Counter-Currents
2,148 words
The shooting of Ahmaud Arbery on February 23, 2020, made national headlines after a video of the incident surfaced last week. Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was “jogging” near Brunswick, Georgia, when he was confronted by two white men, Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, who were arrested on May 7. The incident has, unsurprisingly, received extensive coverage, and thousands of people have flocked to social media to signal their sympathy for Arbery under the hashtag #RunWithMaud. As usual, the narrative put forth by the mainstream media — that Arbery was an innocent jogger who was “lynched” by racist white men — is highly disingenuous.
Contrary to the impression given by the high school yearbook photo that has been all over the media, Arbery was not a stranger to criminality. In high school, he was sentenced to five years probation after bringing a gun to a basketball game. In 2018, he violated his probation and was charged with shoplifting. His older brother likewise has a criminal record and is currently in jail.
Gregory McMichael, 64, is a former police officer and investigator for the district attorney with decades of experience in the field. He worked on the prosecution of Arbery on shoplifting charges in 2018 and would have been familiar with Arbery’s criminal history.
On February 23, McMichael was standing on his front yard when he spotted Arbery “hauling ass.” McMichael had reportedly seen surveillance video implicating Arbery as a burglary suspect. He also would have known Arbery from his earlier dealings with him. Upon seeing Arbery, the McMichaels armed themselves, got in a pickup truck, and followed him. They were followed by William Bryan, a neighbor of theirs, who recorded the cellphone video that was made public last week.
The video, which is about 30 seconds long, is consistent with the description of the incident in the police report written by George E. Barnhill of the Waycross Judicial District. The McMichaels intercepted Arbery and parked in the road. Travis stood near the driver’s side of the truck, Gregory in back. Arbery, who was running toward the truck, ran along the passenger’s side, made a sharp 90-degree turn, and charged at Travis, who was holding a weapon. They fought over the weapon before Travis fatally shot Arbery.
Two calls to 911 were made before the shooting. The first caller reported seeing a black man who entered a house under construction and then ran out. He claimed that the man had “been caught on camera a bunch before at night” and that it was “kind of an ongoing thing out here.” The second caller was Gregory McMichael, who reported that a black man was running down the street. The conversation was cut short when the altercation began.
The testimony of the first caller aligns with surveillance footage released recently that shows Arbery entering a house under construction at the same time the call was made. It is extremely likely that Arbery intended to steal construction equipment and tools, which can be sold for decent prices. Each year, up to $1 billion worth of construction items are stolen in the US. The property owner shared additional footage showing that Arbery had entered his home multiple times over the course of the preceding months, which lends further credibility to Arbery’s status as a burglary suspect. (The surveillance footage has elicited hilarious responses from mainstream conservative pundits, who have shifted from saying that Arbery was “just a jogger” to insisting that manly men just love checking out random houses under construction, dude.)
It is also curious that Arbery was in Satilla Shores, which is about nine miles away from his hometown of Brunswick. Satilla Shores is a mostly white, middle-class community. Brunswick is a mostly black city whose residents are poorer than average. Is it really a coincidence that he chose to go “jogging” in Satilla Shores?
McMichael has stated that several break-ins occurred in Satilla Shores prior to Arbery’s death. We know of four incidents. On December 8, someone reported that rifles had been stolen from their car. Another theft occurred on December 28. On January 1, Travis McMichael reported that a 9mm pistol had been stolen from a vehicle parked outside his home. A man who is building a home in the neighborhood claims that $2,500 worth of fishing gear was stolen from him earlier this year, though he never reported the crime. It is possible that there were more incidents that also went unreported.
It is unclear whether Arbery actually left the house with anything (he appears to have dropped an object in the road during his altercation with Travis, but the video is blurry). The Arbery family’s lawyer, S. Lee Merritt, argues that the new footage does not incriminate Arbery since there is no evidence that he committed theft or damaged the property. This is irrelevant, because entering a structure with the intent to commit a theft still constitutes burglary even if one leaves empty-handed. The law is pretty straightforward:
A person commits the offense of burglary in the second degree when, without authority and with the intent to commit a felony or theft therein, he or she enters or remains within an occupied, unoccupied, or vacant building, structure, vehicle, railroad car, watercraft, or aircraft. A person who commits the offense of burglary in the second degree shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than five years.
If the house had lacked walls or had been in the earliest stage of construction, Arbery would probably only have been guilty of trespassing. However, it clearly was a structure of some kind. If the house qualified as a dwelling, then Arbery was guilty of burglary in the first degree and not the second; one could debate this point.
