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Friday, October 24, 2008

The abuse of anonymity. I do not mean blog-anonymous. I mean indefensible things done in the community.

Strib, PiPress and now an AP feed by reporter Patrick Condon which is going nationwide, (for example here, here, here and here), have reported parallel vandalizing [graffiti] of the Coleman, Klobuchar, Ellison, Kline and Ramstad homes, and the old Bachmann home in Stillwater.

"Psalm2" is one repeated motif, with the PiPress item showing a photograph of the Coleman garage with that marking, then by a sidebar linking over to bible text (Why do the heathen rage, ...), here, here or here.

Annendale Advocate, here, reports of a particularly offensive Obama-Biden sign vandalization. Blueman provides the image:



Vandalized yard signs are not new. Usually the signs and rebar are taken, or the signs ripped loose or in two. This puts a clear and threatening hate crime dimension to things.

The home graffiti has a threatening dimension also.

All of this is not new - bigots of whatever kind not putting their "statement" on their own homesite where the "speech" is backed up by identifying the "speaker."

THESE ACTS ARE BY PEOPLE WELL KNOWING THEY ARE DOING WRONG. THAT IS WHY THEY DO IT ANONYMOUSLY. THEY ARE UNWILLING TO STAND AND FACE REPERCUSSIONS OF THEIR ACTS.

The Obama-Biden sign is, in terms of property damage and remedial burden the least offensive. In terms of the message, it offends most.

This occurs at a time where I independently came across two parallel John Sack items, an article he wrote and a speech he gave to a Holocaust denial conference, on the nature of hate, revenge, and how it harms not only the target but the hater.

Here and here.

I have seen and found online Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You, [here and here], and Letter to a Hindu, which was influential on Gandhi and his passive resistance non-violent view of change and attaining it short of might makes right neocon kinds of thinking. It sits quite contrary to the kinds of things these anonymous people seem to convey about themselves and their motivations. I think it is a perspective that is helpful in viewing these present acts of vandals and the hate crime question.