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sixminutestoriesblog · 2 months

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ides of march

well, its tumblr's favorite holiday and who can blame us? The assassination of Julius Caesar is probably one of the only group projects that ever went down the way it was supposed to with, well, not complete group participation (there were said to be upward of 60 people involved but only 23 stab wounds - obviously someone was not carrying their weight) but at least a good effort was made at it. But lets take a moment, between our jokes about salad and Animal Crossing butterfly nets to look at what else has happened in history on the Ides of March. For instance, did you know, on March 15th:

1493 - Columbus returned to Spain after 'discovering' the new world.

1580 - Phillip II of Spain put a bounty on the head of Prince William I of Orange for 25,000 gold coins for leading the Dutch revolt against the Spanish Hamburgs

1744 - King Louis XV of France declares war on Britain

1767 - Andrew Jackson, who would go on to be the seventh president of the US, was born.

1820 - Maine became the 23rd state in the US

1864 - the Red River Campaign, called 'One damn blunder from beginning to end' started for the Union Forces in the American Civil War

1889 - a typhoon in Apia Harbor, Samoa sinks 6 US and German warships, killing 200

1917 - Czar Nicholas II abdicated the Russian throne, bringing an end to the Romanov dynasty

1955 - the first self-guided missile is introduced by the US Air Force

1965 - TGI Friday's opens its first restaurant in New York City

1991 - in LA, four police officers are brought up on charges for the beating of Rodney King

2018 - Toys R Us announces it will be closing all its stores

2019 - a terrorist attacks two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51, and wounding 50 others

Oof! Pretty bleak, isn't it? It would almost make you think that the day is just bad luck, start to finish and its probably just as well, we're all focusing on assassination instead of other horrors. But wait - its not all bad news! The Ides of March has some tricks up its sleeve yet (joke intended). I'd be telling you only half the story if I didn't add:

1854 - Emil von Behring is born and will eventually become the first to receive the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin, being called 'the children's savoir' for the lives it saves

1867 - Michigan is the first state to use property tax to support a university

1868 - the Cincinnati Red Stockings have ten salaried players, making them the first professional baseball team in the US

1887 - Michigan has the first salaried fish and game warden

1892 - the first automatic ballot voting machine is unveiled in New York City

1907 - Finland gives women the right to vote, becoming the first to do so in Europe

1933 - Ruth Bader Ginsberg is born and will go on to become a US Supreme Court justice

1934 - the 5$ a day wage was introduced by Henry Ford, forcing other companies to raise their wages as well or lose their workers

1937 - the first state sponsored contraceptive clinic in the US opens in Raleigh, North Carolina

1946 - the British Prime minister recognizes India's independence

1947 - the US Navy has its first black commissioned officer, John Lee

1949 - clothes rationing ends in Britain, four years after the end of WWII

1960 - ten nations meet in Geneva for disarmament talks

1968 - the Dioceses of Rome says it will not ban 'rock and roll' from being played during mass but that it deplores the practice - also in 1968, LIFE magazine titles Jimi Hendrix 'the most spectacular guitarist in the world'

1971 - ARPANET, the precursor of the modern day internet, sees its first forum

1984 - Tanzanian adopts a constitution

1985 - symbolics.com, the first internet domain name, is registered

The Ides of March turns out to just be a day, like any other day in history.

Unless you're us. In which case -

#ides of march #happy ides of march #julius caesar #today in history #please take some of my 'bad' dates as tongue in cheek #we love you maine #and a few of my dates fit both the good and bad side of the things so I just went with whichever I was on at the time #feel free to wiggle them around to a more appropriate column

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mariacallous · 11 days

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The Islamic State’s recent return to prominence with its bloody attack on a Moscow concert venue overshadowed a solemn and tragic anniversary of a different kind of terrorism. Five years ago in March, a white supremacist named Brenton Tarrant carried out twin shooting attacks against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Fifty-one people were killed, all of whom were Muslim.

Until then the conventional wisdom was that Islamist terrorist groups like al Qaeda and ISIS posed the only serious terrorist threat to Western countries, with Christian white supremacists rarely mentioned. This assumption was shattered with the Christchurch attack, which would become the defining exemplar of modern far-right terrorism—and a precursor of more tragedies to come. At a moment when attention is again focused on the threat from the Islamic State, it is important to remember that other terrorist threats exist and can have equally lethal consequences. The violent, almost viral momentum of such attacks inspire copycats and require an holistic appraisal to effectively and sufficiently counter them.