We can never know precisely what Arbery’s motive was. But all the facts on the table point toward the conclusion that his intent was to commit theft. The burden of proof is on Merritt.
The McMichaels’ arrest of Arbery was not illegal. Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law reads as follows:
A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.
The McMichaels had probable grounds to detain Arbery. Gregory McMichael saw a video of a man committing burglary and shortly afterward saw what appeared to be the same man burglarizing another property and making a rapid escape. The McMichaels did not “hunt down” Arbery because he was black.
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Open carry is legal in Georgia. The McMichaels’ decision to arm themselves was both legal and justified. They did not know whether Arbery was armed and rightly erred on the side of caution. Given Arbery’s past, it would not have been unreasonable to assume that he was armed.
Finally, Georgia’s stand-your-ground law secures one’s right to use lethal force to defend oneself against threats. Arbery is the one who instigated the altercation. Travis did not fire until Arbery attacked him. The McMichaels’ intention was not to kill Arbery, but to detain him as per the citizen’s arrest law until law enforcement arrived. According to the police report, they shouted at Arbery to stop and tried to talk to him. If they really had wanted to kill him, they would have done so earlier and gotten the job over with. Instead, they went to the trouble of intercepting his path and trying to start a dialogue.
It is misleading to claim that Arbery was “unarmed.” Arbery grabbed Travis’ gun and tried to pull it away from him. The first bullet went through his right hand, which was grasping the muzzle of the weapon. The upward angle of the blood spatter of the second shot is consistent with the downward motion of the buttstock during the struggle. The police report further points out that “while we know McMichael had his finger on the trigger, we do not know who caused the firings. Arbery would only had to pull the shotgun approximately 1/16th to 1/8th of one inch to fire the weapon himself and in the height of an altercation this is entirely possible.”
Why did Arbery refuse to cooperate with the McMichaels? Stefan Molyneux’s theory about what happened is compelling. Arbery was probably guilty of the burglaries in the area and knew that he would end up in jail. He also would have seen Gregory McMichael calling 911 in the flatbed of the pick-up truck and might have recognized him as one of the two men responsible for his prosecution in 2018 (since investigators commonly have face-to-face exchanges with suspects). Arbery had gotten off easy in 2018 and probably figured that McMichael wouldn’t let that happen again. As he ran toward the pick-up truck, he decided that instead of allowing himself to be detained and jailed, he would seize Travis’ weapon and kill both McMichaels. (If this had happened, we never would have heard about the incident, of course.)
It is ironic that the initial lack of charges brought against the McMichaels is being touted as an example of the racism inherent in the justice system because, if anything, law enforcement were too lenient in dealing with Arbery, not the McMichaels. The shooting might not have happened had Arbery been penalized for violating his probation.
It is also ironic that the people demanding “justice” for the supposed “lynching” of Arbery are acting rather like a lynch mob themselves.
A third irony is that most attacks against joggers are perpetrated by black men. It is not uncommon for black men to pursue or sexually proposition young white female joggers, which occasionally escalates to rape or murder. Karina Vetrano, a 30-year-old white woman, was sexually assaulted and murdered by a black man while jogging in New York City in 2016. Around the same time Arbery was shot, an African migrant raped a Swedish woman, putting a knife to her throat, while she was jogging in the forest. Feminists blame incidents like these on “toxic masculinity,” but the issue is obviously racial. Black men commit rape and murder at much higher rates than white men.
There are a number of recent cases of black-on-white violence that are far more disturbing than the Arbery shooting, but they have been ignored by the media. A few days ago, a black man murdered an elderly white couple on the grounds of a veterans’ cemetery. Last month, a black man murdered his girlfriend’s white parents and left their bodies in a ditch after an attempted robbery.
Mainstream responses to high-profile white-on-black shootings always fall under two categories. Liberals and certain conservatives (National Review types) decry the incident in question as a “hate crime” and an example of “white supremacy.” Other conservatives quixotically attempt to discuss the facts of the case and argue that the white perpetrator was not actually racist. If we only stuck to the facts and stopped creating division, they argue, racial tensions would cease to exist.
The second response is just as wrong-headed as the first: racial tensions have always existed in the US and will continue to exist as long as the races are forced to live together. Conservatives’ denial of the importance of race also prevents them from acknowledging their opponents’ pattern of specifically targeting white men for destruction. Their refusal to take their own side renders them incapable of responding effectively.
Foremost among our enemies’ reasons for concocting false narratives about white-on-black shootings is that they want to deprive us of our right to defend ourselves and intimidate us into submission. In their ideal world, all attempts by white men to defend themselves and their communities would be considered “hate crimes.” Indeed, the Department of Justice is currently considering whether to pursue hate crime charges against the McMichaels. The notion that the shooting was a “hate crime” is patently false; the McMichaels’ pursuit of Arbery was not racially motivated, and they acted in full accordance with the law. But this does not matter to our enemies.
