Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Adding Lawlessness to Lawlessness

In my post yesterday about anti-immigrant sentiment in Russia, I referred to the nationalist sentiment that is developing there, and included this excerpt about the formation of vigilante groups:

Druzhinniki, popular militias whose members sometimes carry arms and which have links to the Russian Orthodox Church’s nationalist wing, are already patrolling Russian cities seeking to keep immigrants from any actions that violate law and order, a development that has prompted some Muslim groups hitherto quiescence to become more active.

Tuan Jim objected to my take on the situation, and left this comment:

Baron,

I hate to say it, but I think you’re engaging in some very selective article posting and commentary here.

There is a distinct difference between calling for a restriction on immigration from certain countries to counter radical Islam or even cutting back on allowing economic immigration for the purpose of protecting domestic jobs and the blatant xenophobic violence that has resulted in over 100 foreigners deaths just this year, not to mention an black US college student getting stabbed in the last month.

I sent you the article (and you included it in a recent news roundup) of the outcome of the trial of a gang of teenage thugs who had admitted to killing over *20* people in a period of less than a year. 20 people! That’s mass murder right there — and it’s not like they shot them — they beat and stabbed them all to death in the streets. And the average conviction for 20+ murders was 6 years (even less for the minors).

That is not a good trend. Nationalism and Patriotism backed by appropriate rule of law is one thing — attacking and killing random people because you don’t like the way they look (i.e. “not Slavic” to quote another article) is a completely different kettle of fish. And the failure of the government to prosecute these crimes appropriately is very disconcerting.

I had to concede his point. I agree that a descent into vigilante thuggishness is not a desirable outcome in any country.

My gut reaction comes from watching the growing brutality and lawlessness of immigrant areas in various parts of Europe, about which the civil authorities do virtually nothing.

Every day I sift through the news stories with their mind-numbing litany of assault, murder, rapes, vandalism, looting, and arson committed by “youths” in the banlieues of Western Europe. The reaction of the lawfully-constituted governments is to ignore or play down the problem or pretend it doesn’t really exist, and to give the young thugs at most a slap on the wrist. In Britain, anyone who dares to point out the extent of the crisis and criticize it may be charged with the crime of “racism”.

My gut reaction is also informed by the experience of a female member of our family, who was assaulted by an immigrant tough on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. No one was ever arrested for the crime. It’s well-known in Charlottesville that some of the worst Mexican gangs have infested the schools and housing projects of the city.

So I have to admit to a guilty and illicit thrill at the thought of vigilantes of my own ethnic persuasion taking back the mean streets from the invaders. But Tuan Jim is right — this kind of lawlessness is not a solution to be desired.

On the other hand, what will be the alternative? This is the awful dilemma which is gradually confronting us. Our political leaders, to whom we have delegated our governance via our electoral consent, are failing in their most fundamental duty: the protection of their citizens.
- - - - - - - - -
In a free society, people voluntarily give up a portion of their liberty in exchange for the protection of the State. This is the basic social contract. We grant the State a monopoly on violence, and in return we are protected. But the State has failed to keep its half of the bargain, and no longer maintains a monopoly on violence.

So lawlessness already exists. The abdication by the civil authorities of their responsibilities is a breach of the common law. Unless this slide into anarchy is reversed, further lawlessness on the part of the erstwhile victims will inevitably result.

The system which should replace our failed leaders is broken. At present there is no way in the United States or most other Western nations to throw out the negligent rascals and replace them with responsible leaders. The electoral system is rigged so that we are only allowed to vote for several different flavors of “more of the same”.

There is no choice that would allow a return to the kind of muscular law-enforcement that used to be the norm. And maybe that’s the way most people prefer it. Maybe we as a society would rather be “nice” than be protected from violent thugs. Maybe we no longer have the stomach to do what is required to re-establish civil society in our inner cities and immigrant suburbs. Maybe we are too morally sophisticated to protect ourselves.

But not everyone feels that way, and eventually some people are bound to respond in the same manner that the Russian vigilante groups are responding, by adding their own murder and mayhem to the mix.

A politically feasible way of avoiding this outcome, if it can possibly be found, is much to be preferred.

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

Im somewhat surprised that you concede these points so easily.

I really cannot see anything wrong with "popular militias ....patrolling Russian cities seeking to keep immigrants from any actions that violate law and order."