It took only weeks for other violent far-right extremists to emulate Tarrant’s target and tactics. On March 24, an arson attack on an Escondido, California mosque was perpetrated by a white supremacist who spraypainted “For Brenton Tarrant -t. /pol/” on the pavement, an obscure reference to the 8chan imageboard that both terrorists frequented. A month later, that same person, John Earnest, walked into a Jewish synagogue in nearby Poway and opened fire, murdering one person. “Tarrant was a catalyst for me personally,” he wrote in his manifesto, which itself copied another of Tarrant’s tactics.

10,000 miles away and five months later, Philip Manshaus, a 21-year-old Norwegian neo-Nazi, was clearly and directly inspired by Tarrant in his targeting choice, communications efforts, and sanctification of his terrorist predecessors when he murdered his Asian-origin stepsister as she slept, before proceeding to the Al-Noor Islamic Centre in Bærum, a posh suburb of Oslo with a GoPro attached to his helmet. (Manshaus was quickly subdued by elderly worshippers.)

Tarrant’s influence can also be seen in the shooting at an El Paso Walmart, perpetrated by Patrick Crusius, a white supremacist who killed 23 Latinos in August 2019. (Crusius opened his manifesto by referencing Tarrant.) And, Payton Gendron, who killed 10 Black Americans at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo in May 2022, plagiarized large sections of the New Zealand shooter’s manifesto in his own screed.

With his own violent act, Tarrant was following the model arguably advanced by Anders Breivik eight years earlier. In July 2011, Breivik murdered 77 persons in twin attacks. Tarrant himself was actually inspired by events in the United States. While dismissing Donald Trump as a politician, he nonetheless praised the then-serving president “as a symbol of renewed white identity.” Notably, Tarrant also weaponized strategies of leaderless resistance and accelerationism, which respectively advocate for lone acts of violence designed to spread violence and disorder leading to the collapse of elected government; both of these can be traced to the American neo-Nazi movement of the late-1970s and early 1980s.

More than anything, then, the Christchurch shooting was indicative of the increasing internationalization of domestic, far-right terrorism. The potential for its continuation and expansion should be a matter of greater international concern. A more coordinated and systematic transnational response, focusing on better countering social media radicalization and increased multi-lateral law enforcement coordination and intelligence sharing, is key to containing this threat.

The ideology of Tarrant’s manifesto, titled “The Great Replacement,” can be traced back at least as far as the Reconstruction era after the U.S. civil war. The name refers to a conspiratorial rant which claims that Jews and Marxists in the West are deliberately replacing Western white communities by encouraging and facilitating mass immigration in previously homogeneous polities. Today, this dangerous and virulent ideology poses a particular challenge when it is weaponized by politicians and media figures.

What is also noteworthy about the Tarrant model, and is in fact more easily achieved today, is lone actor violence using firearms. In the United States, where the lack of gun control laws significantly enhances terrorist capability, such attacks are particularly effective at totally destabilizing communities, entrenching a deep sense of perennial danger. Precisely this point was made by the European white supremacist who attacked a gay bar in Bratislava in October 2022. His manifesto praised the Buffalo shooter for successfully damaging the cohesiveness of the community in which he acted.

It is the nature of these “extremely online” terrorist attacks that details are often hidden from public view for years after. Only this February, for instance, have researchers in New Zealand revealed previously unknown online posts that actually undermined much of what Tarrant would eventually declare in his manifesto, suggesting he in fact began dreaming of his violent act long before he claimed. Not only do his earlier posts suggest law enforcement and intelligence agencies may have missed an opportunity to intervene in this budding terrorist’s trajectory, they also reveal specific details about his tactics and targeting, which followed those of Dylann Roof, the gunman who in 2015 attacked a place of worship in Charleston, SC. The findings underscore the continuing centrality of social media for modern terrorism and counterterrorism—and the importance of tackling social media radicalization head on.

The New Zealand government has led the charge in holding social media companies accountable for wanton radicalization on their platforms. Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern founded the Christchurch Call, which has worked with social media companies to better address harmful content on their platforms through countermeasures including content moderation and algorithmic reform. A suite of gun control measures, meanwhile, included buy backs and bans on high-capacity magazines, with the initial bill passing the parliament 119-1. New Zealand also took symbolic steps to counter the ideology that inspired the killing. The Christchurch Commission Report, when it was released in late 2020, was titled Ko tō tātou kāinga tēnei—Maori for “This is our home”—a resolute statement of unity and openness across race, religion, and language.

