The Pride Flag Murder - A Reflection

Last week in California, Laura Ann “Lauri” Carleton, a 66 year old woman was shot dead in cold blood by someone who can only be described as a domestic terrorist who took issue with a rainbow flag displayed outside her business. 

The terrorist in question was named as one Travis Ikeguchi, a slavering and brainwashed devotee of the Trump/MAGA cult.

While this event may appear at first glance to be a simple hate crime, or yet another commonplace shooting incident, one of many that has already taken place across the USA just this year alone, there are actually more facets to this event than initially meet the eye.

First off, the victim of this cold-blooded and cowardly killer, wasn't even part of the LGBT community at all, but she could just as easily have been. She was an ally - a "cis/het" individual, someone who showed support for LGBT+ people in a time in the US where they are the subject of a surge of intense social, legislative and violent persecution - and the target of hate crimes just like this one. 

Secondly, putting flags on display is a common form of expression in the US - for example the US national flag - and other flags too, are typically displayed outside businesses, office buildings, and even at private homes - and in this case, the business-owner was legally entitled to display her flag on her business premises.

Thirdly, by tearing down the flag, Ikeguchi was committing several crimes, not only by infringing on his victim's freedom of speech, but also likely vandalism, criminal damage, and trespassing. In fact, he had as much right to do this as a disgruntled homeowner might have venturing into their neighbor's yard to take down their Trump election signs and confederate battle flags - none.

Fourthly - and most importantly - by doing what he did in this case, Ikeguchi unwittingly proved her point: why it was necessary for allies to show support for the LGBT+ community. This incident demonstrates exactly why LGBT+ Americans - and LGBT+ people worldwide need legal equality and legal protections

LGBT+ people, Jewish people, people of color, non-Christians, women's rights - ALL need protection from the GOP-aligned horde of right wing crackpot Christians with their bibles, their guns and their small dick complexes.

As I said, there are more aspects to this tragedy than just a mere hate crime. Here are several that stand out to me: 

• The prominence of hateful mindsets and prejudices within religious communities in the USA, specifically and especially evangelical Christianity.
• The encroachment and intrusion of not just religion into state bodies, machinery and ultimately lawmaking and governance - but a particularly hateful, toxic brand of religion.
• Lack of legal requirement for news media to portray facts and truth of news and actuality in a fair, objective manner - the unopposed proliferation of propaganda and radical sentiments presented as news.
• Radicalization of individuals in society by news media, fake news, political and religious public figures.
• A gradual and cumulative lowering of educational standards and access to education to the point where people can read but not comprehend, and where people are so ill-informed and unable to think critically that they tend to believe all manner of nonsense, like cheap low-brow conspiracy theories and every little thing said by their political or religious idols.
• Availability and ease of access to firearms; lack of regulation and oversight and chiefly, the public obsession with and the glorification of guns, guns, and more guns.

If ever there was a blatant example of the USA's widespread domestic terrorist problem, this is it.

Looking at it from an outside perspective, I often see reports of yet another *yawn* shooting death or mass shooting taking place in the USA - and just scroll on by without bothering to read it. After all, if Americans don't care enough about the mess they're in to actually change it, why should I care?

Now - if you mistake my remark here as being callous, I apologize, but what I'm doing is to raise the point that it happens so damn often, that it's not really news anymore. The truth is, I'm sick and tired of seeing news about innocent people being murdered left, right and center by disgruntled co-workers, bad friends, estranged spouses, abusers - and radicalized, deranged religion-fueled terrorists.

The reality from where I'm sitting, is that life only means something over there if it belongs to billionaires or politicians or prominent public figures. For the rest, if they die in needless tragedies, there's always "thoughts and prayers".

The fact is, that those in Congress or the broader US government as a whole, COULD do something decisive and final about this issue - up to an including the gun problem, the intrusion of the NRA and rabid, fanatic religion into government and the proliferation of propaganda and fake news in media - but... simply... don't.

All the beatific bullshit in the world is totally meaningless if there is no intention whatever to correct the problem.

Yet the American news media continues to report on every shooting incident - and every mass shooting as if it were totally unexpected, wholly unpredictable and completely unprecedented, like some kind of "stop press" moment - when it's really not. It happens. Every. Day. 

I can understand the whole of Norway and Norwegian media (and international media) reacting in utter shock when right-winger Anders Breivik went on a murderous rampage, blew up a street and shot 77 people to death in 2011. After all, that was really unexpected. Norway? Nothing ever happens in Norway, right? But another shooting in the US? Again? Pff! What's on Cartoon Network instead?

What should REALLY be making the news is WHY the US government has NEVER acted definitively and decisively to stop it - to nip this sort of shit in the bud. Why hasn't Congress done something to prevent repeats of this sort of completely avoidable and needless tragedy?

Why haven't they acted to curb the hate being spilled into social media, news media, and via political platforms? In the current set of circumstances, I would have to say it's because the Republicunt traitors to the republic won't act against their own fans and followers.

Why haven't they acted to regulate access to firearms, or to restrict guns to people with dangerous levels of mental illness, or affiliations with hate groups? Well, because of the gun lobby, which is essentially backed by the Republican Party (which is really just one big hate group) - and vice versa - which essentially means that perhaps half of the US government is unofficially the NRA/KKK/American Nazi Party.

I've written at length about the insanity of this fuckery at length previously, so I'll not delve into that subject again this time, but what I will do instead is focus on the steady, unhindered proliferation of hate speech and stochastic terrorism in the media - and in particular on social media - which is directly relevant to this case in particular.

