Just a mention that people might consider making a donation to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which does good work in tracking hate groups and their members, and sharing this intelligence with federal, state, and local law enforcement.

get ready for the disavowals. "mr. christian (!) is in no way affiliated with..." "mr. christian has struggled with mental illness and substance abuse for many years..."

RIP, good samaritans.

He will rot in jail.

@5, if he had killed these people during, say, a robbery, then I'd see your point.

But the crime arose directly from his political views, and therefore they are relevant.

#5: Yeah, and I'm sure make that same argument when a Muslim kills a bunch of people, right?

The far right likes to concern troll any time one of their "warriors" slaughters someone. Motivation and ideology suddenly become irrelevant.

@9: True, and conversely 'the far left'.

#10: I don't remember the last time an American leftist stabbed someone to death on a subway. While I agree that much of the American far left is full of shit, with some of it even engaging in intimidation and other violent tactics, they certainly haven't been committing crimes like this. Punching a neo-nazi or pushing and shoving an academic, while not exactly peaceful or civilized, isn't exactly comparable to stabbing two people to death. And far-right extremists have been committing quite a few crimes like this nationwide lately.

And when was the last time a leftist actually tried to minimize the murder of someone?

Though I suppose you could probably dig up some anti-police rhetoric.

@11: It's entirely possible to punch someone to death. Either the blow itself causes the trauma, or contact with the ground when the victim of the punch falls in an uncontrolled fashion. It could be head trauma, or it could be a ruptured internal organ, if it's a body blow. Or, again, a fall. It isn't even necessary to land a blow if you can get them to fall badly.

So, actually, yes, it's quite comparable. End of digression.

Your point mostly stands, that this sort of thing is FAR more common on the right than on the left. Particularly the part where the perpetrator engages in random abuse against a bystander that they perceive to be of the despised out-group. And #6 speaks to the point succinctly, that in this particular case the assault stemmed direction from his political leanings, and therefore they are relevant to the discussion.

@13
Your argument rests entirely upon hypotheticals, and is therefore invalid. Thank you for playing, have a nice weekend.

@5
He was arrested for his actions, not his thoughts, and there are plenty of historical precedents demonstrating a clear line from the latter to the former.
Meanwhile, your hypotheticals are invalid as an argument.

@15: In case you were unaware, the far left and the far right meet up with each other and shake hands on the dark side of the moon.

Sorry you got a lousy poli sci and humanities professors. Obviously, we need to address tenure in our universities.

Tragic news. Another damaged man using someone else's religion, as a cover to act out his rage. He hates, doesn't matter who that hate goes towards.

Damaged humans carry their pain always, so they find a way to get it out, kicking a trash can or a dog, stab two brave strangers to death, on a train.

Without empathy for others, ideas are useless.
And these sad people, have no empathy. Empathy is learnt by it being done to oneself. Or consciously developed.
Yes. humans use ideas to guide them and politics to direct them, and they are signs of our evolutionary development. They must work with empathy. Like Trudeau and the French President, you see by their actions and hear in their speech, their empathy for others. Not so trump.

While we all recoil from this man, whatever his affiliations, at the same time one can see how he is a victim as well. Of modern western capitalism. poverty and bad parenting, schooling probably useless as well, ugly surrounds, etc.

@21 -- I can't believe I'm throwing myself into the mix, but I will for one comment, just for argument's sake.

Motives clearly inform our moral and legal judgments. A person who robs a bank will probably (and should) receive a lighter sentence if he's trying to cover the costs of his son's chemo than if he's trying to raise the start-up capital for a murder-for-hire business. The motive of a crime affects the way we feel about the defendant, as well as the sentences meted out during the penalty phase.

Now let me clarify something right now: although I support hate crime legislation, I am radically against criminalizing hate speech or hate groups. I hold the Trigger Warners in a fair degree of contempt. I regard the right to freedom of expression as a near absolute. Nazis should have the right to speak, write, wave their signs, and rally.

But in the case of hate crimes, the motive actually changes the nature of the crime. I'm white, male, hetero. When I hear about a murder, I think, "Wow! Crazy world we live in. You never know what day might be your last...." But when an extremist murders a person for being gay or trans or Muslim or black or whatever, the goal as well as the end result is to terrorize an entire community. That makes the crime much more severe IMO and should influence our moral and legal judgments.

