It is certainly becoming more obvious to many liberals and those on the left that one of the worst instances of the attribution of human rights to artificial entities was when a Supreme Court clerk, NOT EVEN A "JUSTICE" BUT A CLERK! created the "person hood" of corporations which subsequent Supreme Courts have used to set up corporations over and above mere, mortal, limited human beings, especially those who are discriminated against and who have little or no money. Even liberals of the stupidest sort can see the catastrophic results of the creation of such rights for artificial entities in that case.
To then grant such rights to creations of not only human ingenuity but to human malignant intent is ever so much more absurd. Video games are exactly such entities, those made to become addictive through appealing to the worst in us, self-gratifying hatreds and fantasies of power and domination and destruction of the kind under discussion. Such games, especially given the position that "gamer culture" has played in the recent rise of white supremacist, racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, anti-Muslim and other violence, the denial of the role that such intentional messaging has played in the pandemic of terrorist violence in the United States is worse than delusional, it is willfully and enablingly blind.
Last night Rachel Maddow reminded us of the violent white supremacist, neo-Nazi racist Tom Metzger and how it was proven to at least a preponderance of the evidence (perhaps beyond any reasonable doubt of the jury) in court that he incited murder and was made to pay with most of his property to the family of a victim of the violence done by others incited by him. One of the ways he sold his hatred in the 1980s was through a cable TV show, spewed out over those old cables in the unregulated world of cable TV the direct precursor of the unregulated internet. I have read that the aged Metzger is now host of an unregulated internet program though there are sites I won't click on - maybe when I have mastered using disposable linux operating systems on USB and not risk infecting a hard drive.
One of the keys to the hate-talk of the 1980s was in mixing entertainment with the hate messaging, appealing to a degenerate form of pop culture which, ironically, such hate-talk comedians as Andrew Dice Clay were a more publicly and so mainstream expression of. That Clay is Jewish and would be more likely a prime target of his fellow "anti-political correctness" devotees even as he competed with them for his share of the lucrative market in racist and misogynist alpha-macho-male promotion, is worth a series in itself. His more recent more mainstreaming has included a praised appearance in a Woody Allen movie. Woody Allen is, for me, a monument of the disaster that 1950s-60s style secular liberalism has been, something that makes me suspicious of its tropes of civic piety, even those I used to hold with, before I fact checked and thought about it.
My question is why, with those obvious and clear examples of the same thing that the current racist, misogynistic, white-supremacist, anti-Muslim, antisemetic, etc. manifestation in online video gaming - REMEMBER GAMERGATE, FOR PETE'S SAKE - are veiled under the protective pseudo-rights language of "First Amendment" in these current cases that end up with far more people murdered in a far more extensive terror campaign. Tom Metzgers quaint use of hate-talk media when cable-TV was its most effective venue is held up as a great example of how to effectively protect ourselves and our fellow Americans but one of the foremost venues for peddling that hatred to the most liable to kill people is now sacrosanct.
I would like to know why I shouldn't conclude that Adam Lanza's choice to murder grade school children and younger was not motivated by the video games he was addicted to. That isn't only known IT IS PART OF THE OFFICIAL REPORT ON THAT EMBLEMATIC EXAMPLE OF HOW BAD THIS IS.
The report says: “The obvious question that remains is: ‘Why did the shooter murder 26 people, including 20 children?’ Unfortunately, that question may never be answered conclusively, despite the collection of extensive background information on the shooter through a multitude of interviews and other sources.”
It goes on: “The evidence clearly shows that the shooter planned his actions, including the taking of his own life, but there is no clear indication why he did so, or why he targeted Sandy Hook elementary school.”
One aspect of the report that is likely to be pored over by both sides of the gun control debate is the evidence of Lanza's computer game obsessions that was discovered in his bedroom in the basement of his Newtown home. The investigation report lists 12 video games, found in the gaming area of the room, which had violent content, including popular titles such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto . Others included Left for Dead, Dead Rising, Vice City and Doom.
A computer game called School Shooting, which features a character controlled by the player who enters a school and shoots students, was also found.
Call me an enemy of "civil liberties" but I can see no reason I should hold that the "School Shooting" game has a right to the presumption of innocence.
Update: Apparently the example of the victims of Adam Lanza leaves someone unmoved. How about this from the New York Times in regard to Robert Bowers, the mass murderer who attacked the Synagogue in Pittsburg, AFTER it notes his use of Gab, a site set up by a First Amendment Absolutists-free speecy huckster, whining about the attempt of others to at least make a show of reigning in hate speech.
Discord, a chat app
built for video gamers, became a haven of white nationalists last
year, who used the service to plan and execute the “Unite the
Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. The company subsequently shut
down several large far-right groups, but many have since reappeared.
On Saturday, a
Discord channel populated by neo-Nazis filled with chatter and gossip
about Mr. Bowers’s possible involvement in a mass shooting of Jews.
Several members praised Mr. Bowers, while others criticized him for
jeopardizing the neo-Nazi movement’s long-term prospects by
resorting to violence.
“This guy just
blew out the kneecaps of the movement in order to kill some no name
Jews,” one member wrote.
A Discord
spokeswoman said the company had investigated and found some accounts
that violated its terms of service, which it deleted, although she
said the accounts were not directly linked to the shooting.
On Gab, however, the
talk was less about Mr. Bowers and the anti-Jewish movement, and more
about what was happening to the platform itself. On Saturday, as
Gab’s service providers began to cut ties, one of the most popular
posts on the site speculated that the company was being unfairly
targeted because “Gab is the free speech platform Jews want to
destroy.”
Asked if Gab would
be changing any of its policies in response to the mass shooting, Mr.
Torba gave an unequivocal answer.
“Absolutely not.”
Am I the only person who remembers reading this stuff? I ask because it doesn't seem to have entered into the memories of people you'd expect would remember this kind of stuff, such is the power of the slogans of "free speech - free press" to induce a sort of "civil liberties" amnesia to go along with other habits of non-thought among those on the secular left. It is a perverted morality that places the rights of hate speech over the lives of the victims the hate speech endorses murdering.
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