Dummy-Kruger Effect: Who Killed Philadelphia’s Most Annoying HIV+ Meth-Addled “Journalist”?

1,203 words / 8:21

Audio version: To listen in a player, use the one below or click here ^[2]. To download the mp3, right-click here ^[2] and choose “save link as” or “save target as.”

Josh Kruger is now dead, which means he can no longer publicly exult in the suffering and death of his ideological enemies.

https://counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Goad-DummyKrugerEffect.m4a ^[2]

The Philadelphia writer, who was able to weave a career out of peddling a personal sob story of meth addiction ^[3], homelessness, and being immunocompromised due to receptive anal sex ^[4], was shot seven times in his chest and abdomen early Monday morning inside his row home in South Philly’s Point Breeze neighborhood.

Before the blood had dried and rigor mortis had stiffened his pompous gay corpse, people were noting the grim irony of how often Kruger had used his Twitter account ^[5] to mock anyone who dared allege that Philadelphia was a violent hellhole where shootings were rampant.

Kruger posted on August 14, 2021 ^[6]:

Some idiot just said you’re more likely to get shot and killed than die of COVID in Philly to make some insensitive rhetorical point for “his side.” Folks, four times as many Philadelphians have died of COVID than gun shots this year. I understand math is hard but do better.

From July 20, 2023 ^[7]:

Look, it’s that lawless land of liberals in Philly where shootings are . . . dropping to levels not seen in years.

From September 23, 2023 ^[8]:

Advertising you have guns is like saying you have gold, dumdum.

Last Saturday, Kruger dredged up an old tweet from cartoonist Scott “Stay Away From Black People” Adams ^[9] which predicted that “If Biden is elected, there’s a good chance you will be dead within the year.” Kruger responded ^[10] in predictably bitchy form:

The Dilbert dude is like Nostradamus. Look at this prediction from 2020. Wow. Eerie.

Two days later, Kruger was shot and killed in Philly, that lawless land of liberals. Wow. Eerie.

While it is generally considered not cricket to dance on someone’s grave, back in April Kruger gleefully pirouetted ^[11] over the death of Carolyn Bryant:

It’s fine to rejoice in the death of people who facilitated injustice. Carolyn Bryant, who accused Emmett Till leading to his lynching, died. This is a good thing. It also has a Scriptural basis, if you’re a Christian or person of faith. . . .

He also rejoiced over the imprisonment of January 6 defendants ^[12], advocated “involuntary psychiatric detention ^[13]” for opponents of the Democrat regime, and encouraged violence ^[14] against those ubiquitous “Nazis”:

Now that I’m no longer in government I can finally say that it’s OK to punch Nazis.

Since he spent his life sniffing his own holy farts and relentlessly using his moral perch to sadistically wish ill on others, my heart sings a happy song and my feet dance a joyous Irish jig over the fact that an unidentified shooter made him choke to death on his own words.

As someone who drove a cab during my college years, I remember Point Breeze as the worst hood in South Philly. It was one of those interstitial urban zones tucked just far away enough from the main thoroughfares that things were allowed to fester. It mostly escaped notice unless my route forced me to cautiously glide through its narrow streets, causing the hairs on my neck to stand at terrified attention. Back in the 1980s, Point Breeze was overwhelmingly black, which was an anomaly, seeing as how the Cradle of Liberty’s Zulu hordes mostly clustered in North and West Philly.

So when I heard that a gay white and obnoxiously progressive writer who at one point managed current Mayor Jim Kenney’s social-media accounts was shot dead in a bleak brick-and-cement dindu terrarium, I assumed his killer was some random black robber who did not know Kruger personally. So did many others.

But when I searched the zip code ^[17] for the 2300 block of Watkins Street, the section of Point Breeze where he was slain, I was surprised to learn that it is now 45.3% white and 36.4% black. Kruger seems to have been one of those mavens of white gentrification that writers such as Kruger are always lamenting.

But the evidence seems to be shifting away from the idea that he was killed by a local black stranger.

For starters, many have noted that whereas a robber might shoot you once or twice and then flee, seven bullets suggest a personal vendetta.

According to a report published in The Philadelphia Inquirer ^[18] less than nine hours after Kruger was shot:

Detectives believe Kruger’s death may have been the result of a domestic dispute or may have been drug-related, according to three law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case. The sources . . . said police investigators recovered troubling text messages between Kruger and a former partner. Investigators also recovered methamphetamine inside Kruger’s bedroom, the sources said.

Back in April, Kruger posted a thread ^[19] on Twitter about how he was abruptly awakened in his bedroom one morning by “a man I used to be friendly with” who “did not have permission to be there” and who “had somehow obtained a copy of my keys.” He said that rather than grabbing his gun and chasing the stalker out, he “deescalated” the situation until the man finally left of his own accord. Kruger vowed that he would change his locks.

In late August, he tweeted ^[20] about how someone “sent a heavy glass egg (?!) projectile through my front window” and that it was “seemingly a targeted act.”

The New York Post ^[21] and The Philadelphia Inquirer ^[18] report that two weeks before he was murdered, Kruger allegedly left a post on his Facebook page — but which he seems to have deleted before being killed, perhaps out of fear — about how “a man I’ve never met once in my entire life” came to his house and began threatening him. Kruger said that the unwanted guest said he was looking for his boyfriend and referred to himself as “Lady Diabla, She-Devil of the Streets.”

Was “Lady Diabla” the gender-confused boyfriend of the man Kruger “used to be friendly with” who’d shown up uninvited in his bedroom back in April?

Philadelphia police ^[22] claim they reviewed street surveillance footage from outside Kruger’s house at the time of the shooting. On Tuesday, they announced they’d arrested a “person of interest” in Kruger’s murder. They have yet to cough up any identifying details about the suspect, but say they believe Kruger knew him personally:

Police sources said Kruger had told friends that he continued to have issues with the man, who struggled with a meth addiction and continued to show up at his house.

Who is this mystery meth-head stalker? Is it the former butt-buddy who invaded Kruger’s house last spring? Or is it “Lady Diabla,” who seems to be the butt-buddy’s ragingly jealous current squeeze? Since the cops have yet to spill the beans, I can only speculate.

Maybe my initial instincts were right, and the super-sanctimonious Kruger was hoisted with his own petard. Maybe he got drilled with hot lead by some feral sub-Saharan hood chimp who resented the ongoing intrusion of snooty “allies” with pale skin and low T-cell counts. Maybe his killer was a ball-scratching, nappy-headed local black robber or drug dealer who could only communicate via grunts and gunfire.

Or maybe, for once, the blacks are innocent.

^[23]

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