Hate speech in and of itself is not and has never been a crime. The reason that hate speech can be used as a criminal enhancement hen combined with acts of criminal violence is because at that point the crime has become an act of terrorism. The act isn't just to harm the victims, it's to frighten and terrorize a particular community united by their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or other commonalities. It's to get people of a different race or religion to move away, to get LGBTs to remain closeted when they are in public, and so forth. The enhancement comes from the crime against more than just the immediate victims.

Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos!

@25
Go back and read @24 again, and don't comment further until you've understood the material.

@26: Really? I heard it was only terrorism if gay black women are peeing their skirts.

We can all be damn sure that this is going to go wildly under reported, due to the murderer's surname alone. Which is unfortunate, because the two people who lost their lives were behaving exactly how we all should behave.

You guys are wasting your efforts trying to convince facts2supportURpoint of anything. Facts are the last thing he's interested in.

@23 -- Said I was only going to make one comment, definitely not going to follow this up. But what you say is just not true. The motive (and mindset) of the perpetrator is almost always taken into consideration when deciding on a punishment for a crime, from the kind of sentence requested by the prosecutor through the sentence ultimately handed down by the judge or jury. That's basically why there's a penalty phase for serious crimes.

You acknowledge as much in earlier posts, when you mention premeditation. By your logic, that shouldn't have any impact on the punishment because it has no impact on the victim. A stabbing is a stabbing -- who cares if it was premeditated? The victim is dead either way. Well, it does matter -- as a society, the intent matters. A driver who runs over a pedestrian out of carelessness should face consequences, but shouldn't be treated the same as a driver who does so for the joy of killing.

Bashing someone's skull in isn't a form of protected speech. And random acts of violence are terrible, but they're worse when their goal is to instill fear in a community. So yes, vile racists should be able to wear robes and hold rallies where they burn crosses. And a lynching should be treated as worse than an ordinary murder.

@5

Oh shut the fuck up.

If this guy was Muslim you'd be crowing about how liberals never report on identity and whining non-stop about Muslims this and ban them that.

So go fuck yourself you hypocritical shit pile.

Trump is giving permission to those filled with undisciplined emotions and very little understanding about political/ economic complexities, to act out against certain groups. Black Americans and Mexicans and Jews have long been targets of hate, by the Group. Muslims have joined as targets. During the last World War it was Germans and Japanese.
If people siphon off their rage at certain communities, blame them for whatever, then that same rage isn't directed at trump and the rest, the real architects of people's increased misery.

Religion and politics are still just vehicles for toxic masculinity.

I'm going back to my feminist hole in the ground now.

Between that shirt and that hair, I'm guessing his biggest regret in life is never having attended a Ronnie James Dio concert.

I like how The Stranger hacks and the comments here in the open cesspit which is Slog are trying to blame Trump for the actions of a mentally ill Nihilist whose social media shows he didn't vote for Trump. As opposed to blaming the City of Portland and the progressive lunatics running that town for allowing a bunch of dangerous and mentally deranged criminals to take over the city streets. But let's criminalize the police and not allow the cops to arrest and institutionalize some whackjob whom they already were aware of.
This crime is a reflection of your policy decisions progressives. Not Trump's.

@39
It's called Incitement to Commit a Crime, and a case could be made that tRump did that on several occasions, including but possibly not limited to, him offering to pay legal fees for followers who attacked protesters, and saying he could shoot someone on 5th avenue without repercussion.

That selective memory and feigned ignorance really doesn't look good on you.

@41 So the bums on the street today are all because of Reagan because 40 years ago he made the mistake of listening to a bunch of leftists who wanted to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill? Seriously. It's like listening to a broken See-N-Say with you people and how you keep regurgitating the same, tired talking points.

@40 Again. It is laughable that you are trying to pin the antics of a mentally ill Nihilist in Portland who didn't even vote for Trump and - gasp - said a lot of good things about Bernie Sanders on his social media feed on our duly elected President. Seriously. You people should be institutionalized yourself.

And continuing with the nonsense of Stranger hacks trying to politicize the actions of some random, mentally ill, Nihilist.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliareinstein/…

Looking through the guy's social media rants, I came across some whoppers. The guy supporters Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein in their fight against the prison industrial complex. He's also opposed to pipelines.