Despite the initial failure to stop Tarrant’s attack, this sweeping counterterrorism response has successfully derailed various follow-on attacks in New Zealand. Other countries should heed lessons from the Christchurch tragedy and New Zealand’s holistic policy responses. Namely, a focus on three dimensions of effective counter terrorism: combatting online extremism; escalating countering violent extremism programming; and, most importantly, building an international coalition, especially among those democracies most often targeted with this violence, to ensure a united front in countering domestic threats. Though these are aimed at individual democratic countries, they often have a dangerous transnational dimension and intention.

Firstly, the imperative to counter the free rein of extremism on social media has never been more critical. Today, extremists proliferate freely online, as social media titans, most notably Elon Musk’s X, dilute their online harms departments. European countries and institutions have been aggressive in pushing back, with the European Union for instance, implementing the Digital Services Act, forcing large social companies to better police their platforms or risk major fines. Last fall the United Kingdom enacted the Online Safety Act that gives government with parliamentary approval the power to suppress a range of online content.

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution makes the adoption of similarly far-reaching measures to curb digital content more complicated and controversial. However, the United States could take signal action by reforming Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. This law, enacted at the dawn of the internet, is an anachronism in an era where more people get their news online—and especially from social media—than from traditional, mainstream news and media sources. Section 230 protects internet and social media platforms from being held liable for content they publish. Removing that protection would likely force social media platforms to more actively monitor and remove dangerous content, including not just extremism but a range of other online harms, such as child sexual abuse material—much like the UK’s Online Safety Act.

Secondly, the United States in concert with other countries should considerably ramp up and improve their own respective domestic programming on countering violent extremism (CVE), focused on addressing vulnerabilities to extremism and radicalization, including mental illness and histories of isolation. Across the board, far-right terrorists are getting younger (some arrests now involve individuals as young as 13), and although Tarrant is a relative exception, his case exhibited the same instances of bullying and family trauma that often accompany extremism today. CVE, however, remains a mostly localized and uncoordinated cottage industry both nationally and especially transnationally of social workers, psychologists, former extremists, and welldoers—professionals doing important work, but often lacking direction, funding, and scale. The German-Swedish EXIT program provides one model of a framework for counter- and de-radicalization programming that might be replicated.

Our final recommendation is an ambitious one: as the international community is increasingly challenged by these ideologies and the violence they inspire, it should create a more formal multi-lateral framework to coordinate responses to these trans-national manifestations of domestic political violence. First, and most importantly, more organized cooperation than currently exists would better enable the exchange of best practices. Second, enhanced intelligence sharing about transnational terrorist networks and violent individuals communicating internationally would enable more effective disruption of cross-border terrorist financing. Finally, the sum total of improved cooperation would appreciably advance the core democratic values and traditions the countries most afflicted by this violence share, including trust in electoral systems and better countering the conspiracy theories that threaten undermine them. Such a working group might emerge from pre-existing alliances such as the Five Eyes partnership already linking intelligence sharing between the United States and New Zealand as well as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In this way likeminded countries with shared values can cooperate in undermining a pervasive threat that now threatens national security across the Western world.

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brexiiton · 2 months

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UK terror attack survivors warn politicians over anti-Muslim hate

By Arab News 10 Mar 2024 13:35

A photograph taken on March 22, 2022 shows a wreath of flowers laid on Westminster Bridge in front of Palace of Westminster, home to the House of Parliament and House of Lords, in London, to mark the fifth anniversary of the Westminster Bridge terror attack (AFP)

London: A group of more than 50 survivors of Islamist terror attacks in the UK have signed an open letter warning politicians against tarring British Muslims as extremists.

The letter against anti-Muslim hate was coordinated by Survivors Against Terror, a network of people in the UK and British people overseas who have been affected by terrorism.

Signatories include Rebecca Rigby, the widow of Lee Rigby, a soldier who was stabbed to death in London in 2013, as well as Paul Price, whose partner Elaine McIver was killed in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing.

The letter reads: “To defeat this (extremist) threat the single most important thing we can do is to isolate the extremists and the terrorists from the vast majority of British Muslims who deplore such violence.

“In recent weeks there have been too many cases where politicians and others have failed to do this; in some cases equating being Muslim with being an extremist, facilitating anti-Muslim hate or failing to challenge it.”

The signatories say defeating Islamism and extremism should be a “national priority” and they are “only too aware” of the threat posed by terrorism.

