Almost everything about the killing of eight people, six of whom were Asian women, at three spa salons in Atlanta, Georgia, speaks to the intersection of white supremacy and misogyny – from the way in which the locations were targeted by the white male suspect to the manner in which the predominantly white, male Cherokee County Police Department responded. When Captain Jay Baker stood before reporters, he did not use the words “terrorism” or “hate crime” to describe the violence. Instead, he seemed to apologise on behalf of the gunman, by saying that “he had a really bad day” – an odd way to speak of the premediated killing of eight individuals. He went on to mention 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long’s struggle with “sex addiction” and said that he was a “deeply religious” man. “He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places,” Baker added. “It’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.” In other words, the attack was not motivated by race, misogyny or religion – because the white male accused said so to a white police officer. This violence did not occur within a vacuum. Hate crimes against Asian Americans, mostly women, have spiked 150% during the past year, even as overall hate crimes have fallen by 7%, according to the Centre for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino. (…) In a 2018 report titled ‘When Women are the Enemy: The Intersection of Misogyny and White Supremacy‘, the the Anti-Defamation League observed: “There is a robust symbiosis between misogyny and white supremacy; the two ideologies are powerfully intertwined. While not all misogynists are racists, and not every white supremacist is a misogynist, a deep-seated loathing of women acts as a connective tissue between many white supremacists, especially those in the alt-right, and their lesser-known brothers in hate like incels (involuntary celibates), MRAs (Men’s Rights Activists) and PUAs (Pick-Up Artists). “This cross-pollination means the largely anonymous outrage of the men’s rights arena acts as a bridge to the white supremacist and anti-Semitic ideology of the alt-right. After all, it’s not a huge leap from ‘women’s quest for equal rights threatens my stature as a man’ to ‘minorities’ and women’s quests for equal rights threaten my stature as a white man’.”
via bylinetimes: ATLANTA MURDERS – The Toxic Relationship Between White Supremacy & Misogyny