Ofcourse any law abiding citizen would rather let the government ensure our safety, but when they let the people down, it is inevitable and totally justifiable, that people start defending themselves. And these militias are just a way of the people protecting themselves.

Now....does this mean i think its oke to go out in the street and shoot the first muslim i happen to set my eyes on??

Does it mean i think its oke to randomly attack people because i dont like the way they look?

Ofcourse not. Thats just silly!
And that isnt what was said or meant.

So why concede his objections??

As i see it, i agree with Tuan Jim that this vigilante stuff should not get out of control. But i also agree with Baron that its time the native people start protecting themselves.

These are not opposite points of view. They are quit complementary!

But maybe ive just misunderstood Baron. Maybe you did mean to say that its ok to attack and kill people at random, if you dont like the way they look. But i cant imagine.

Baron Bodissey said...

erdebe,

The point I concede is that these vigilante groups tend to grade into gangs who commit murder and mayhem, and that I oppose such things.

That's the great problem when the State's monopoly on violence is broken -- the likelihood that indiscriminate lawlessness will emerge. I don't know of any workable solution to this dilemma.

Mystery Meat said...

This "militias" stuff is a slippery slope. Too often in spills over into thuggery and criminality.

I reserve the right to protect myself and my family. I want the legally-sanctioned authorities to do this, but if they can't or won't, I will. I must

A few years ago at a nearby high school, kids started getting into fights. School officials were unable or unwilling to protect the students. Kids grouped together to protect themselves from bullies. This evolved into full-fledged gangs which now terrorize everyone, fight over who gets to sell drugs on campus, and occasionally commit rape or murder. The campus resembles Northern Ireland during the "troubles."

Government, police and courts have accountability. They have rule sets. There are checks and balances. Militias have few if any constraints. Who holds the militias accountable?

I agree with you, Baron. I don't know of any workable solution to this dilemma. We all must work hard to promote civil society and motivate political leaders and the police to do their jobs.

Tuan Jim said...

I think part of the problem - at least in Russia - stems from the legacy of the Soviet Police State in which the gov't held the *only* reins of power. Now, with democratization, some of that power has been given up - too much in some cases and not enough in others, depending on the jurisdiction and organization involved.

This would explain why the courts are handing out lenient sentences for murder while the Duma is trying to abolish trial by jury for terrorism suspects (although according to at least one article I've read, already well below 50% of criminal trials have juries). Similarly, it might explain why the Moscow riot police are sent to Vladivostok to put down a generally peaceful protest (including hitting reporters of gov't tv stations) regarding the gov'ts decision to vastly increase the import duty on used foreign cars - "Buy Russian! - or else."

Despite pulling in some major oil revenues over the last few years, the rise of the oligarchs and their subsequent bowing to the Kremlin (after the Yukos scandal) has not led to any sizeable public spending increases for public services, police forces, etc - so instead of having practical policing and good policies, you have gaps (filled by "vigilantes" - and I use that term lightly in this case) and police brutality against folks with legitimate complaints - ie. journalists who publish stories critical of local authorities (or Putin).

"Oops, we arrested him, handcuffed him, and when he tried to take my pistol, he accidentally shot himself in the head....but we didn't want to mess up the car, so we just dumped him by the side of the road."

Homophobic Horse said...

One notes sparingly: Weak civil society.

Gregory said...

Hey Baron, you might want to read up on the vigilantes of the old west in America....They didn't degrade into anything. And they got rid of some real trash.

Unknown said...

The wealthy all have their own private "security companies" and live in gated communities, here in the U.S., as an acknowledgment of the inadequacy of local policing and enforcement of laws - see Miami Florida, Boca Raton etc. as examples of this.

Why can't citizens join together in cooperative groups to police their own neighborhoods - we have this now with an unarmed "Neighborhood watch" program throughout many communities in the U.S. - but with some degree of legitimate arms? It's an opportunity for either private sector start-ups (armed security forces hired by communities, not just by the wealthy)or for the non-profit sector.

The problem seems to be where the state monopoly on violence forbids citizens from possessing arms or defending themselves(Europe)or where any self-defense action will in fact be seen as an act of insurrection against the state. However there are precedents for citizen protection associations - see for example in the UK - the Community Security Trust (http://www.thecst.org.uk/ )

Unknown said...