The McMichaels have already been charged with murder and aggravated assault. The special prosecutor assigned to the case is Cobb County DA Joyette Holmes (three DAs previously assigned to the case recused themselves due to conflicts of interest). This could very well end up being the next Trayvon Martin case.
The media’s grossly dishonest coverage of the Trayvon Martin case was red-pilling for many white Americans. The Ahmaud Arbery case might well have a similar impact.
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18 comments
Its funny, my first reaction when I read about this story is why they didnt just leave him alone and mind their own business…. Then I thought; If I lived in such an area, I would be appreciative of the people looking out for my community.
It’s truly sad what people have to deal with being in or near black/diverse areas. And middle-class and working-class Whites are the first to lose their communities – one of the worst things you can do to these people because it’s the most important thing they have; kinship.
I think most people instinctively would think “Just let the police handle it” but when it comes to breaking and entering, the police rarely have the resources to pursue those crimes and they normally remain unsolved unless the thief sells something easily identifiable online. But like you, my thoughts turned to the notion of why we should have to hide in our homes while criminals rampage through our neighborhoods. Maybe if more people ran off thugs like Arbery, property crime would be less common?
Excellent summary. You are right, Stefan Molyneux did an excellent job explaining the entire situation and he has a new video following up on his first video. Hopefully the father and son will be acquitted as they are guilty of nothing other than being good citizens. However, if they are, there will be nationwide riots in my opinion. This goes back a lot further than Trayvon. Think Rodney King. Bush 41 was a traitor for forcing a second trial and at least two of those cops ended up in prison.
I wonder why the lying media are never indicted for their dishonest reporting which causes riots, loss of life and destruction of property.
@Jude Jackson….However, it was not smart of them for killing him. Best thing was leaving him alone and for them just to mind their business. These type of killings is just asking for it and they know it aswell. Stefan Molyneux is a jew and his whole goal is cause riff on his platform as crypto jews are known for dont even know why you watch his videos and many of the misinformation he propagating to young white american males . Gregory McMichael and his son, should have just called the police if they felt any insecurity and let them handle it instead playing the ”civlian killer” of a man that did not pose a threat to them at that moment.
But the father was an ex-cop who actually played a role in arresting the criminal Arbery in the past. He likely knew what Arbery was up to, and his cop instincts kicked in. They did nothing wrong. If criminal Arbery hadn’t attacked them, he would likely still be alive. I hope to God they are acquitted.
America’s multicultural experiment has literally become a Kobayashi Maru test. (Sorry for the cringe Star Trek reference, but it fits).
I bet also if one looked at the cases that the bulk of white rape hinges around disagreements about “consent” whereas the bulk of black rape is true violent rape of anonymous persons.
We are a nation divided by race. They will always take their own side, calling a gun a sandwich until the end of time. We will take our own side, unless the facts really are on their side, in which case we will admit fault—all too zealously.
Except whites, the racial loser race, almost never take our own side. That’s the entire problem with race in America (assuming we have to live integrated with savages, which in fact we don’t).
As the Z man of the Z blog has already pointed out, the propaganda campaign has already crashed against a massive wall of white skepticism. The behavior of the prosecutors will determine how it proceeds. If they railroad the McMichaelses, it’ll be bigger than Trayvon.
And now the neighbor who owned the home under construction (who obviously was concerned about trespassing and thievery because he had a security camera in place), is throwing the McMichaels under the bus. 2 men who did their neighborly civic duty by helping protect the property of others, are going to be thrown under the bus because their (probably shitlib) new neighbor is too much of a coward to take a stand for the men who were looking out for him.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/owner-empty-house-ahmaud-arbery-allegedly-entered-shooting-might-not-n1205191
It is reasonable for the homeowner to not want to help them The McMichaels were idiots who handled this in a very poor manner. Especially the older guy who was an off-duty cop. I’d be pissed at them too.
The homeowner simply doesn’t want to be dragged into this drama, but now he must deal with it thanks to these retards.
Nobody should have to tolerate well meaning buffoons.
“We can’t even scope out houses to rob without getting shot “.
– Lebron James
I’m not here to troll, honestly. But this article makes nationalists seem unreasonable. I don’t think the evidence presented in this article comes close to showing Arbery was a burglar. The surveillance videos almost show the opposite. The other burglaries mentioned happened months ago, which makes them seem unrelated. And it’s not unreasonable that someone would want to check out a house under construction. I also think Stefan’s take sounds too convenient given the footage.
