Landlord charged with hate crime, accused of stabbing 6-year-old tenant to death allegedly because family is Muslim

ZeroCool@feddit.ch to News@lemmy.world – 754 points –
Landlord charged with hate crime, accused of stabbing 6-year-old tenant to death allegedly because family is Muslim | CNN
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Thanks Republican party! Your rhetoric, bullshit, and gaslighting of your voters caused this.

Also Fox News.

And to be honest, the problem is much deeper.

America was founded on racism and slavery. The belief that white people are superior to brown and black people sits very deep with many Americans.

The enthouisam of those Americans to see Palestinian children die in Gaza is just vile and disgusting.

I really hope that the more progressive and enlightened Americans can figure out how to get rid of it.

The enthouisam of those Americans to see Palestinian children die in Gaza is just vile and disgusting.

The real irony is many of those same folks are anti-Jewish in nearly every other context.

I really hope that the more progressive and enlightened Americans can figure out how to get rid of it.

I thought a lot of this shit was settled already when I was a kid. Turns out it not only wasn't, but we've managed to roll some things backwards since then. I waffle between being sure we've got the critical mass to make lasting change now and beingg sure my great grandkids are going to be fighting and arguing over all these same issues.

As an American Jew, I've almost gotten used to antisemitism from the right. From being told to my face "the only thing Hitler did wrong was not finishing the job" to having public Jewish displays vandalized to literal Nazis marching in the street being referred to as "very fine people."

What has surprised me recently was the number of anti-semitic comments from the left. I'm fine with people criticizing Israel and pushing for better treatment of the Palestinian people. That's not antisemitism and I'd actually agree with them. However, I've seen people on the left celebrating the attack, making fun of babies being killed, and even claiming that an attack on an American temple and bakery are justified because they are "symbols of the Jewish/Zionist state."

I know many on the left aren't anti-semitic, but it just feels so frightening to be targeted from both sides of the aisle - especially for Israel's actions when I, as an American Jew, have zero control over what they do.

I can only empathize - I don't have a similar situation but I'm sure it's difficult and creates a feeling of unease.

Sorry!

I'm definitely on the side that feels Israel takes their reaction too far when things like this happen, but I can't justify blaming individual Israeli citizens for that, let alone US Jews. It's just a bad situation over there, and far too many people have what they think are fair reasons to justify their hatred.

The real irony is many of those same folks are anti-Jewish in nearly every other context.

Yep. It's not that conservatives give a shit about Jews; they very much don't. What they care about is Israel existing as a precondition for Armageddon so that they can get Raptured. In other words, they're psychopathic doomsday cultists and their support of Israel is purely selfish.

War is hell and Israel is teaching Palestine why it is.

Peace is also hell if you live in Palestine. Israel isn't teaching them anything they didn't already know.

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They can declare all the war they want. What they are actually doing is cowardly murder.

... And have been for over 60 years while they occupy their land.

Forgot that part. No biggie though, sure it was an honest mistake.

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He's 71 and obviously mentally ill. And yes, rightwing stochastic terrorism led him to this path.

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Conservatives are so fucking cowardly, they’re afraid of children now? When will that entire party be officially considered a hate group? Because i think now would be a good time.

(Continuing:)

"So you care about people with jobs?"

Conservatives: Hah! Unions shouldn't be legal, workers are lucky to get paid. We should eliminate minimum wage, let the free market decide what you're worth, if anything.

"You support the free market... So you don't mind my selling pride accessories and clothing?"

Conservatives: Pride is pornographic, and endangers children. We need to restore morality and decency in society, keep children safe!

"In that case, you surely condemn child trafficking, abuse and pedophilia?"

Conservatives: hey it's fine for adult men to have relationships with teenage girls, that's when they're most fertile! Plus the Bible has no problems with it.

"The Bible also says to love your neighbor, turn the other cheek."

Conservatives: That's weak minded effeminate liberal nonsense, we should rule with iron fists and show no mercy.

"Are you saying you do know how to rule?"

Conservatives: lol we can't even decide who to elect as our leader, much less govern effectively. Honestly we're just here for the grift and free healthcare.

"..."

“Are you saying you do know how to rule?”

More like:

Conservatives: Don't tread on me! Government is expensive, i don't want to pay taxes! The government should stay out of my life!

Then continue into the mob justice rants and pigeonhole them into describing how they would rather have a fascist dictator than anything else.

Ron DeSantis is currently afraid of a 15 year old who asks him questions. His security detail treats the kid like a security threat

Currently...several months ago

Oh ok did you guys hear that? He did it several months ago, so no reason to let it reflect on his character! Never mind then!

