Eurydice Dixon

[David]

I actually hope nothing happens to this guy (beyond getting his just deserts in court). I know what he did was awful, but having looked at his lengthy Facebook rants and YouTube videos about scientology, he clearly isn’t well. In a way, the death threats he is receiving are worse than his defacing of the memorial, particularly if some hero decides to actually carry them out.

[Nick - Pie Man]

Not sure what it is about social media which encourages this sort of behaviour. All I know is it makes people express thoughts that normally would and should not be published.

[Mugwump]

We really should bring in a system of something like traffic fines for people who post threatening material on social media. It’d be a good revenue raiser, and improve the tone of life generally. No doubt someone will tell me it couldn’t be done, but where there is a will, etc.

[KenH]

[Nick - Pie Man]

Sounds like a good idea. Ita not as hard as it used to be to connect facebook accounts with their owners these days.

[David]

The irony is that these direct and indirect threats of violence are (presumably at least in part) exercises in virtue-signalling – that is to say, people associate virtue with the concept of deliberately inflicting harm on “bad” people. Our species has a long way to go...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/27/the-root-of-all-cruelty

[Mugwump]

^ you have posted that article before. I thought it was just as far off the mark the second time. The Nazi pogroms share almost nothing useful in common with statutory punishment for murder after trial. Nor did the Nazi pogroms share much aetiology with (say) the act of the spurned lover or the robber who kills to escape recognition.

Despite the article’s contention, some acts of violence are formed by ignorance or denial of the other person’s subjectivity ; others happen because of it. I can’t see why the article impresses you so.

I do agree that the vigilantes who are threatening this sad person think they are in the right. People who think that they are in the right and have the right to act purely because their own consciences tell them so, and who think that they alone have the right to define or threaten due punishment, are always dangerous.

[David]

^ The contention I find most interesting within it is the idea that violence is, so often, a 'moral' act (and that, by extension, morality is violent in nature). An idea that I've thought about for a long time, but haven't seen expressed so clearly until I read that article.

[Mugwump]

^ it sometimes is, and it sometimes isn’t. And sometimes the person committing such an act rationalises it as being just when they probably know it isn’t. If the “justice served” rationalization doesn’t necessarily fit most cases, it’s only a variable that explains some percentage. It’s like saying misogyny causes most murders. Some it does, some it doesn’t. And where it does, I think we were already pretty aware of what those cases look like. So I don’t see how that article adds much at all.

If its real agenda is to suggest that retributive justice by the state is akin to Nazism or vigilantism, then it makes a very bad fist of that argument.

[HAL]

How specifically does misogyny cause most murders?

[stui magpie]

Lots and lots of keyboard warriors round these days.

The number of Filipino's who jumped on Twitter to lay into anyone associated with the Australian Mens Basketball team was ridiculous. Insults and death threats were par for the course.

Some of the crap that Jason Todd (father of the man accused of Eurydice's murder) copped online was appalling.

[Pies4shaw]

I was a little concerned that his name was published by the Press - in the scheme of things, what he did was minor, albeit it was tasteless, stupid and reprehensible. I wonder whether there was much public interest in disclosing his name. If the Press published the name of every minor offender who had done something tasteless, stupid and reprehensible, there’d be no room for actual news (even if we all tacitly agreed that Carlton supporters need not be named individually).

[David]

^ Looking at the comments on his Facebook page – some of which are clear, direct threats of violent retribution – I couldn't help but think they'd made a huge mistake in publishing his name and photograph. There's a lot of understandable fury and sadness in the wake of Dixon's death, and with no opportunity to attack the actual perpetrator (who is behind lock and key and out of the public eye), it's not at all surprising that all of that fury is being turned directly onto the man who vandalised her memorial. A case in point: one commenter claims that "capital punishment should be brought back for scum like this" – which I think says a lot about how emotional and irrational calls for capital punishment so often are.

[stui magpie]

Capital punishment for a nimrod who drew a large self portrait to get up the nose of feminists and utterly disrespected a memorial for a murdered woman?

Only if we get an open hunting season on Carlton supporters.

[HAL]

Do you think everyone will agree?