I think people are being very much affected in the West by media propaganda against Russia. Every day you have on the BBC for example news stories on the front page of "Protestor Rally Smashed in Russia" when they were protesting a tax on foreign luxury cars. The question people should probably be asking is which outside forces are supporting these "protests". It's obvious how affective NGOs have been in countries like Ukraine and Georgia. During the Georgia-Russia conflict, my satellite that included Russia Today news channel for years, mysteriously removed this channel from the line up. It seems the West doesn't want to give Russia the right to give its side of the story to these news stories. Maybe its PR campaigns aren't as sophisticated as some other countries. It's obvious now who started the Georgia Russia conflict even though the Western media was crying bloody murder at the time. This though is beside the point.

I don't agree with vigilantism but I also don't agree with allowing people following a modern (or ancient in another regard) form of fascism into a country. Should these gangs be roaming about the streets looking to do violence on immigrants? Definitely not. Should government sell out their people though? Definitely not. I'm not downplaying that it's wrong for these vigilantes to be roaming the streets. I think the system is at fault here. There is nothing wrong with having Russia for the Russians or France for the French etc. Not racial homogeneity, but a cultural one. People should appreciate the fact that they live in Russia or wherever part of the world they live in.

closed said...

The State is not given a monopoly on violence in the US.

It is given a monopoly on the dispensation of justice.

States that fully support the right of individuals to keep and bear arms are always less violent then those that do not, and it is the possibility of retaliatory self-defense violence that makes them so.

I am also unhappy that the local government is building housing for illegal immigrants from a third world crap-hole, and wondering why they insist on acting like criminals from a third world crap-hole when they arrive.

Insisting that only desirable persons be allowed to immigrate is not racist.

Czechmade said...

I am not sure anybody here is able to decide who might be immigrant or not in Russia. In Europe it is simple. Not so in R:

As Russian territory migrated to the east and south esp. (conquest, colonization??) many ethnicities became part of Russia without moving anywhere, not one metre from their village. Then R. functioned as a sort of Osmanic empire including other nations. Many were mixed in the process. So try to define who might be "immigrant".

So

Tuan Jim said...

I must thank Homophobic Horse for putting my thoughts into a much more succinct summary.

That said, I will qualify my earlier postings by stating that most of what I read is not coming from "western" media sources, but translations of media coming out of the respective countries - although I often find myself having to resort to western wire services when it comes to English language versions for posting here.

While I take most of what's posted here with as much salt as I do Reuters or AP (more in some cases, since those aren't official gov't mouthpieces) - you're free to search http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/ for articles along the lines I've already mentioned. ie. http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13413286&PageNum=0

Even the Russian media is full of commentary about these crimes - but most editorial there are never translated or available elsewhere - and not all of it is in the Kremlin's pocket either.

Tuan Jim said...

Let me qualify my statement about itar-tass a bit further - they are good for official releases - unfortunately most of the really good stuff is only released in Russian to the Russian media - and does not show up in google news or even on the English version of their page.

Unknown said...

I am not sure anybody here is able to decide who might be immigrant or not in Russia. In Europe it is simple. Not so in R:

As Russian territory migrated to the east and south esp. (conquest, colonization??) many ethnicities became part of Russia without moving anywhere, not one metre from their village. Then R. functioned as a sort of Osmanic empire including other nations. Many were mixed in the process. So try to define who might be "immigrant".


Notice that I said cultural unity not racial. A Polish American is as much American as one whose ancestors arrived to the US on the Mayflower. FYI the general ethnic make up of Russia along with Ukraine, BelaRus, is Slavic along with some Scandinavian heritage. Russians fought other invading peoples tooth and nail in the past centuries. Wikipedia the Russo-Turkic wars to get an idea. The arguement "Whose an immigrant anyway" is the most common fall back argument to left-wing and multi-cultural supporters.

Afonso Henriques said...

Tuan Jim,

"Similarly, it might explain why the Moscow riot police are sent to Vladivostok to put down a generally peaceful protest (including hitting reporters of gov't tv stations) regarding the gov'ts decision to vastly increase the import duty on used foreign cars - "Buy Russian! - or else.""

