skandalon

Like so many others in this day and age, they fought against the pressures of modern society to maintain a happy, respectable and responsible family life. Andy … was a model employee, hard working, personable and well liked.

✖ Via Guardian.co.uk: “Family found dead in Hampshire home were deeply in debt” by Matthew Taylor, July 27th, 2010

The quote above is a statement by John Underhill, former managing director at the firm where Andy Case used to work, before he killed his two daughters, his wife and himself.

• Sep 10, 2010 link notes tagged: communication mass murder family debt nexus nexum slave critic insurrection news UK violence death modernity society life potentiality stress pressure happiness economy

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society [1] places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.

✖ Via Condition of the Working Class in England, by Frederick Engels, ch. VII: “Results”, 1845

First published in Leipzig in 1845. The English edition (authorised by Engels) was published in 1887 in New York and in London in 1891. Source: Panther Edition, 1969, from text provided by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Moscow. Transcribed by Tim Delaney in 1998. (more)

A similar (not identical) argument motivates various “murder by proxy” theories regarding mass murders. See for example Going Postal by Mark Ames (2005) and the documentary Murder by Proxy. How America Went Postal.

• Aug 22, 2010 link notes tagged: communication society community murder mass murder killer murderer killing spree proxy murder by proxy blame bias determinism book author responsability representation

communication ordinary mass_murder killing_spree normal lost loser film movie art representation

✖ Via He Was A Quiet Man, Frank A. Cappello, 2007

See also Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976), Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993) and more recently Rampage by the infamous German director Uwe Boll.

• Jun 03, 2010 link notes tagged: communication ordinary mass murder killing spree normal lost loser film movie art representation

I can’t believe he would do that — he was a quiet little fellow.

✖ Via The Associated Press: “UK taxi driver kills 12, wounds 25 in England”, June 2nd, 2010

“SEASCALE, England — British police say a taxi driver went on a shooting spree across rural northwestern England, killing 12 people and wounding 25 others before turning the gun on himself. The rampage in the county of Cumbria is Britain’s deadliest mass shooting since 1996 and shocked a country where gun ownership is tightly restricted.”

Travis Bickle in Martin Scorese’s Taxi Driver:

“The idea had been growing in my brain for some time: TRUE force. All the king’s men cannot put it back together again.”

Meanwhile, in Calumet Pennsylvania : 1 dead, 2 wounded in western Pa. shooting

• Jun 02, 2010 link notes tagged: communication mass murder shooting spree death homicide multiple homicide ordinary England destruction excommunication