But they are saddened by a series of controversies in which major political figures in the UK have conflated Islam with extremism.

Last month, the former deputy chair of the governing Conservative Party, Lee Anderson, was suspended after claiming that Islamists had “got control” of Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor.

Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, also faced controversy after warning that “the Islamists, the extremists and the antisemites are in charge now,” referring to pro-Palestine protests that have taken place in London amid the Gaza conflict.

Their comments are “playing into the hands of terrorists,” signatories to the letter believe.

Darryn Frost, who fended off a terrorist who had killed two people near London Bridge in 2019, said: “I think it’s dangerous when any of our leaders marginalise communities and paint a very broad brush.

“People need to consider the power of their words because they have the power to incite further hatred.”

The letter is being published ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque killings on March 15.

The attack, carried out by a far-right terrorist, led to the murder of more than 50 Muslims in the New Zealand city.

Brendan Cox, co-founder of Survivors Against Terrorism, said: “Anyone using the issue (of extremism) to seek tactical party advantage risks undermining that consensus and making our efforts less successful.

“The message from survivors of attacks is clear: you can play politics all you like, but not with the safety of our country.”

Among the 57 signatories is Magen Inon, whose parents were killed during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

The letter coincides with UK government plans to update the official definition of extremism, which will allow authorities to suspend ties or funding to groups found to have exceeded the new definition.

Currently, extremism is defined by the government as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.”

Communities Secretary Michael Gove, who is leading the change, has claimed that pro-Palestine marches in London have included groups who are “trying to subvert democracy,” and that some pro-Palestine events have been organized by “extremist” organizations.

#terrorwave #terror wave #terror #westminster #uk #britain

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ausetkmt · 8 months

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On Feb. 15, 2023, a judge informed Payton Gendron – a white 19-year-old who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo Tops market in 2022 – that “You will never see the light of day as a free man ever again.”

The week before, Patrick Crusius – a white 24-year-old who gunned down 23 people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 – received 90 consecutive life sentences.

The threat of domestic terrorism remains high in the United States – especially the danger posed by white power extremists, many of whom believe white people are being “replaced” by people of color.

I am a scholar of political violence and extremism and wrote about these beliefs in a 2021 book, “It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US.” I think it’s important to understand the lessons that can be learned from events like the Buffalo and El Paso mass shootings.

After decades of research on numerous attacks that have left scores dead, we have learned that extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks. Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron was sentenced to life in prison in February 2023. Scott Olson/Getty Images

The lone wolf extremist myth is dangerous

FBI Director Christopher Wray said in August 2022 that the nation’s top threat comes from far-right extremist “lone actors” – who, he explained, work alone, instead of “as part of a large group.”

Wray is wrong, and the myth of the lone wolf extremist – the mistaken idea that violent extremists largely act alone – continues to directly inform research, law enforcement and the popular imagination.

I think that Wray’s focus on extremism is much needed and long overdue. However, his line of thinking is dangerous and misleading. By focusing on individuals or small groups, it overlooks broader networks and long-term dangers and so can impede efforts to combat far-right extremist violence – which Wray has singled out as the country’s most lethal domestic threat.

Not a new trend

Far-right extremists may physically carry out an attack alone or as part of a small group of people, but they are almost always networked and identify with larger groups and causes.

This was true long before the social media age. Take Timothy McVeigh. He is often depicted as the archetypal lone wolf madman who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995.

In fact, McVeigh was part of a pack. He had accomplices and was connected across the far-right extremist landscape.

The same is true of Gendron and Crusius, who were also characterized in media coverage as lone wolves.

“He talked about how he didn’t like school because he didn’t have friends. He would say he was lonely,” a classmate of Gendron said shortly after Gendron carried out the mass shooting.

Both were active on far-right extremist social media platforms and posted manifestos before their attacks. Gendron’s manifesto discusses how he was radicalized on the dark web and inspired to attack after watching videos of Brenton Tarrant’s 2019 massacre of 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Almost a quarter of Gendron’s manifesto is directly taken from Tarrant’s, which was titled “The Great Replacement.” This fear of white replacement, centered around perceived white demographic decline, was also a motive for Crusius. His manifesto pays homage to Tarrant, before explaining his attack was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

The lone wolf myth also suggests that extremists are abnormal deviants with anti-social personalities.

After Gendron’s rampage, for example, New York Attorney General Letitia James called him a “sick, demented individual.” Crusius, in turn, was described by the White House and news articles as “evil,” “psychotic” and an “anti-social loner.”