It's not "buy Russian! Or else...". It is a great problem because Russian products do not have much quality and as such, the Russians import quality when they are able to. Due to the Communist legacy in Russia, many cities in Russia depend on one or two factories where the majority of the people work. They have to find market to the products they produce and to the people who work there, otherwise it is anarchy in Russia.

I know that in America something similar happens: Whole cities destroyed due to the failure of industries but in America, when one factory goes down, there will (potentially) be a man to start a new business. In Russia it is very unlikely. And in Russia a city can be totally dependent of the former Statal factory.

Communism sucks.

Tuan Jim said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Afonso Henriques said...

"There is nothing wrong with having Russia for the Russians or France for the French etc."

D, what a lovely phrase!

"(...)
Not racial homogeneity, but a cultural one."

:( You ought to explain that to me. Do you tention to suck the culture out of the immigrants? Isn't that even more deshumane? To rip a man out of his identity?
Why do European Nations have to recieve "foreigners" in great numbers?

It is impossible to have "multiracial" States without multiculturalism. They can only come in if the conditions for them to be assimilated without changing the Nation are already in.

Afonso Henriques said...

Tuan Jim,

About the cars in the Far East (where the "revolt" took place with the police, not of Vladivostok but of Moscow) I got the number that 90% of the cars there are used Japanese Cars and half of the others are Corean (Kia, etc). That's a big challenge for the Russian Economy.

Tuan Jim said...

Yes, and Moscow wants them to buy Russian cars instead. Look at the articles I linked to. It doesn't make sense economically in any way, shape or form.

no2liberals said...

I've said it before, and I will say it again.
Thank God I Live In Texas!
Texas man cleared in shooting of burglars.
The lawful actions of a concerned citizen and neighbor are taken seriously, here.
While we have neighborhood watch programs, it is the individually armed citizens, capable and willing to defend their rights, that keep the wolves at bay.
Vigilantism is a mob, effective at times, but always a serious risk of criminal abuse.

Whiskey said...

Baron you have touched on a concern of mine.

First of all there is a "gap" between the demands of the people for safety and security and the ability of a deeply feminized, female-dominated state in the West, and the corrupt, male-dominated states in the Latin America, Middle East, and Russian nations, to provide for said security. Even if they wanted to, which largely they don't.

Traditionally, in Europe, the ME, Latin America, and Asia, the male-dominated corruption (think China before Japan's invasion in the early 1930's) invites various groups to form the nucleus of both criminal gangs and political parties in all but name to fill the gap and provide protection.

In the US, the failure of the state to provide protection was both political (infighting between Northern and Southern forces over acquiring territory that would be either Slave or Free) and a function of time and distance. Jackson "solved" the Red Stick Wars by exiling the Cherokee to Oklahoma. The "Regulators" in frontier South Carolina, Georgia, etc. "solved" the problem of banditry by vigilante hangings. Perhaps the best know was the Committee of Vigilance, made up of fed-up 49'er merchants and ex Mexican-American war vets who hung the mostly Irish gang leaders in San Francisco. So organized and formidable that Sherman himself declined to challenge them (though he later wrote a somewhat self-serving memoir where he claimed his willingness to confront them was stymied by higher-ups who were now conveniently dead).

The Committee disbanded after their points had been made. They had other things to do, basically their own businesses.

What we have in Western Europe is unique. It is female-dominated status games, for social advancement and power and social ladder climbing that drives the stop signs and inability of the police to combat crime and widespread lawlessness, aimed specifically at native Europeans by recent immigrants, be they Muslims from North Africa, or the ME, or Animist Africans, or Caribbean immigrants, etc.

It is not the case as in say, Mexico, where police are hopelessly corrupt, "plata y plomo" (silver or lead) being the offers on the menu for law enforcement, and a political class so hopelessly corrupt (and male dominated in the worst "Big Man" way btw) and afraid of physically being killed by crime bosses that nothing is done.

The police in the UK, or Belgium, or France are not in the pay of Muslim crime bosses. Muslim crime bosses do not run great swaths of criminal enterprises that dominate the entire politics of the nation, from the very top down to the very bottom, including who is elected to the town council in remote rural villages. The entire economy does not mostly depend on illegal smuggling, of drugs or other contraband. Taxes are mostly collected honestly, and the government is run mostly honestly.

