A journalist and advocate who rose from homelessness and addiction to serve as a spokesperson for Philadelphia’s most vulnerable was shot and killed at his home early Monday, police said.
Josh Kruger, 39, was shot seven times at about 1:30 a.m. and collapsed in the street after seeking help, police said. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. Police believe the door to his Point Breeze home was unlocked or the shooter knew how to get in, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. No arrests have been made and no weapons have been recovered, they said.
Authorities haven’t spoken publicly about the circumstances surrounding the killing.
But who’s committing these crimes, and why so much senseless violence?
Probably a “good Christian”, since the fundamentalist are militantly (in a literal sense) against any sort of tolerance, acknowledgement, or compassion being expressed towards people who don’t completely conform to their heteronormative worldview.
I stole this from another poster, but it does indicate that it was probably his ex boyfriend, or drug related, and not a “good Christian” as you imply.
Here’s some excerpts from the local paper.
https://www.inquirer.com/crime/josh-kruger-killed-point-breeze-shooting-philadelphia-journalist-20231002.html
What a strange hateful and bigoted worldview you hold
Not all that strange, just go by a planned parenthood and check out the crazies accosting people outside of those.
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I mean it would par for the course.
Excuse me, but your bigotry is hanging out. Would you mind zipping up?
Yes! That’s exactly what you should say to Christians when they start spouting off on their racist, homophobic, or otherwise prejudiced beliefs. You’re a great role model.
I have done and will continue to call out racial and homophobic bigotry as quickly as I do religious bigotry.
Unfortunately, as shameful as it is, one of those forms of prejudice is supported by most of the active population here.
What? You mean in America, the country ruled by Christians who impose Christianity on children in schools, where the majority religion is Christianity, where Christian organizations get preferential treatment by the government, where Christianity is the overwhelming majority religion of politicians, and where there is an active political movement to literally enforce state Christianity on the population, and where Christian moral doctrine is being widely used to restrict the bodily autonomy of women?? Ah yes so much Christian hate
Unironically shut the fuck up
You have thoroughly convinced me!
Where can I sign up for the daily hate speech against Christians? Oh, nevermind, I forgot I already have a Lemmy account.
It is unfortunate that rather than learning how to fight against their methods, you have instead decided to emulate them.
“Hate speech against Christians”
Please point out the hate speech in the comment you replied to. Telling you to shut the fuck up isn’t hate speech, and everything else is literally a straightforward fact about Christianity in America. Zero hate speech.
Gotta play the persecution game though, am I right?
Those first two lines were intentionally sarcastic exaggeration. Was I supposed to include a /s for the cheap seats? It seemed pretty obvious from here.
They pretty well lost me when they told me to “shut the fuck up”. I certainly wasn’t going to waste my time on a clearly worded response to someone who likely wouldn’t read it anyways.
Not sure who you think is getting persecuted, I doubt many Christians would hang out in a place like this. Even those that push for the bodily autonomy of women would feel unwelcome with so many people openly hostile to their faiths.
I’m curious what you consider hate speed or bigotry against christians.
If I dislike all christians that follow the bible/their gods commands and believe in their gods benevolence, would you say I’m a bigot?
tl;dr Maybe. It mostly depends on your wording and actions. Christians are not one group or thing anymore than Europeans or LGBT people are. They are a collection of highly varied peoples that can’t even agree on the number of books in the bible or whether Jesus was man, god, or both.
If someone says or implies “all Christians” are this or that negative thing it moves closer to yes rather than maybe. If someone is accuses a person of being something for no other reason than a group they belong to, then the accuser is probably a bigot.
This wall of text is an eyesore, so I added bold to your words and Italics to other quotes to help with readability. My words have neither.
If you personally dislike them, but you don’t let it affect the way you treat them, I really wouldn’t care one way or another.
As far as I am concerned, fear and hatred of the unknown and different are as human and natural as love and lust. It is what people do with those emotions that matter.
If someone’s lust encourages them to date and eventually spend their life with someone they are attracted to that is a good expression. If someone’s lust encourages them to violet the privacy of or assault someone then that is a bad expression.
Fear of the unknown and different is similar. If it encourages someone to learn more about different peoples, foods, or animals, then it is a good expression. If it encourages them to disparage or commit acts of violence against them then that is a bad expression.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bigot
https://www.britannica.com/topic/hate-speech
I see bigotry and hate speech as more words and actions than opinions. What does an opinion matter if it is not expressed through word or deed? Is someone really intolerant if they tolerate someone in all areas except their own mind?
Mostly it comes down to treating any group, Christians in this case, as if they are the same and are each responsible for the acts of all the others.
Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodoxy don’t even agree on the number of books in the bible. If you haven’t run into the idea of the Apocrypha you may find it interesting.
