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CSUSB professor comments on white supremacists coining a derogatory code word in the case of a black man fatally shot while jogging
Vice News
May 14, 2020

Brian Levin, director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, was interviewed for an article about extremists celebrating Ahmaud Arbery’s killing in the worst places on the internet, and turning his assailants into white supremacist folk heroes. Arbery was fatally shot in February while jogging in his suburban Georgia neighborhood.

Over recent years, online extremists have been constructing a shared, private language that they use to dog-whistle in public, online arenas without having to worry about getting banned for hate speech. “Jogger” is just the latest example.

“In the twisted, putrid world of white supremacy, those who murder and maim blacks become folk heroes,” said Levin. “Whether it’s the Klan, their support for George Zimmerman, or even Dylann Roof.”

Levin added that the fact that Arbery was killed — and that white supremacists are glorifying his assailants — should come as no surprise. It’s got deep roots in the history of racism in America.

Forty years before Arbery was killed, an avowed white supremacist murdered two black joggers using sniper fire in Missouri. Back then, white supremacists would refer to a “running n----- target,” said Levin. “The idea of running blacks out of town, running them down and lynching them because they’re rumored to be come sort of criminal threat, has a long history that goes back to slave patrols,” said Levin. “Each generation has its own incarnation, and that’s what’s so awful and painful about this. But also highly predictable.”

Read the complete article at “White supremacists have a disgusting new code for the n-word after Ahmaud Arbery's death.”

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