The above video news story is about a black man named Jay Phillips, and how he was attacked out of the blue by a group of white males in Vancouver B.C. Phillips explains that the men, a group of five, drove by in a pickup truck while shouting unprovoked epithets and threats before jumping out of the vehicle. Phillips said that he remembers the men using the word “lynch” as they threatened him, before they attacked him. Phillips is trained in martial arts and defends himself against the men, but as the video shows, he could not fend them off forever. Mr. Phillips explains to the reporter that these types of threats and bigotry have no business in a place like Vancouver that has such a diverse population.
Although the police stated that there “seemed” to be a racial element to this assault, they have called it an isolated incident, and say that there is no reason to believe that the white men are connected to any organization such as a white supremacy group.
The type of behavior that Jay Phillips describes in the report, correlates to the behavior that Frank Meeink portrays as typical skinhead behavior in his book, Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead. Meeink stated throughout the book that the main thing that binds skinheads together is violence and mayhem. He writes extensively about the violence that he and other skinheads lashed out with on a regular basis. Through Phillips testimony as well as the video that was caught of the assault, it seems like a page right out of Frank Meeinks book. Then men cruised around in the back of a pickup looking for trouble while calling Phillips a [n-word], then jumped out and attacked him as a group and continued to use racial epithets.
The police initially called the attack an isolated incident, but the judge that tried the men felt differently. Provincial Court Judge Peter Doherty said that “the acid fog of racism permeates the case”. Though I could not find an article specifying whether or not the men we finally convicted of an actual hate crime, the articles containing Judge Doherty’s statements definitely seemed that they would try the men for a hate based assault. Doherty also said that the white men who committed the assault has forever changed their lives through their immature, alcohol and testosterone driven actions, which leads me to believe that the court either intends to, or has already convicted the assailants with a the crime.
Through the Autobiography of a recovering Skinhead, Meeink describes his remorse for his actions and affiliation with this style of behavior, and explains how foolish and ignorant his previous beliefs were. These are the actions of the these white men that shocked this community in B.C. It surely seems that the courts are trying to make an example of this group so that assaults like this do not happen again. It is inspiring that people like Frank Meenik and the courts of Canada are trying to prevent future acts of hate and violence from happening again.
“the acid fog of racism permeates the case”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/guilty-verdict-for-assailants-in-bc-assault-caught-on-youtube/article1656248/
Do you believe these actions are indicators of white nationalist action taking hold to the north in Canada? I personally have never heard of white nationalist hate crimes taking place in BC. Also, I find it baffling that with the provided evidence, the police still claimed this to be an isolated indecent separate from hate groups. "Lynch" is a pretty powerful word.
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