Social media is a real swamp - and that's the actual swamp that needs draining. Yes, there's everything on there from cat videos to people flying models and advertising crypto-currency scams - but there's also a lot of embittered, small-minded wankers who like nothing better than to vent their feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy at not being able to find a willing date by launching into racist, transphobic, misogynistic or homophobic rants, repeating bullshit from the lips of their right wing idols - or to bully anyone their indoctrination tells them is "the enemy".

Stochastic terrorism, by the way, is the indirect incitement of harm by suggestion or encouragement. 

From his posts, it's clear that Ikeguchi's idols were radical extremists who vented hatred and harm against persecuted minorities - LGBT+ people, Jews & non-Christians, women - and abortion clinics. It's not surprising that their hatreds and their targets became his hatreds and targets.

Even before Ikeguchi picked up that gun and killed  Laura Ann Carleton, he was already a terrorist.

Judging by the content of his Twitter account, not only was Travis Ikeguchi just such a "relay station" for such aggressive right wing ideology, he was also a fanatical MAGA supporter and affirmed Trumpanzee. 

In the days since the murder, his Twitter account has been discussed in the plethora of news articles about this killing, as it is filled with disturbing, hateful material that indicates he was not just a homophobe and transphobe, but he was also a misogynist and an anti-Semite - incredibly deluded, and violently so. One of his posts encouraged the burning of rainbow flags and actually shows one on fire - and his accompanying message encourages the destruction of not just LGBTI+ flag, but those whom it describes.

Most of us today are users of social media in some form or another, and most of us know there are usually a set of rules or "community standards" that we are supposed to follow on these platforms - usually items like no porn - or more importantly, not inciting violence or hate against others - but are these ever actually enforced? 

I know from personal experience, that reporting neo-Nazis and homophobes and transphobes in particular on Facebook, most usually results in a disinterested A.I.-generated message to say that they found "nothing wrong" with the offending post, page or group - even if it was saturated with pictures of swastikas or laced with transphobic statements or homophobic death threats. Users who find these posts offensive are encouraged to just block these accounts so they don't have to see them, while no action is taken against the offenders, who remain free to go on as they have been, using the platform to post hate speech to their black little heart's content while the rest of us get our accounts restricted for posting too much cleavage, or pictures of a cat (A.I. - go figure). I got Facebook jailed once for calling a Nazi who denied the Holocaust ever happened, an ignoramus. No bullshit.

But sure, I understand - people are just talking, what harm can talking do,right? They're just making use of their right to freedom of speech - and everyone knows, words have no consequences at all, they're just hot air. People who get hurt by words must be really weak and deserve it, and should just grow thicker skins - isn't that exactly how bullies and narcissists and their enablers think?

However, sometimes someone goes beyond their little trope, and graduates from just posting hatred against other groups on social media, to actually acting on it.

As it did in this case.

If ever there was a damning indictment of social media's sham enforcement of "community standards" and their widespread failure to treat hate-speech and terrorism as a serious matter, it is Twitter's recent failure to censure the account of Travis Ikeguchi. 

In spite of users making complaints about his account to Twitter in recent weeks, nothing was done. Twitter apparently saw nothing wrong with a user inciting open violence against an actual persecuted minority suffering demonstrable violent attacks by people *exactly* like Travis Ikeguchi.

And yet, Ikeguchi subsequently graduated from stochastic terrorism to actual physical terrorism when he manifested his plethora of incendiary, hateful anti-LGBT+ posts by committing an unsolicited act of violence against an unarmed woman for displaying a rainbow flag outside her shop, for no justifiable reason, and the terrorist himself was ultimately shot dead in a confrontation with police.

Good riddance. Not that it will bring his victim back, or provide any comfort for her husband or children, or anyone else who loved and appreciated her - or the LGBT+ community, in whose stead she was struck down.

Even so, Ikeguchi's reprehensible anti-LGBT, misogynistic and anti-Semitic posts on Twitter still remain publicly visible. For some reason, nobody seems to be pointing any figures at Twitter (or Elon Musk) for aiding and enabling domestic terrorism, homophobia, transphobia, violence, persecution - and murder.

A few other things I've noticed about this incident comes from its reception: There are far more people speaking directly about this brutal murder in social media openly referring to the killer as a Christian terrorist/killer etc. whereas previously, similar perpetrators who were also right-wingers, also radicalized Christian extremists, were not referred to in this way - and after years and years of circumnavigating seas of pretense, I find the honesty of that refreshing.

Whether radicalized or simply insane, Travis Ikeguchi's Twitter profile was peppered with Christian references - he identified clearly as a Christian. 

So too do the legions of admirers and sycophants singing his praises for "standing up to the LGBT dictatorship". According to them, the terrorist Ikeguchi is in heaven for committing murder, and his victim is in hell for siding with evil.

Having been a Christian once myself, my mind reels at the prospect of trying to understand the thinking of these people - and to work out how the actual living fuck they manage to reconcile such cruelty and baneful blatant evil with the central core of Christianity - compassion, mercy, tolerance, forgiveness and love, even to the extent of self-deprecation.

The message of the Pride Flag Murder is chillingly clear: if you support LGBT people, stand against the Christian persecution of LGBT+ people and 'defy us' - be prepared to die. It is a message designed to instill fear in LGBT+ people and their allies alike, and to chip away at the support of the LGBT+ community by attacking our allies.

If ever there was a clear-cut, obvious demonstration of why LGBT+ people need urgent protection from these arrogant sociopath wingnuts and their religious delusions of superiority and entitlement, and that something desperately needs to be done about the runaway hate-cult that has hijacked modern Christianity, it is this.