The vast majority of far-right extremists are, in fact, otherwise ordinary men and women. They live in rural areas, suburbs and cities. They are students and working professionals. And they believe their extremist cause is justified. This point was illustrated by the spectrum of participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. People hug at a memorial outside the Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where a shooter killed 23 people in 2019. Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images

Tracing the lone wolf mythology

How did the lone-wolf metaphor come to misinform the public’s view of extremists, and why is it so tenacious?

Part of the answer is linked to white supremacist Louis Beam, who wrote the essay “Leaderless Resistance” in 1983. In it, he called for far-right extremists to act individually or in small groups that couldn’t be traced up a chain of command. According to his lawyer, McVeigh was one of those influenced by Beam’s call.

After Beam formulated this idea, both far-right extremists and law enforcement increasingly used the lone wolf term. In 1998, the FBI even mounted an “Operation Lone Wolf” to investigate a West Coast white supremacist cell.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks further turned U.S. attention to Islamic militant “lone wolves.” A decade later, the term became mainstream.

And so it was not a surprise when, after the Buffalo shooting, New York State Senator James Sanders said, “Although this is probably a lone-wolf incident, this is not the first mass shooting we have seen, and sadly it will not be the last.”

The tenacity of the lone wolf myth has several sources. It’s convenient – evocative and powerful enough to draw and keep people’s attention.

By using this term, which individualizes extremism, law enforcement officials may also depoliticize their work. Instead of focusing on movements like white nationalism that have sympathizers in the various levels of government, from sheriffs to senators, they focus on individuals.

The lone wolf extremist myth diverts from what should be the focus of deterrence efforts: understanding how far-right extremists network, organize and, as the Jan. 6 insurrection showed, build coalitions across diverse groups, especially through the use of social media.

Such understanding provides a basis for developing long-term strategies to prevent extremists like Gendron and Crusius from carrying out more violent attacks.

#Violent extremists are not lone wolves – dispelling this myth could help reduce violence #white supremacy #white hate #white terrorist profile #violent extremists #lone wolf attacks #mass shootings #law enforcement lies

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filosofablogger · 2 years

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Saturday Surprise -- SILOS!!!

Saturday Surprise — SILOS!!!

This … … is a grain silo. And these … … are also grain silos. 🥱 Pretty boring, right? I mean … a structure whose only purpose is to store grain … what’s to get excited about. Function over form, yes? Well … in Australia, farmers and artists have managed to combine form and function and … WOW! Take a look … This one is located in Colbinabbin, Victoria, and was painted by Tim Bowtell over…

View On WordPress

#Anne Lawson Art #Australian Hobby Bird #Christchurch mosque attacks #Guido van Helten #Jacinda Ardern #Loretta Lizzio #Tim Bowtell #Victorian Silo Art

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ifreakingloveroyals · 2 months

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25 April 2019 | Prince William, Duke of Cambridge arrives at the RNZAF Air Movements Terminal in Christchurch, New Zealand. Prince William is on a two-day visit to New Zealand to commemorate the victims of the Christchurch mosque terror attacks. (c) Hannah Peters - Pool/Getty Images

#Prince William #Duke of Cambridge #Prince of Wales #Britain #2019 #Hannah Peters #Pool #Getty Images

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non-licet-bovi · 2 years

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Why (I personally believe that) the Riddler is white supremacist coded

I’ve seen some back and forth over whether or not the Riddler as a character can be interpreted as a white supremacist in The Batman (2022), so I figured I’d expand a bit on why I personally came away with that assessment in my viewing of the film. This is a bit of a character study ramble, because I feel like I need to touch on what I believe the core of Riddler’s persona is to really explain why I believe he’s a supremacist terrorist.

Obviously a lot of this is based on subtext and imagery as well as my own ruminations on the film’s themes, not direct quotes from any member of the cast or crew, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt. Regardless, I think the structure of the Riddler character is pretty overt, especially when paired with Reeves’ and Dano’s words about him.

I really enjoy this take on the Riddler because it is so different from what we’re used to in other Batman media, for the most part. I think Reeves & Dano tooled his character in a way to really benefit the structure of this story and to reflect on societal problems that are prevalent in our modern lives. This character is so effective, I feel, because he is a familiar figure of fear in our culture that we see so often: a passionate extremist with a hateful, selfish motive he twists into a dogmatic ideology that radicalizes others into violence online.