Various numbers below (formatting edited for readability):
https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2022/04/why-are-protestant-catholic-and-orthodox-bibles-different/
Lest you think that it is only the old testament that is debated here is info about the New testament in Martin Luther’s Bible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilegomena#Reformation
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“Religious bigotry” LOL
The only people who practice anything that could be called that are religious people themselves. Everyone else just wants to be left the fuck alone.
Fair enough. I should have called it anti-religious bigotry.
Calling out your hateful ideology for what it is, is not bigotry. You seem to not understand that word either. Nothing I said was bigoted.
What? I didn’t call anything you said bigotry. Just adjusted the term I used based on your previous statement.
I am not sure what this means unless you think I am religious. I am not.
Religion is a choice
Expression of Religion is a choice. Belief in religion is often more fundamental to who a person is.
Religion is poison.
It is unfortunate that you think so, there is a lot of wisdom in the various world religions.
We may be beyond the need for religion, but I doubt even that.
Finding wisdom in religion is like trying to pick corn out of shit.
Nice quote, though I think it would be better applied to this whole post.
The few bits of wisdom here are so surrounded by shit that most people would need a hose and sieve to find them.
No there’s not.
You can be a wise, moral and ethical person without religion. It’s easy. Tons of people do that every single day.
I fully agree.
Edit: That in no way discounts the idea that there is a lot of wisdom in religion. Even if some of it is outdated.
That is not really what I was referring to Edit: when I said I doubt we are beyond the need for religion. There is a (debated) theory that religion was important in moving from tribalism towards modern civilization. Specifically, the belief that a god or gods would punish your neighbor if he was doing evil behind your back may have been a necessary concept in our development. Even in modern times, the idea that our fellow citizens may be doing evil without recourse is a serious consideration. It may be adding to our current societal stresses.
Of course, that could be all horse shit, but I am leaned slightly towards that opinion at present.
As an atheist (i do not believe in an intelligent creator, or othewise deity), the more time i invest in being moral and wise the more friends i make with pastors. Most people cannot tell from the surface that i am not religious, the more i ask myself if i am religious or not the more meaningless that question starts appearing.
I don’t identify with any particular religion, but it would be challenging to prove i’m not religious despite the fact that i do not believe in any god.
What wisdom is in world religions that couldn’t be found elsewhere without all the murdery baggage?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
You gotta take a stand somewhere. The intolerant religious zealots would be a good place to start.
To borrow a line from /u/theneverfox@pawb.social
https://lemmy.world/comment/3754441
The paradox is literally what’s happening with you in this thread, genius. the Christian church has been out of bounds for centuries, and now that people are finally responding appropriately, you kick and scream saying “not like that! you can only respond appropriately if you follow all the rules laid out by the people who oppress you! you need to tolerate our intolerance because our imaginary friend says we need to hate you to stop the end of the world”
There were “good” people who identify as Nazis. should we let that ideology thrive because a minority of its population put flowers on the graves their compatriots created?
I get that you just want to hold hands and sing kumbaya, but I have trouble holding the hands that are covered with the blood of my brothers, sisters, and allies.
The vast majority of Christians have spent your entire life moving more towards the middle. Yet, all you see is the ground that hasn’t been covered yet. When you push them (not me) back and pretend that they should be judged by the actions of their ancestors instead of their own actions, you make it that much more challenging to have them stay in-bounds, or move back in if they have gone astray.
When you compare the Christian Religion that two-thirds of the US shares, to the secular Nazi Ideology, and claim they have blood on their hands, you push them towards radicalization.
When people that support your stance go out-of-bounds themselves, and aren’t called on it they make it that much harder to show the way back in-bounds to the opposition that have strayed.
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Just be sure you’ve taken a moment to understand who you’re speaking with and what you’re speaking with them about. Because in this case, any issue of bigotry has absolutely nothing to do with this drug related domestic dispute murder.
Commenters here are arguing with each other over something that has nothing to do with this case. So, it’s not that you care about the victim, you care about virtue signaling.
FWIW, the victim regularly attended an Episcopalian church. So, I’m not so sure he’d be cool with people using religion as a cudgel beneath his obituary.
Is that what it is looking like now? The article was significantly sparse on details.
Yeah. No argument there…
I posted this earlier https://lemmy.ml/comment/4475683
Thank you for the link. The article from that comment was far superior.
I am sorry to hear that Josh lost his life like that. Seems like Philly lost a good guy.
Hopefully it wasn’t actually the domestic option. It is a hard thought to think that someone he helped out by letting them live there would come back to kill him.
Also, I am glad to hear that his friends are looking into rehoming his rescued cat friend.
If you keep advocating in this fashion you are going to start feeling very backed up against a wall very quickly. When people are routinely hurt by an institution the unambiguous defense of the people within institution as a whole claiming a similar victimhood plays on a part of human nature. What people want of you is to accept that the numbers of people claiming Christiandom to then go on to harm someone means that as someone who claims to be Christian that you should be the first voice to start criticizing your own.
