Sunday, August 14, 2016

I like talking to people I meet. But what do you say to a guy with a huge swastika tattoo?

I like talking to people. I can find something good or beautiful in everyone I meet. And I've met some nasty people. What do you say to a guy with a huge swastika tattoo? "Nice Ancient Greek symbol you got there"?
Maybe what you say is the same kinds of things you say to non-threatening people. Talk about the weather, maybe he’s got a cool wristwatch. Pretty soon you might know more stuff about him than you want to. And he might come out of the isolation of his white supremacist world for a little while.


It was the time when the Crips, Bloods & MS-13 were pouring into Coatesville looking for a piece of the action in a town where the PD was decimated by a new city council & city manager & unqualified PD chief.
I looked for any new gang graffiti when I drove across the east side Coatesville bridge.
A kid, maybe 20 years old was shivering at a bus stop just across the bridge. It's across the street from Coatesville Area High School and on the same side of the street as a Methadone clinic. It was cold, about 40 degrees. He was shivering because he was shirtless. He had a large maybe 8-inch across swastika tattoo in the middle of his chest. He might have seemed frightening to some people. But he looked vulnerable and scared to me.

I wonder what kind of life is ahead for the big swastika tattoo kid. Would he have the swastika removed? Or would he add to them like this guy:

SPLC Southern Poverty Law Center
by Bill Morlin
August 12, 2016


An undercover investigation by a Pennsylvania State Trooper led to the arrest and conviction of a white supremacist cell that planned to bomb the Peach Bottom Nuclear Reactor. 
"In addition to the anonymous trooper, whose name is not being released because of his undercover status at a Chester County state police barracks, West Goshen Detective Sgt. Gregory Stone and Coatesville Detective Martin Quinn were recognized for their investigative work that led to the guilty pleas or convictions of a number of violent local criminals. 
 'The local police and local prosecutors are and must be the first line of defense in defeating crime in Chester County," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas P. Hogan Jr. "Chester County residents are incredibly lucky to have such good police officers taking care of them on a day-to-day basis.'... 
 Hogan said the white supremacist cell was meeting on a regular basis in western Chester County -- in the Honey Brook and Parkesburg areas -- as well as over the border into Lancaster County for years before their arrests in 2002. 
 'The frightening thing about Hull is not just that he hates people because of their race and not just that he wants to be violent, but that he’s teaching people how to hate and how to be violent,' said Hogan. 'He’s telling people how to make bombs, where to put them and where they’ll do the most damage." 
 FROM: 
Local police receive awards 
Daily Local News  
GINA ZOTTI , Staff Writer  
Go to:
Saturday, April 18, 2009You may walk by them at the mall, on the street or at a "Tea Party"..


There's a new movie this summer. It's kind of prescient, considering the explosion of white supremacist groups in mainstream politics.  It's about an undercover FBI agent in a white supremacist organization.

It's like the undercover PA State Police investigation of that led to the arrest and conviction of white supremacist David Wayne Hull in Parkesburg, PA in 2009.


"My dad's from Northern Ireland — he grew up during the Troubles. I grew up with an awareness that terrorists come from everywhere and have all sorts of motivations, and so it seemed like that was a very relevant thing," Radcliffe recently told Business Insider before a TimesTalks event to promote "Imperium," which is out on August 19. "But I don't think either of us envisaged that white supremacy might take this sort of bizarre jag toward the mainstream or rather that the mainstream might jag toward that by the time it came out." 

Instead, Ragussis said that a feeling of victimization and oppression is "the seed" of totalitarian movements that is "far more prerequisite of it than a figure like Mussolini or Hitler." 
 
Radcliffe told Business Insider that, in the process of making the film, he decided that talking to people on the fringes of politics is the most important way to move forward:  
"Somebody's life who prior to that had no meaning suddenly feels like they are engaged in something meaningful, and I think my biggest takeaway from this film is that, as much as we want to demonize these people and in a way demonize their views, we should try and find a way of getting them into this conversation, unfortunately as awful as that sounds, because the more you ostracize them and aggressively dismiss them, the more it just plays into their worldview that everything is a conspiracy against them."  
Ragussis, who joined Radcliffe in an interview with Business Insider, agreed, saying that catchall terms like "monster" aren't helpful.  
"They don't give you any access as to the mechanism that's going on there and why the people are behaving the way they are," Ragussis said. "I think if you're going to try to dismantle that or change it, you have to understand what's going on and what's happening."
MORE AT:
Business Insider
The surprising thing Daniel Radcliffe learned while playing a white supremacist in his new movie
by Meryl Gottlieb
 Aug. 11, 2016, 2:20 PM


No comments:

Post a Comment

You can add your voice to this blog by posting a comment.