While Riddler has a sympathetic backstory and is absolutely an example of how the lack of social programs causes undue suffering, he’s purposefully an extremist. He employs fear to exact his personal form of justice and it makes him a textbook example of a terrorist. His spree of murders coupled with an entire media campaign would be enough to designate him as such, but his purposeful use of bombs and a small army of enthralled followers fashioned in his own image hammers the point home.

Nashton uses the same tactics we’ve seen from white male terrorists for decades, from the Oklahoma City bombing to the Christchurch Mosque Massacre. Not only were those terrorists motivated by racism and supremacist ideology, they were also stridently anti-establishment just like Nashton. It was hard for me to view the attempted assassination of a Black female political leader by a crew of masked white men in military surplus gear and not draw connections to real world terrorist attacks.

The only other people we know he associates with are his followers, who are apart of a small, radicalize group that watch his social media videos. That structure is so important, I think. Like, yes, the Riddler drew a ton of inspiration from Heath’s depiction of the Joker in the Dark Knight, but there are a lot more connotations to a guy yelling his criminal aspirations into a camera in 2022 than there were in 2008. These days, it's impossible not to watch those scenes and think of the myriad of extremists who used their streaming platforms, social media and/or youtube accounts to publish their hate-filled rants to a forum of sycophantic bigots. The Riddler’s scenes pretty overtly harken to extremists that have been ubiquitous in American news, including incels and alt-right zealots. His final video seems to me to be a direct allegory to the manifestos of killers posted on 4chan. I don’t think a film so purposeful in its aesthetic, themes and character building would have presented those scenes in such a way without recognizing what they would suggest to the viewer.

Let’s not forget either that the character is heavily inspired by the Zodiac Killer, a killer that famously used a cross through a circle – a symbol long appropriated by white nationalists in America as far back as the KKK (once again, a white male extremist in a hooded disguise is always going to have certain connotations in an American film) – as his signature. It may not be the killer’s only motivation for picking the symbol, we probably won’t ever know for sure, but it’s still a connection that’s difficult to ignore. While the Zodiac, like most other serial killers, stuck to his own racial group for his choice of victims (there’s a lot of reasons for this, usually, but I’m not gonna go off on a tangent lmao), he also uses the n-word in one of his letters and mentions how he’s turning his victims into “slaves in the afterlife” several times.

All that, along with the context of his time period in 1960’s San Francisco, makes Zodiac an influence you cannot completely remove from racism. Zodiac may not be as strident an example of a racist criminal as, say, Charles Manson, but I don’t think these details were lost on the crew of The Batman. In fact, I think the theme continues through their use of the neck bomb in DA Colson’s murder.

Nashton’s use of the neck bomb device is directly lifted from a crime that occured in 2003, where a Pennsylvania man -- Brian Wells -- was allegedly a co-conspirator in the bank robbery he committed and was double-crossed by the perpetrators when he realized the bomb wasn’t fake like he’d been lead to believe (that retelling is my take away from the event, fyi, as it is debated whether or not Wells was a duped conspirator or an innocent and unwilling participant). Just like with Colson, the bomb couldn’t be removed from Wells’ neck without activating a fail safe that would cut off his head. Also like Colson, Wells was given detailed instructions on how to get the code to unlock the collar, but authorities failed to remove the bomb before it detonated.

Why is this relevant to my point? While I think The Batman uses this device mostly because it is a shocking, fascinating murder weapon, there’s a detail about the crime that sticks out to me: Wells originally blamed the collar and the bank plot on Black men, to intentionally divert suspicion from the real conspirators he knew were all white. The alleged mastermind of the crime, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, also suggested blaming Black people in pre-crime meetings (which Wells may or may not have attended, it isn’t confirmed). The purposeful racist choices of murderers that help make up the inspiration for Nashton’s character absolutely color my interpretation of any underlying biases he may or may not have. Obviously this interpretation isn’t confirmed by any sense of the word, but I think it is reasonable to believe that the Riddler’s persona being inspired by real world racists encourages the audience to assume he may very well be one as well.

Racism isn’t the only tenant of white supremacy, though, and there’s more to the Riddler’s ideology and actions that seem to align with that form of extremist thought. I think his personal conflict as well as his indiscriminate victims both add to why there’s cause to label him a supremacist.