With that sort of attitude, he should be hired by The Stranger.

He's also anti-male circumcision where the screen capped rant ends with this treasure.

"There are Estrogen receptors in that foreskin!!! It ain't garbage!!!"

...

...

But do go on trying to pin this on Conservatives, Slog-holes.

@44
Funny, that link doesn't say any of the things you claim it does, instead offering evidence that the alleged perp is a racist wrong-winger.

Argumentum ex silentio, argumentum ad lapidem, onus probandi, continued argumentum ad hominem.

Personal foul, red flag. Get off the field; suspension for the remainder of the season.

Oh, Donald. Always so grumpy.

Theres something ironic about the "Hail Vinland" thing.

Yes that was the Viking name for the part of North America where they landed- Aix-au-Plains, Newfoundland, Canada. However, when they arrived, the Native American population indigenous to that area was technologically superior tot he Vikings. Every Viking who landed there got killed.
As for Greenland, that colony didnt last long, either. The Vikings refused to adapt their diet to match the terrain. They brought sheep and goats over and insisted on eating those instead of the food the Inuit relied on (seal, polar bear, walrus). The sheep and goats ate all teh grass, which led to a into environmental catastrophe- while they lasted longer in Greenland than they did in Vinland, the still had to abandon the settlement entirely since there wasnt any grazing area left and all the farm animals they ate for food died off.

Those that stand against white supremacy are heroes.

There is also a major difference between the far left and the far right and their purpose is entirely different. Far right = extreme capitalism = fascism. Far Left = Freedom. Example of the far left - the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) a labor movement that fought for the 8 hour day and worker rights without which people could well be working 12 hours a day with little pay if they had work. The IWW has the first labor movement to include people of all races and skills and it included socialists, communists and anarchists. It is anti-capitalist because capitalism is based on exploitation. Th status quo says there is no difference when that is entirely wrong. The status quo is interested in continuing to claim they are the same because of the profit motive and the privilege given some.

Those that stand against white supremacy are heroes.

There is also a major difference between the far left and the far right and their purpose is entirely different. Far right = extreme capitalism = fascism. Far Left = Freedom. Example of the far left - the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) a labor movement that fought for the 8 hour day and worker rights without which people could well be working 12 hours a day with little pay if they had work. The IWW has the first labor movement to include people of all races and skills and it included socialists, communists and anarchists. It is anti-capitalist because capitalism is based on exploitation. Th status quo says there is no difference when that is entirely wrong. The status quo is interested in continuing to claim they are the same because of the profit motive and the privilege given some. This should get you going!

The mainstream media keep getting this guy wrong. Go read JJ MacNab's analysis on her twitter feed. She's a US non-Muslim extremists subject matter expert to believe until there's a clear reason not to, in my opinion. I've been reading her takes on the past 18 months of events she's publicly commented on and, so far, she's been worth it. Depressing to learn, but still worth it.

Wait, is this guy a leftist or an alt-righter? I read at a credible source somewhere else that he was a BernieBro.

Mr Christian's life in detention promises to be an eventful one, filled with episodic violence and mayhem. His Aryan Brotherhood pals will be glad to see him.

@1 Sublime Afterglow: An excellent suggestion. Thank you.
Here's hoping wingnut Christian and all thugs like him rot in prison.

@33 LavaGirl: You GO, girl---well said! I nominate you winner of this comment thread.

Thanks Grizelda.

@33: I think this is what you are trying to say (I'm pretty sure Danny Elfman was joking, though):

"Only a lad. He really couldn't help it."
"Only a lad. He didn't want to do it."
"Only a lad. He's underprivileged and abused."
Perhaps a little bit confused?
Oh oh oh, ohh ohh ohh

It's not his fault that he can't believe,
It's not his fault that he can't behave,
Society made him go astray.

Perhaps if we're nice he'll go away,
Perhaps he'll go away,
He'll go away

"Only a lad. You really can't blame him."
"Only a lad. Society made him."
"Only a lad. He's our responsibility."

Bollocks. This guy is a piece of shit full stop and no amount of referring to things that are wrong with society excuse his actions. His kind are corrosive to society.

I suspect he is going to be in prison with a lot of the kinds of non-Aryan people that he hates and has acted against. I only regret that the prison officials will likely protect him from the rest of the population.