Though corruption and stuff do occur in European countries, they are mostly honest and mostly efficient, and mostly not afraid of being killed by Muslim gangsters over crime-related issues.

The reason is the endless status games that dominate the ruling class, itself dominated by a female obsession with power based on status, social approval, all the "soft" attributes. As opposed to the status games of the Kremlin based on who has the most secret killers on hire, and is willing to use them.

The Western idea of "power" is a soft, female-oriented one of having the correct opinions and being a global celebrity. Russel Brand in this instance being THOUGHT more powerful than say, Vladimir Putin even though the former is silly fop and the latter a dangerous thug who can think.

As long as the top hierarchies run according to female-oriented "soft" power games of having the "correct" opinions this gap will exist.

IMHO the only organizations able to fill that gap in the West will be native criminal ones, the others being washed away by the acidity of modern social isolation. No political parties, no religious reformation ala Wilberforce and the Slave Trade (desire to end it), no political awakening. Because there are no ties that bind men together into collective action for defense of all.

Only the ongoing criminal conspiracies and organizations that have collected hard, brutal, devious men, who seek money and power and are locked out of the fairly hereditary and aristocratic power exercised by the female-oriented "soft power" elite: government officials, media, entertainment, academia, etc.

We are likely to see in the West criminal organizations take advantage of the security gap because they are the only power structure able to do so. Itself a great tragedy. Particularly if you consider the implications: such men can become Napoleons but only if they are the only choice left. They have every incentive to fuel the fire so they are the only ones with a firehose, so to speak.

Unknown said...

Not racial homogeneity, but a cultural one."

:( You ought to explain that to me. Do you tention to suck the culture out of the immigrants? Isn't that even more deshumane? To rip a man out of his identity?
Why do European Nations have to recieve "foreigners" in great numbers?


There are cultures that will generally assimilate with others. A second generation Italian American is just American. One very important underlying issue with people is also their religion. A Christian that immigrates to another Christian culture will usually assimilate. A Moslem moving from Syria to Turkey will become culturally a Turk in a decade or two.
What Europeans fail to understand is that Moslems have no intention to assimilate into a culture that they despise. Turks living in Europe enjoy the benefits for example of living in German, while calling them dirty infidels to themselves in Turkish. A second generation or twenty generation Moslem living in Europe will not assimilate into that culture. The president of Turkey for example Mr. Erdogan while visiting Turks living in Germany called for them to resist assimilating into European culture and actually called it a crime against humanity.

Unknown said...

Maybe we are too morally sophisticated to protect ourselves.

Maybe we're weaklings and cowards is what you undoubtedly want to say. Unwilling to face the realities that used to be taught -ironically- by the Catholic church.

That humans, born and left to their own devices, are cruel and uncaring profiteers. Nothing more.

Conservative Swede said...

the blatant xenophobic violence that has resulted in over 100 foreigners deaths just this year, not to mention an black US college student getting stabbed in the last month.

What I have learned to always ask myself nowadays when I hear these things is what these "people of colour" had done before. We know that this side of the story is never told. Quite as the other side of the story is never told when the "war crimes" of Israel and America is reported. Any white-on-black violence is always reported as pure hate crimes, and quite as when the Israelis respond to Jihadist thugs, the proper background is never given. I fail to understand how people uncritically still buy the MSM "hate crime" PC framing of these issues.

Read here or here to get an idea of what kind of things these brown/black people probably had done beforehand. The kind of unearthly violence described here is never committed by white people. And these thugs, these predators, do not understand any other language than violence themselves. So an under-vegetation of white mobs is entirely appropriate in a society with a significant presence of Muslims, blacks etc. The lynch mobs in the old American West were there for a very good reason. This was the sign of a good society where things were kept in balance and young virgin girls didn't have to face random gang raping including hours and yet hours of the most brutal torture, all finished of with cautic soda (or worse) poured over their faces, over their private parts, and down their throats. Every such case is on the conscience of the "sophisticated" Westerners who want to play it "pretty". These priestly types are the most decadent nihilists that ever existed, and their lack of empathy is mind boggling.

Conservative Swede said...

Have you seen the movie The Invisible Man?

Whenever I hear PC reporting of any white vs. coloured fighting, e.g. when America or Israel is fighting war against Jihadists, it makes me think of a movie scene with someone involved in a bar fight with the Invisible Man. The Invisible Man being the Muslims, the blacks or any of PCism's cherished people of colour.

