Friday, July 31, 2015

Mob Justice Happens When Real Justice Fails


The backlash to the backlash has started. First, Walter Palmer was tarred and feathered on the internet for killing Cecil-the-Lion. Now, Palmer has received death threats and had to close his dentistry practice and so the internet is worried about mob justice. Jason Gilbert on Fusion is spot-on. We all know that this ends with Walter Palmer making millions of dollars and having his own “nature” show on Fox. 

Let me play my role as the counter-narrative to the backlash to the overreaction: Palmer is only getting mobbed because official justice has failed. Yelp reviewers aren’t the heroes we need, but they are the heroes our dumbasses deserve because we have so woefully failed to address this problem through normal means. Every mob is always the same. Whether they’re using a keyboard, a rope, or a guillotine, you’ll see the same freaking people. And their cause is always the same: some perceived injustice that the nominal authorities have failed to address. 

Thing is, sometimes, the mob is right! You can’t eat cake if you don’t have any bread, Ms. Antoinette. You can’t turn Rome into a structure fire and then ignore it, Mr. Nero. You can’t shoot unarmed black people because Emancipation still bothers you, Mr. American Police Officer. The mob will rise whenever the authorities fail to provide justice. Unfortunately, the mob will also rise whenever they can’t understand how justice works. And it will also rise whenever Chelsea is denied a penalty. Or the Giants win the pennant. Or when it’s hot and people run out of Bud Light. A mob is why we invented the word “unruly.”


In any situation where a mob is acting, the easiest thing in the world is to blame the mob for its behavior. That’s like trying to stop the bomb from becoming. But railing agianst “mob mentallity” is always a safe position to stake out on Facebook. 

The harder thing to do is to address the justice gap the mob is rushing in to fill. Here, Palmer allegedly engaged in illegal poaching. Whatever you think about the ethics of legal trophy hunting, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a guy who went to somebody else’s country and poached an animal. 

Take a second to try to understand that Zimbabwe has laws. Palmer shot a lion in a restricted area. Those areas are restricted precisely because Zimbabwean officials are trying to protect mature pride males like Cecil-the-Lion. Palmer knew he did something wrong, because he and his team immediately went to destroy the tracking collar on Cecil. That’s significant, because there are zones in Zimbabwe where it is legal to shoot collared lions. Palmer is trying to blame his guide — we’re supposed to believe that a professional trophy hunter who travels the world killing things is as ignorant about international poaching laws as most Americans are. And this Palmer joker has already been fined for illegally killing a black bear in Wisconsin. His word is worth poop. This is not a “rush” to judgment, this is a fully formed observation that Palmer is a poaching jerkface. 

Where’s Interpol on that? Where’s the Zimbabwean ambassador demanding redress?

[UPDATE: Zimbabwe has formerly requested extradition. So now we’ll see if Palmer really wants to follow the law] Where’s Loretta Lynch vowing to do everything in her power to see that this man is investigated and brought to justice? Where’s Congress demanding tougher laws against poaching, not hunting, but poaching at-risk species for sport and profit? Where is the will to prosecute somebody who allegedly violated the law? 

It’s not there... and so we have a mob. All we have is the mob. All we’re left with are Twitter jackasses because the actual freaking authorities have not stepped up.

So sure, be afraid of “mob justice.” It’s very bad. But we’re not comparing “mob rule” to “the legal system.” We’re comparing mob justice to no justice at all. 



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