I'm sure he's changed a lot since then lol

They are afraid of everything that's doesn't fit into their little religious bubble. Years of brainwashing with 24/7 "news" cycles telling them what to be afraid of (anything but them).

The people that make that "news" need to be tried in The Hague.

Wtf? You people are insane

You make a solid arguments defending your point.

Oops, wrong user

I'm not the guy who tried to claim an insane murderer is somehow representative of an entire political party.

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The boy was stabbed 26 times and succumbed to his injuries, the sheriff’s office said.

The 32-year-old woman, who had more than a dozen stab wounds, is recovering at the hospital and is expected to survive, the office said.

What kind of sick piece of shit has the capability to stab a 6 year old once much less 26 times?

Extremists who have fallen for the dehumanization of Muslims. It's just another example of why all the dehumanization and pro-genocide rhetoric coming out of Israel's government and social media is so dangerous.

Also American Christian Zionism. Israel can only get away with it the way they do because the genocide had forgien backing

Shot, even the Israelis are more critical of their government compared to the average American Zionist.

A MAGA piece of shit. They’re terrified of everything now.

The same type of people that are capable of stabbing babies in their cribs.

At least in this case no one is making any excuses.

A 6 year old was stabbed 26 times.

#26 TIMES!!!

I have a nephew around that age. He fell off his bike 2 weeks ago and cried his eyes out because he scraped his knee on the road.

The fact that the coward is so old too. He lived a full life. Whether he lives or does in prison is irrelevant. No matter what his punishment is, it's unjustified.

26 times man. The poor mom. Fuck, imagine escaping the hell in Palestine, thinking you've finally made it and can actually make a life in the US, and this is what you get. Life is so incredibly unfair for some. That's what conservatives don't understand. They simply cannot fathom any scenario that doesn't affect them personally.

Fuck, imagine escaping the hell in Palestine, thinking you've finally made it and can actually make a life in the US, and this is what you get.

Well I'm going to get a tiny bit of hate for this, but both her and the killer went to live on the graves of the Native Americans who were genocided to free that land. So maybe it's not entirely as innocent as you describe it

Well I'm going to get a tiny bit of hate for this

Ha, well at least you're aware.

both her and the killer went to live on the graves of the Native Americans who were genocided to free that land. So maybe it's not entirely as innocent as you describe it

Neither her or the scum that killed her child were responsible for the Genocide of the Native Americans.

A lady escaped the hell of Palestine and ended up losing her child in a horrific and extremely violent murder. This is not the time to mention the Natives. The only people who need to hear about them are the people choosing to govern the nation.

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What the fuck is it with all these comments taking the horrific news of a 6 year old being stabbed 26 times in a hate crime.... and they respond with some witty "gotcha" comments against the other side? Like am I crazy? Did anyone else get that vibe?

Anyway so...

On Saturday, Israel’s military 

Ah. Just when I was wondering why they even bothered to write and publish this tragedy that so often gets ignored .... yes that's right! That shit is trending!

I think I fucking hate the internet now.

I'm sure a good portion of them are from the Hexbear community that many have defederated from. I'm glad for defederation because I don't have to see their toxic, disrespectful comments. People who want to leave defederation up to individuals must not be familiar with the Paradox of Tolerance.

Here's the problem I have with the whole wack-ass federation system:

Those Hexbear trolls could just make accounts on other instances and keep messing with people without consequences.

Most major Lemmy instances aren't heavily moderated and the ones that are are only modded to serve the emotional whims of the mods and admins, and not for the benefit of the users.

The whole-ass structure still has a hierarchy and therefore is still problematic.

Except other instances don't allow hate speech and behavior like Hexbear admins do. Their whole instance is dedicated to trolling and spreading hate and disinformation. So they really can't just go anywhere and act like they do.

That's not gonna stop them. They can arbitrarily make as many accounts as they need to do it, and just bounce from account to account one comment at a time if necessary.

Most people have at least a few alts on other instances simply by virtue of instance shopping. Meaning most people already can evade bans.

It's just a bad, broken system.

A bad and broken system isn't an excuse for doing nothing about a problem.

Defederation is the best option available.

Much better than requiring individuals to block toxic instances.

I agree with you. I am merely pointing out the facts of the matter, that's all.

People who don't have skin in the game often like to point out the facts, or play devil's advocate.

And yet here I am, telling you facts being the one to suffer the most from calling them out, while nothing bad happens to you. Fancy that

Once again your interest in the subject has nothing to do with the subject themselves and everything to do with you. It's not about what's best for the community but what is interesting and relevant to you.

And it does, because I am the one who has been calling out popular instances for this crap since day one and have been banned repeatedly for it. To which you don't bat an eye because who cares what happens to an inebriated pachyderm? Instance admins would never abuse their power to protect their feelings or cover up their wrongdoing with you. You're kind and sober, after all.