A huge point, I feel, is how Riddler views and depicts Martha Wayne. His expose on the Waynes isn’t just a condemnation of Thomas, but of Martha as well. His loathing of her carries into his snide tone and word choice. Even the retelling of her parents' murder-suicide disregards her trauma. Martha was mentally ill and struggled with her condition, which Riddler assumably believes to be deplorable. The reporter who intends to publish her medical history is called "crusading", like his purpose in exposing her as a mental patient is valiant. Nashton recounts her experience like it is a salacious, dirty thing that is unsuitable for society, just as much a horrific secret as Thomas getting a the reporter killed. He doesn’t outright state that she is lesser for being mentally ill, but his rhetoric and weaponization of her circumstances alludes to ableist eugenics-based ideology that is absolutely championed by white supremacists.

Similarly, Riddler has no regard for Annika’s personhood nor safety when publishing her image. She’s completely unimportant beyond the fact that she is a confirmation of Mayor Mitchell’s poor moral choices and duplicity. She’s just another clue at the connection between Mitchell and Falcone, not a downtrodden person who deserves justice as much as Nashton does. The man is a forensic accountant, a job that is detail-oriented and meticulous, and it reflects in the specificity and planning of his crimes. It certainly must have occurred to Nashton what might happen to the beaten sex worker he exposed, he just didn’t care. Her murder is unremarkable to him.

Riddler is unconcerned with other people in general, since he’s willing to kill hundreds of innocents well after he’s exposed the truth about the Renewal Fund and knocked off all but one of his primary targets. The flood and the attempted massacre show his true purpose is shock, awe and total fear. Gotham’s corruption was just a fine excuse to create something powerful out of himself, so he’d never be ignored or forgotten again.

Sure, he sees and loathes the stark inequality of Gotham’s system. He rages against it. But, in all honesty, I believe it is only because he happened to be one of the people who didn’t get to benefit from that unfair status quo in the way he wanted. He’s not an advocate for the marginalized – in fact he actively harms them – just resentfully fixated on the circumstances he suffered from and obsessed with comparing that experience to the object of his disdain: Bruce Wayne. He delved into the corruption of the city not necessarily because he was investigating the reasons why his orphanage was left to rot, but because he had a chance meeting with the Waynes. He saw a little kid that was essentially just like him – white, male, able-bodied – but when Bruce is orphaned, suddenly only the reasons they’re not alike affect their difference in treatment. Bruce is rich and prestigious, Nashton is not. Those qualities give Bruce power Nashton does not possess, so they are the qualities Nashton demonizes.

If there was no Bruce, Nashton would have still been a neglected orphan, but he likely wouldn’t have had the personal vindictive drive to discover the Renewal Fund’s secrets. Every target of his may be a loathsome, corrupt power figure, but they are all connected to his hatred for Bruce. They're all pinned to his wall, but Bruce dominates the entire center. His mission is personal, based in his private hates and inadequacies, not a bourgeoise uprising. If he cared about anything resembling leftist ideals, he certainly wouldn’t have chosen to bomb the sea walls, as the ones who suffer the worst from such disasters are always the poor and disadvantaged. If he cared about the structural failures behind his suffering, he maybe would do more than turn the old Wayne Orphanage into a private theater occupied by drug-addled, destitute orphans. He doesn't care about orphans, he cares that he is one.

To him, justice isn’t forcing Gotham to change. Justice is forcing Gotham to acknowledge his individual pain to his satisfaction, which means everyone else should feel the pain and fear he’s shouldered since childhood. It doesn’t matter how many die, so long as he is vindicated and legitimized. It’s peak terrorism.

His selfishness, I think, is a key pillar of who he is and why he makes the choices he makes. Dano, in an interview, talks about how Riddler was fixated on questioning “Why Me?” as he lamented his lot in life. He’s a tortured individual focused on his own misfortune, who ends up blaming Gotham’s powerful for his individual situation. He’s a loner, like Bruce and unlike Selina. He doesn’t have a community he’s concerned about uplifting, he wants retribution for himself. Nashton’s only motivations are getting the revenge he feels he deserves, finding his individual power through instilling fear, being “remembered” in a way he never was as a child, and earning the attention/approval from the figure he most admires (Batman).

“Why me?” becomes “Now they will spend their last moments wondering, ‘why them?’”

I see that selfishness in the manifestos of recent terrorists and in the hateful ideology that demands the white man always be given exactly what he proclaims he deserves, everyone else be damned. For me, the way the film frames Riddler’s disregard for others can be read as bigotry. Riddler’s idealization of Batman as a figure he assumes to be just as detached from reality as he read as a particularly white male power fantasy he constructed for himself (this is a subversion of the Batman power fantasy trope that I enjoyed, tbh. The Batman depicts making a fearsome, vengeful god out of Batman is a bad thing). His personality and actions seemed to hint at white nationalist extremism without needing to lampshade it. I love the script for getting so much more across than just what was said overtly.