The people watching see only a man bouncing around in the bar, breaking furniture, crashing bottles, flowing into people. The Invisible Man is not seen. People will tell the story of how the man did all this damage for no apparent reason. It's like having the MSM reporting America at war somewhere in the Middle East. For no apparent reason America is blowing up buildings, destroying infrastructure, and having innocent children killed.

Baron Bodissey said...

Tuan Jim --

Please don't paste long URLs into the comments; they make the post page too wide and mess up the appearance of the permalink page.

Use link tags; the instructions are at the top of the full post's comment section.

----------------------

Tuan Jim said...

If you look at the news though - it costs tens of thousands more rubles to ship a russian car from all the factories in the western part of the country to the far east region. It's much cheaper for folks in that area of the country to import used (or new) Japanese or Korean or Chinese cars.

Some stories have even laid out that there are thousands of people in the far east province (traditionally a very economically depressed region as well - without as much state aid as the west) employed in the industry of purchasing, repairing, reselling and servicing used Asian cars.

With a country as large as Russia, the Kremlin should take factors like that into account as well - I've seen that they say 1.5 millions jobs are dependent on the Russian car industry - but if the car industry is only catering (or capable of efficiently catering) to the capital region and western areas, why would you force something like that on the Far East?

a couple more links: link

link

link

Regardless of whether Putin says that they're going to get rid of the shipping duty (or use federal funds to cover it - what an improvement) - the fact is, it's ignoring a larger problem - although Afonso did point it out too.

State industries are dinosaurs anywhere you go - China's managed to dump most of them, I thought Russia had gotten rid of most in the 90s, but I guess assimilating the oligarchs hung a couple albatrosses around their necks along with the yukos moneybags.

Tuan Jim said...

Conservative Swede said: The kind of unearthly violence described here is never committed by white people. And these thugs, these predators, do not understand any other language than violence themselves. So an under-vegetation of white mobs is entirely appropriate in a society with a significant presence of Muslims, blacks etc. The lynch mobs in the old American West were there for a very good reason. This was the sign of a good society where things were kept in balance and young virgin girls didn't have to face random gang raping including hours and yet hours of the most brutal torture, all finished of with cautic soda (or worse) poured over their faces, over their private parts, and down their throats. Every such case is on the conscience of the "sophisticated" Westerners who want to play it "pretty". These priestly types are the most decadent nihilists that ever existed, and their lack of empathy is mind boggling.

Excuse me? I thought we were talking about Russia here. We can get into US crime stats and I've had great discussions about it elsewhere and we've talked about what the numbers can and can't cover up. It's been getting easier and easier to tell from a newspaper article who's involved if you read the description and areas involved - just like seeing a Sweden story that references "Malmo" - "oh, that's gotta be the Muslim immigrants now." It's a given.

We're talking about something very different with the Russian situation here and I'm not even getting my numbers and articles from the western MSM. I'm not certain what point you're trying to make by quoting a US blog on crime stats to justify "lynch mobs" in Moscow. I can't believe you would even say that randomly murdering someone - "stringing him up" without a trial or conviction - or proven guilt - is justifiable in any way shape or form. It wasn't justifiable in the old west (however much we sometimes like to romanticize it in the films - although every John Wayne flick I ever saw had him standing up to the "mob".) And it must be justifiable if they're "brown/black" or "don't look like us".

You want some more links - western and otherwise?

Russian Racists on Rise after Series of beheadings - "Sova, a hate-crime monitoring centre, says neo-Nazi gangs are now borrowing tactics from Islamic extremists as they try to incite a 'holy racial war'."

Union of Councils of Jews in the Former Soviet Union Bigotry Monitor - Dec 08

Russian experts say sentencing of skinhead murderers too lenient

Russia Profile: The age of Racism

Quote from the last link:
"....The second shocking fact was that in many cases, the murders were committed in the presence of witnesses who did not prevent these racially-motivated attacks, and sometimes did not even bother to report them to the police. The murder algorithm malfunctioned just once, in spring of 2007, a year after the gang launched its despicable activity in 2006. The witnesses of a murder of an Armenian businessman, committed by Skachevsky, reported it to a police patrol, which caught the criminal red-handed......

