids who snap and carry out spree violence' is not a forseeable outcome the way that 'south asian muslims will get to raping' is.

Yes, blacks are more prone to violence. No, spree killing is still not common among them.

Rwandans.

Literally the only thing that country is known for is hacking each other with machetes.

The two are ethnically indistinguishable. And a huge supermajority of Rwandan immigrants still don't commit random killing sprees.

Of course majority of them don't, but that doesn't mean that it was worthwhile to let them in. African immigrants are a net drag on public resources in general.

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The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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