I canceled my subscription to Fox Nation. It renews at the beginning of May so before it expires I’m finishing up my watchlist.
Fox did a documentary series called Scandalous. One two-part episode, titled Subway Vigilante, was on the Bernie Goetz shooting.
The amazing thing about watching that is that it could have taken place last year, in terms of how the shooting was covered by the media and the politics involved.
Crime was at epidemic proportions in New York in the 1980s, largely due to a lack of policing and prosecution. One of the facts that I learned was the Goetz had been previously mugged, beaten up, and his property stolen. The mugger was arrested and charged with only criminal mischief.
This is exactly what we see today. The lack of prosection and the pleading down of serious violent crimes to petty offenses by career criminals has led to crime waves in major cities across the country.
Goetz applied for a concealed carry permit in NYC and it was denied for lack of good cause. This is important because in his first grand jury trial, he was only indicted for gun possession. It stood out to me how tectonic the Bruen decision is and how vital it is that it is fully enforced in places like NYC.
After the first grand jury failed to indict him for attempted murder of the four people he shot, the Manhattan DA took another crack at it. They offered the men shot by Goetz immunity in exchange for their testimony. All the men shot by Goetz had extensive criminal records. One was even in prison for assault, robbery, and rape at the time of the second grand jury.
The Manhattan DA had no problem not prosecuting violent career criminals and rapists, but had a huge grudge against a man who shot career criminals.
Between the first and second grand juries, the DA and the media tried and convicted Goetz in the court of public opinion.
The narrative went from a meek man who defended himself against four thugs on a subway to a white racist who shot four black boys. It was largely on the basis of that narrative that they got the second grand jury to indict.
Every aspect of the Goetz media coverage and trial was present in Zimmerman and Rittenhouse cluster-fucks.
Citizens who defended themselves from career thugs, who ended up being accused of being racist murderers.
Another aspect that hasn’t changed is the way The Narrative rebrands self-defense as “taking the law into your own hands” or vigilantism. It is fundamentally not vigilantism to use force to defend oneself at the moment of imminent bodily harm. But by rebranding it that way, the people who support The Narrative can get ordinary citizens to turn against the idea of self-defense.
Again. something used against Zimmerman and Rittenhouse.
For forty fucking years Progressive politicians and The Narrative they push have been the same.
They don’t do anything to tamp down crime until an honest person shoots a career criminal, then that person gets the full weight of the law thrown against them.
Even though race played no role in the motivation for self-defense The Narrative will make the matter into one of white racism and black victims.
If they can’t convict you in court, they will convict you in the court of public opinion and ruin your life afterward.
There is so much detail that I’m glossing over, but I could probably sit down and write a book that compared the media and government tactics across the Goetz, Zimmerman, and Rittenhouse trials that without names, you couldn’t tell the difference between them.