During the trial, both Ryno and Skachevsky behaved in a defiant way, cracking jokes and visibly enjoying the video footage of their crimes. The girl, who shot some of the video, Svetlana Avvakumova, was found not guilty by the jury by a slim margin of just one vote. The other murderers, due to their older age, got longer sentences – one sentence of 20 years, one sentence of 12 years, and two sentences of nine years....

....The widow of the murdered Armenian businessman, Marta Abramyan, was only happy about the fact that Ryno and Skachevsky will still have to pay four million rubles to her family upon their release. “I don’t need this money,” she said in an interview to the Kommersant daily. “These scumbags killed my husband in front of my children. One of my three sons, who rushed out to save his father, still stutters. At the trial, Skachevsky said that he wanted to leave the Earth to ‘white’ children. So, I will give this money to orphanages. Let him sweat his guts outs for the white children until the end of his days.”"

Seriously, I don't care if someone is a radical islamist or a college student or an illegal immigrant. Nobody has the right to beat them to death for being alive in their country. That's not being a pansy liberal nose-picker - that's respecting the rule of law and the fact that the established law of the land (and it's accompanying rights and freedoms - innocent until proven guilty) is what makes us different and better than all those countries and governments we regularly criticize.

Tuan Jim said...

"and it must be justifiable" in the last sentence of the lynch paragraph" should be "although it must be justifiable."

Afonso Henriques said...

Conservative and Tuan Jim:

Conservative Swede, I think you are too used to the Swedish/European way. Things in Russia are very different. For instance, what can possibily a nine years old Tajik girl do? Why did they kill her, stabbing the girl to death. These people are indeed criminals.

However, Conservative Swede, I think you are right and that Russia is way more healty than the rest of Europe in this regard. I don't agree wit Tuan Jim that we shall not answer "ethnics" with violence because we're superior to that...

I believe that a society as THE right to attack "ethnics" if they can find an excuse to that; that is, if the "ethnics" do not respect the majority as the majority want them to. But, to attack "ethnics" just because is wrong.

In 1507 they here massacred the New Christians aka Jews, because things that today would be seen as normal and "progressive".

Henrik R Clausen said...

Vigilante groups should not be necessary.

The operative word here is should, unfortunately. Here in Denmark the situation is not as bad as elsewhere, but we do have remarkable trouble getting rid of those foreigners who plot terrorism against Motoon artists etc. That's a problem.

Another problem is the descend of police into ineffectiveness. This is spearheaded by Antifa-style thugs who file truckloads of frivolous lawsuits against the police, and in general do a quite effective job at discrediting the police and the intelligence services. Every possible fault is dutifully examined, and the police management is jumpy at the situation, not backing their forces on the ground sufficiently.

A third problem is a botched police reform which has caused a stack of embarrasing situations where the police would not appear when called upon to stop crimes in progress. That's pretty bad.

Fourth, major events such as the clearing of Ungdomshuset and the upcoming 'Climate summit' spend so much police time that stacks of crimes go unexamined and unpunished. The order of things today is that the number of reports to the police is rising, convictions falling.

We have a kind of vigilante groups too, though not applying physical force. They call in the real police when needed, and that is quite useful. Actually, they can legally make arrests, too, and that happens occasionally.

In Denmark, self-defense against physical attack is legal, also with firearms. That is good, but we're missing a vital component, the defense of property. That, as I've said before, is a fundamental cause of civilized behaviour. It's all fine when the State is effective and the principle is widely respected.

But when the State abdicates its responsibility and the police is bogged down by bad management, red tape or fear of doing their job well, it's natural for citizens to step up, to the extent possible under the law. When the groups operate in the open, with a well-defined membership and leadership, and kick out thugs on sight, I see absolutely no problem.

Except that, as a citizen of the most tax-burdened state on Earth, I fully expect a police force so effective that citizens should not need to invest their spare time keeping the streets safe...

Czechmade said...

Tuan Jim
"Russians fought other invading peoples tooth and nail in the past centuries". Blabla.

You do not have to accuse me of anything, just list the ethnicities who found themselves a part of r. empire not invading anyone.

Start in Siberia with shamanic and buddhist folks and move westwards.
It seems Georgians unvaded R. badly many times!
(poor victims those R.)