But we don’t need to prove that Arbery was a criminal to be right. This incident is an opportunity to show that black and white are incompatible, which can be shown whether Arbery is guilty or not. After all, it’s impossible for a black man to get shot by white men while he’s jogging in his own homeland. Is it not? It’s great that this article defends these white men. But it looks less like we’re defending these men, and more like we’re justifying killing a black man.
All we need to show is that we’re reasonable people who want justice. And, whether he’s guilty or not, we can show that the just thing to do (for black and white people both) is to separate once and forever. We’re not lawyers. Were propagandists. And everytime one of these trayvon martin style incidents is in the news–we win. It’s just another opportunity to show that we’re the ones who are on the right side.
But the other side are unreasonable persons who couldn’t give a fig leaf for such a quaint white notion as “justice”. We will never discuss our way into racial liberty. We must prepare to take it, and then do so when times are propitious.
I agree. Some people will never be won to our side, no matter how right we are. But I myself am one of those quaint white people who was converted to the right by the reasonableness these kinds of discussions. We’re not trying to convert the “Jamal Ginsbergs” of the world. (Although it might be useful to convince these people that a homeland is in their best interest.) They’re not our audience. We want the other quaint white people who’ve never even thought to think our ideas. They will ONLY be converted by well-reasoned arguments. We have the moral high ground and should use it to our advantage, instead of squandering it by being unreasonable.
James Burnham once sagely observed: “The tactical objective is precise: to disarm the enemy by psychological (propagandistic), social (mass-action) and moral (guilt-stimulating) means…and to induce him to disarm himself: to renounce his weapons, to spike his missiles, retire his ships and troops, forbear shooting, drop his club, ignore the illegalities, dismiss the charges, accept the trespass, fire the police commission, theater commander and school superintendent.”(*)
Look at the politics leading up to the Ahmaud Arbery indignation-fest and info-op.
The much ballyhooed War on Crime fizzled to an inglorious end with the rise of Black Lives Matter. All those paramilitary cop platoons and all that Pentagon supplied tactical gear proved useless in the face of “Hand Up-Don’t Shoot.” What’s interesting is that the various terminal incidents which sparked the BLM protests involved transgressions by alleged criminals, killed during the commission of crimes. We’re not talking law abiding citizens gunned down by SWAT teams in their homes during drug busts gone wrong. It’s almost as if the System wants to inspire a reaction in which those of criminally violent disposition take it to the streets as a revolutionary army.
Might also ask why the System’s own violations of the Constitution never get this amount of media and politico attention: the expansion of the panopticon surveillance state, corporate IT attacks on the First Amendment, the failure to protect the borders. Instead, the pitchforks and torches are diverted against convenient scapegoats who fit the System narrative of White Supremacists oppressing innocent minorities. Consider the recent rallying of (mainly White) 2nd Amendment and (more mainly White) anti-lockdown activists in various state capitals. Can’t have any emergent White consciousness. Gotta play them off against other ungood Whitethinkers.
Gets back to that radical objective of disarming the enemy. The disarmament is not so much physical as moral. If the police are going to ignore illegalities which might lead to contentious arrests, or accept rioter “space to destroy,” then all those cop AR-15s, APCs and UAVs have been effectively spiked.
This is something to be considered by those who tout the Right to Bear Arms as the best defense against both government tyranny and criminal trespass. Yeah, you might have that 50 cal Barrett with fully equipped rails secured in your gun safe along with 10,000 rounds of 12.7mm. But if you’re going to forbear locking and loading ’cause you don’t want to end up being smeared by the liberal media or denounced by your conservative buddies, might as well retire that weapon and turn it in for scrap. It’s gun grabbing by indirect means, incredibly supported by the potential disarmees.
During the 2010s White America’s first line of defense, the police, were stood down. And in the 2020s White America’s second line of defense, the armed citizen, is being metaphorically fired. For your viewing pleasure: Anarcho-Tyranny Act II.
This is why it is vital for the Dissident Right to make a stand on this issue. A connection needs to be made between the railroading of the McMichaels and the persecution of various members of the Dissident Right. And perhaps form a wider alliance of dissidents. And for heaven’s sake, fight for the Right to Bear Arms.
(*) The War We Are In, Arlington, 1967, page 175. If you can find a copy, Burnham has a lot to say about the forms of modern political warfare.