Ask yourself where it is you're going to go when .world admins ban you for criticizing them, or other innocuous shit like your political speech, or simply because they don't like you. .world controls the vast majority of Lemmy's userbase so what happens to you and any followings you build then? What will happen when major protests erupt next year and they censor people like fucking Reddit did?

All I can do is warn you. And once again you'll refuse to listen to me because you're too busy, how did you put it? Making it all about you and your hurt feelings from my words instead of displaying the humility and wisdom required to do what's right. And the one who will pay the price for it is you.

That’s not gonna stop them. They can arbitrarily make as many accounts as they need to do it, and just bounce from account to account one comment at a time if necessary.

There's a finite number of servers though that they can create accounts on.

The admins of those servers would notice someone spamming account creations just to make comments and bypass bans.

What you're describing is not a federation issue, it's a server admin issue.

If they have that much spare time then let them. They can rule over lemmy and the rest of us get to enjoy the actual world while they're tied up screaming at their keyboards.

I usually agree with this sentiment, but I honestly think Hexbear users have had better takes than the other average user on this. It's generally not the hexbear users I see trying to justify violence in this case. Mostly they're against it. I have plenty of issues with hexbear, but at least be accurate with criticism.

Then join their server so sane people can be spared from you both

Lol. Just because I defend them once after critiquing them dozens of times probably, you tell me to go there. You're as bad as they are.

My instance isn't defederated from them though so I'd have no reason to. I wouldn't care if it were defederated really because generally they're annoying assholes. I guess you guys have that in common.

Nice try. Back to Hexbear with you.

Check my comment history. I've had many arguments with them. I'm not from hexbear, but in this one situation they have been mostly better than the average Lemmy user from what I've seen. They're almost all anti-violence in this situation in my experience, though some are more violently anti-Zionist which is pretty fair considering how many die because the Zionists can do it without consequences.

They're not anti violence. They're anti self defense by groups they don't care about.

They call for nuking western whites (that is genocide). Don't defend those hypocritical twats, they just want to kill anyone who disagrees.

Everything about this is just so fucking horrible. The kid just celebrated a birthday, I've got toddlers around the same age, I can't even imagine what kind of person could do that to another person, let alone a kid that young. The attacker is a 71 year old man, so basically he's dying in prison now, probably deluded by some BS propaganda on Fox News or Newsmax or whatever the fuck.

All I want for Christmas is for those that own and profit off of right wing propaganda networks to get what they deserve.

(Insert the most grotesque form of torture you can imagine here)

That would be a nice start.

Fuck crime, fuck immigration, fuck the national debt, the biggest problem facing America is the unfettered spread of completely untrue propaganda as "fact" by "legitimate" news sources that has seemingly 2 purposes: keep Republicans in power, and make conservatives hate/angry at their fellow citizens.

Trumps fault

Okay I'm ignorant on this one.. can someone tell me how? Idk how to begin to Google this and I'm genuinely asking.

Trump’s campaign and political rhetoric has escalated violence against minorities in general- and in particular Muslim and hispanic people; who he used as scapegoats.

His rhetoric has normalized the concept of political violence emboldening the the far-right to act in exactly this manner.

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And now he's in nazi-courting mode again, so he's dropped all the pro-Israel talking points for the time being. As if we needed more evidence that orange man has literally zero principles.

Thank you! I'm sorry I didn't know how to explain this. I didnt mean how but what context did trump contribute to these particular in and out groups. What you explained is this biggest reason I hate him and why I'm so scared of him.

I really appreciate it and I didn't know there was a term for what I felt about him!

Speech is free, but should still have consequences. This country has been very openly hostile to people of all darker colors. I was so deluded growing up thinking of the melting pot. But all that are lies.

I was so deluded growing up thinking of the melting pot.

Me too! I made it to my twenties thinking racism and bigotry were solved problems except a few corner cases. It gave me blinders that I don't think I fully shook off until I was in my late forties.

Conservatives are terrorists. Let's call a spade a spade.

As an aside, there's several stories of conservative Qanon parents killing their kids too. CPS should remove children from their parents if they are conservatives homeschooling and not vaccinating.

They're proud of that fact.

My god.

This should never be forgotten. They played it for laughs. Claimed the sign was in "Protest".

But they said it, they laughed about it, and then they tried to sweep it under the rug.

Why are so many comments raging against conservatives? Not just in this post but in others too. The article doesn't mention political allegiance. Where does politics come into it?

Edit: lol, a few downvotes but no answers. Come on, enlighten me. I'm not American, and I feel out the loop.

