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Monday, December 23, 2024

Reversal

 Vigilantism is kind of a right-wing trope, as I remember.  It really has nothing to do with sympathy for the victim. After all, a lot of murder victims I'm sure are bad people, like gang members being killed by other criminals. Maybe people Gotti had killed deserved it on some level, because they were brutal mafiosi like him. It is equally against the law to kill a bad person, except in self-defense.  

Why? Because it would be too easy to draw up a list of people to be killed, if the criterion were having sympathy for the victim. I saw an article today about school run the clergy in Ireland, where young boys were abused. Surely, as a gut instinct, we would be in favor of gunning down people who enabled that to happen. If it were a movie, we would be cheering for revenge, and in fact that is the plot of many movies. 

But I think vigilante justice remains a right-wing trope. I know that even when I am participating in it by watching a movie that relies on this trope for its entire plot, its entire emotional appeal.  


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