It’s a matter of law, and the operative law is citizens arrest, not stand your ground or open carry. They changed the nature of the interaction when they decided to effect a citizen’s arrest. Now their authority to use force or the implication of force is controlled by an “appropriate force” standard. Openly holding a shotgun while detaining someone can be reasonably be interpreted as a threat of deadly force. You see, open carry is fine when you aren’t using the color of law to effect a citizens arrest. Fyi, if it was a concealed weapon that would be fine. He chose to carry a shotgun in this instance.
The author does correctly focus on whether they had enough information on other crimes to rise to a level of high probability that Arbery had committed other crimes. This is actually quite a subtle area, I’ll try and be clear. Under citizens arrest guidelines the evidence one has to believe someone has committed a crime must pass a reasonableness standard as well. A suspicion is not enough. A citizen is not a peace officer and NEVER has the right to detain another citizen based on “reasonable suspicion” as peace officers do. They must have enough evidence to think it’s probable he committed a felony, not suspect it. And they never get to that threshhold, not even close. All they had were suspicions.
The author does engage in a bit of slight-of-hand here. We do not know Arbery entered the property with the intent to burglarize it with anywhere near the certainty required to assume this is a felony. In fact, the video evidence of him entering the house on other occasions never saw him steal anything. He would hang out there. Any good defense atty will destroy that leg of the felony criminal assumption. So now we are back to trespass. No felony and citizens arrest becomes questionable at best. With a show of a weapon during the apprehension? Nope – that’s not citizen’s arrest, that’s an assault. Readers here should know that a citizen’s arrest will almost certainly be challenged in court by the state, in a criminal action. Also know your shooters insurance will not cover you – I have CCA – if you use it illegally, you will spend hundreds of thousands defending yourself and may lose.
So what it comes down to now is the evidence they had to suspect Arbery in the unreported burglaries in the area. But there is no evidence. The only evidence is video of Arbery hanging out in the under construction house THAT NOBODY LIVED IN. There was also very little construction progress as the owner had gotten sick and the project was on hold. The other thefts – stealing a gun from a car is not a burglary – weren’t reported. In the real world, that makes the claim weaker right off the bat. And then they have no direct evidence he stole the other items. No witnesses, no pics, no prints, no nothing.
They were effecting a citizens arrest on a trespasser. A misdemeanor – no burglary charge would ever have held up. Do your own research, if you are being reasonable you will see I’m correct.
None of this means this guy was a “jogger” and not a burglar and maybe worse. What it does mean is that the citizen’s arrest was illegal. What does that mean?
In court this will now be considered an assault, not a legal citizens arrest. Arbery’s state of mind now becomes relevant. He’s being ordered to stop and blocked by a car with a man standing on the street holding a shotgun. He could credibly be in fear of severe bodily harm or death and guess what? That means he now acquires the right to use lethal force. His first punch is not an assault, so the son with the shotgun getting his ass kicked has no right of self-defense since he has instigated a fight. That’s like me punching you in the face, and you hit me back and then I shoot you. Because I felt in fear of severe bodily harm, nope. You lose that right when you start the fight. You have the right to retreat if you are the aggressor.
The felons on the street that day were the McMichaels. I am a concealed carry permit holder and also enjoy sport shooting my American Defense Mfg AR-15. I would never consider drawing my weapon in a street altercation like that – ever. I would only consider doing so to stop a felon fleeing a violent crime, assault or murder, and even then I might not if that escalation by me could result in me having to get in a fistfight. I’m 57, okay fitness and could fight when i was young, but now? Look at the fat slobs the son and dad are. They had no business trying to detain him. And the elder McMichaels should know this as he was a cop.
It gets even worse when you consider that angle. You see, what they did is what cops would call a “felony arrest” meaning an arrest where the suspect is likely to resist or attempt to flee. This author shows his naivete the way that Molyneux does, by considering a “breakthrough theory” that Arbery jumped bad because he didn’t want to go to prison for a long time given he was on probation. Giggling – every cop know this. It’s common sense and McMichael should have considered that Arbery might resist. Did Dad McMichaels stop and think about whether his son could detain Arbery singlehandedly? Fyi, cops would prefer to have 4 officers if they wanted to subdue Arbery properly without injuring themselves. Going mano a mano with a shotgun in your hands? Dad should have withdrawn and observed until police could arrive. Video him the whole time.
But this? Idiocy. And the reaction of the right? Barrel-sucking, corn-fed madness. Of course racism had nothing to do with it. But gun totin’ southern men sure did, and it’s a problem down there that is growing all the time. I happen to know the area quite a bit. It’s right near St. Simons Island, an absolute gem of a getaway spot on the Georgia Atlantic coast, just south of Savannah.
Cue the crocodile tears for another scumbag.
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