As a last tangent, I really like the set up in the film of forcing Batman to reckon with himself through the lenses of other characters. Riddler is one of the mirrors held up to reflect Batman back at Bruce, the other being Selina. They both recognize aspects of themselves in Batman and actively seek to engage with those aspects. They’re both inspired by Batman and his power because they’ve been forced to be powerless their whole lives. They both commit crime. They both have murderous intent. However, the things that make them different are why Nashton is repugnant to Bruce and Selina is alluring.

Nashton is a direct contrast to Selina in key ways: he isolates himself and only interacts with others online while she is dedicated to her friend and willing to upend her entire life for her safety, he relishes in the anonymity of his mask and disregards who Batman is without the cowl while she constantly sheds her disguise and ponders just who Bruce might be, his family is never mentioned and never matter while her parents are hugely impactful to her characterization and actions, he gleefully uses murder to exact his revenge while she realizes she doesn’t need to kill to reckon with her personal trauma, his vengeance is destroying Gotham while her vengeance is being able to survive in spite of Gotham.

Selina’s story arc shows just how much Nashton perverts his suffering into a self-righteous excuse to do harm, which in turn allows Bruce to realize how he was unwittingly doing the same. The Batman critiques some of the most frustrating representations of Batman -- as an infallible super soldier, who is so resolute and powerful that he can function as an unstoppable, unquestionable force of his own violent will, beholden to no one -- by giving the Riddler the ultimate revenge fantasy and showing it's inherently destructive.

By the by, I don’t think it’s inconsequential that these two contrasting characters so important to Batman’s development are played by a white man and a biracial Black woman. Media still struggles to circumvent our cultural norms of assuming that every sad, traumatized white guy deserves the best possible interpretation of his choices, no matter how horrific they may be, and that every sad, traumatized Black woman must be unyieldingly strong yet ethically pristine in her actions to be worth empathizing with. Does The Batman have a perfect depiction of its characters and perfect awareness of how race factors into those depictions? Not necessarily, no, but the effort is there.

Ultimately, Riddler is a modern American terrorist archetype. The modern American terrorist is, in his most concise and expected form, a white supremacist.

(Quick sidebar: I doubt it's lost on y'all how differently a 2022 "realistic, gritty" Batman film depicts a terrorist villain compared to, say, a 2012 "realistic, gritty" Batman film did. I do love the Nolan trilogy to pieces, but the change of Bane's entire character into a vaguely Middle Eastern former member of the League of Shadows -- all the while still white-washing the entire League, Jesus Christ -- was a very pointed choice. A decade ago, American prejudice equated terrorism with the Middle East and it isn't surprising that the perception reflected in our media, where we had Talia Al Ghul trying to literally nuke Gotham off the map. Media always takes public anxiety and uses it for horror, as it assumes the audience will already feel intimidated by your villain/monster. Ten years after The Dark Knight Rises, the fear of homegrown American terrorism is much more predominant than it used to be -- even though white extremist violence was always more common place than anti-Muslim bigotry might have some believe -- and we're getting references to that fear in our current Batman antagonist.)

I think that archetype came across very strong in the film’s presentation and it makes him an all the more effective villain, especially for a grounded, realistic Batman film. We recognize the Riddler in the people and movements that scare us in daily life. He’s not an unbelievable, otherworldly monster. He’s sympathetic to a point and his descent into terror mistaken as justice is uncomfortably familiar. To me, it makes him a lot more compelling in a media landscape where we’re used to comic book films featuring superpowered aliens with designs to destroy entire planets rather than reckon with structural inequality and corruption.

Anyway, I hope this overlong drivel helps illuminate why I – and maybe others – consider Riddler to be an unspoken white supremacist character. Even if one might disagree, I think I laid out my thought process where one might at least allow that the interpretation is reasonable enough.

#meta #The Batman #Batman #The Riddler #Edward Nashton #Selina Kyle #Bruce Wayne #white supremacy #racism #terrorism #character analysis #discussion of real life crime #it is so weird experiencing online fandom when you talk with all ur friends irl about batman all the time #i fr thought EVERYONE thought the riddler was a 4chan racist lmao #like i may be over thinking every little detail but damn the batman got DETAILS #i get one run away thought and suddenly ive written a 3k word essay jfc #this riddler scary its a damn good performance claps for mr dano

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