Generally speaking its usually conservatives who freak the fuck out about muslims. Especially since its an older guy who was probably being fed conservative propaganda via talk radio and fox news. They have a noted history of dehumanizing anyone who well I cant give a good example other than saying those they "other" pretty hard to give a non broad definition when the old rule of thumb of them going after non WASPs is becoming less of a rule itself.

Also generally speaking when crimes like this happen with more liberal or left leaning folks its completely scattershot on who they target. Or its against a known factor who they had a grudge against.

Mind you I aint saying if this guy was conservative or not who knows maybe he's devolopt fucking Dementia and got taken back to the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and promptly had a fucking mental break.

Wtf is hate crime? This is murder, not a posting on Xitter.

EDIT: Got it. Just in my country murder based on "political, ideological, racial or religious hate or enmity to some group" counts as worse murder, not as two separate crimes.

I'll save you some time and give you the definition by merriam webster:

any of various crimes (such as assault or defacement of property) when motivated by hostility to the victim as a member of a group (such as one based on color, creed, gender, or sexual orientation)

It's murder (a crime) with racism as the main motivator.

Hate crime (not hate speech) is an aggravating circumstance to a given crime (in this case, murder) that in many places carries a harsher sentence.

That this is a murder is obvious. That this may be part of some "retaliation" against Muslims is what makes this world news (though not in the Reddit/Lemmy sense).

A hate crime is a crime that specifically targets a member of a protected class due to their membership in a protected class. It warrants additional punishment since it may make members of the protected class more hesitant to participate in civil society (for example, after hearing about this murder, a Muslim parent might be afraid to let their child go to a friend's house).

Typical landlord mentality

I hate landlords too, but killing six year old tenants in cold blood with a knife is - thankfully - very atypical landlord behavior.

it's so weird, right? you'd assume that the landlord has seen the mother and child before...and after the whole israel-palestine conflict, he just suddenly becomes violent towards them? the propaganda he watches must be super unhinged

From the local news reporting he was very friendly to them previously:

"What we have is a murdered Palestinian child by someone who is radicalized by the environment in which we live right now, that casts Palestinians as human animals," said Ahmed Rehab, president of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Chicago. "This person had no track record with the family. As a matter of fact, the father says he had built a treehouse for the boy, and allowed him to swim in a makeshift pool and brought him toys."

The nonstop propaganda about Muslims as dangerous subhuman animals can turn a normal friendly relationship into a targeted and cold-blooded murder.

Maybe in previous covid years he suffered a stroke or something else that made him rapidly go demented. There was no talk about Palestine\Israel before the music fest terror. It's too short of a window for that change otherwise.

There has been more than enough ongoing anti-Muslim propaganda in conservative media to prime people to just need a single horrific act and the terminology escalation that follows to push them over the edge.

We can speculate about mental deterioration or whatever, but that just makes people more susceptible to the propaganda. Without flooding the airwaves about the inhumanity and danger of Muslims there isn't the trigger to go get those specific people.

You are right. It's wrong and intense. If you turn off your filters, you'd get insane real quick. What's probably happened there.

I'm just guessing about this surprising and fast switch and a couple of my coworkers got exactly that with their elderly in a recent couple of years. A degradation from regular adults to not knowing how to brush their teeth and reacting to any annoyance like a baby in an adult body.

You pointing this out is important because not all of us have a learnt adblock and many people, especially children, are endangered by this shit.

This landlord that was involved in the incident in the Chicago area this week...
The one that killed a tenant?
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
Well, how was it un-typical?
Well there are a lot of these landlords owning rental properties around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that landlords aren’t safe.
Was this landlord safe?
Well, I was thinking more about the other ones.
The ones that are safe?
Yeah, the ones that don't kill their tenants.
Well, if this wasn’t safe, why did it own the property?
I’m not saying it wasn’t safe, it’s just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones.
Why?
Well, some of them are raised so that they don't kill their tenants at all.
Wasn’t he raised to not kill his tenants?
Well, obviously not.
How do you know?
Well, because he stabbed a six year old boy twenty-six times, and his mother more than a dozen times. It’s a bit of a giveaway. I’d just like to make the point that that is not normal.
Well what sort of housing standards are these landlords held to?
Oh, very rigorous realty standards.
What sort of thing?
Well, they're not supposed to stab their tenants for a start.
And what other things?
Well, there are regulations governing the materials their apartments can be made of.
What materials?
Well, cardboard’s out.
And?
No cardboard derivatives.
Like paper?
No paper. No string. No sellotape.
Rubber?
No, rubber’s out. Umm, they’ve got to have a toilet. There’s a minimum room count requirement.
What’s the minimum room count?
Oh, one I suppose.

thank you Clarke and Dawe