Instead because you cannot separate yourself from your Christian label or other people’s frustration and pain caused by other people who do so under the flag of being “Proud Christians” your advocacy appears shallow and self serving. You and all the good Christians you defend become literary “the good man who does nothing” If facing people in your audience who have experienced trauma at the hands of your group what they want to see is that you accept that people like you harmed them and that you are different than them by being able to recognize their pain and shelve your agenda and listen unambiguously. What they are asking is for you to show you care about them and are strong enough to weather and differentiate the criticism they aren’t directing at you.
It’s a similar effect to how a lot of systemic issues around racism get held up on the feelings of the people in institutions about being implied to be racist. Oftentimes the issues never get dealt with because the conversation has to stop become all about the feelings of the person and how they aren’t a bad person. While they may not intend it that person’s feelings become the obstacle that throws up the roadblocks on people who are fighting desperately to have less roadblocks. Once this happens often enough people start to figure that that person’s feelings DO make them a bad person because regardless of their personal merits they are still in the way and having to sway every individual roadblock by taking them offside and coddling them telling them, it’s okay we know YOU aren’t a bad person becomes way too much. Thus people start getting more frustrated with the people who demand this treatment and take up their energy and they start getting more strident.
When you place yourself in that spot it’s easy to see people’s frustration as hate but it is different. They want you to be better.
I appreciate the well-thought out and verbose response. Have an upvote!
Now to the meat of it. I am not a Christian, I am someone who is tired of some bigots getting a pass and some bigots getting their whole instances defederated. Since there is clearly a disinterest in heavy-handed moderation to get rid of the one-sided bigotry then the best recourse is open discussion.
I have no doubt that the people here who are heavily prejudiced against religion have their reasons, but that does not mean that their words are good or acceptable in an open forum. When people express their ideas in socially unacceptable ways they should be called out and down-voted, but currently they they are mostly receiving positive responses. This is wrong. It is a mark against the communities and instances they are posting those statements in.
It does not matter why someone feels justified for spewing hate, they should be called-out or at least shunned. If you want to help someone work through their hate, that is great. I just want to stop being embarrassed by it. Despite being a great concept, I literally cannot recommend Lemmy to anyone because the top comment is so often some trash about how “all conservatives are fascists” or a gay activist died “it must be a Christian.”
Lemmy is kind of unapologetically leftist and there is a lot of dissatisfaction by a number of groups that all coelece around the use of religion or “traditional values” a euphemism for Christian, more specifically the Pauline chapters, norms that reject LGBTQIA identities and a flattening of the rights of women to be autonomous. When you look at the “bigotry” you’ll find “Christianity” does not always often mean the same thing when people use it from poster to poster. In many ways it closer to a shorthand for the Evengelical movements which are growing more like consolidated political parties. If someone claims to be Christian the belief in Christ itself is not always the cause for the vitriol (not saying the angry atheists do not prowl). Rather it is how they weild it against other communities.
Moderation is never truly neutral. To some extent all places are tailored to be safer to someone. Leftist spaces are often tailored to be more sympathetic with people to whom conservative values trend on the whole to be hostile towards. Importantanly however it is important to look at how that frustration is being utilized. On the whole people here’s main gripe is an overreach of control at the expense of safety and health of other people. The desired outcome is not a banishment from society but a ceasefire.
Once again, thank you for the well-reasoned comment.
I have to say, much of this sounds very similar to something I might have said while trying to convince someone that there is some nuance to the Christian Right. The rest of if though is still worth thinking over some more for sure. Especially the bit about how this space is a bit tailored towards leftist view points. Maybe I am expecting too much in a place where people should be able to throw an off the cuff “goddam repubtards” without being called on it.
Still, I think some of the comments really do push that boundary; including OC’s immediate accusation of some generic Christian being the murder.
It’s true that bigotry can work both ways, but you have to admit the right has given us a lot of reason to feel bigoted towards them, especially in light of incidents like this where progressive and smart people are being killed for being better humans than other humans. Christianity has one main tenet - love they neighbor as thyself. There is no other principle to Christianity, only this one. And yet right wingers seem to think they don’t have to obey it but can still call themselves “christians,” which is a complete lie and slap in the face to god and everyone on earth.
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Well hey maybe religious people should stop consistently hurting other humans and society in general because they think their imaginary friend would be down with it.
It sounds an awful like you are saying, “Well yeah, we are bigots, but we are bigots because they deserve it!”
Am I misunderstanding you?
Yes, you are misunderstanding me.
I’m saying that religion has a richly documented history of intolerance and repression, up to and including the present day. I am simultaneously saying that I am intolerant of intolerance.
I feel like you should read up on this if you’re still struggling to wrap your head around the nuance of what pretty much everyone else in this comment tree besides yourself is expressing.
Thank you for the clarification.
I have read that multiple times. I just think it is a shite theory.
I eventually need to put it in my own words, but /u/theneverfox@pawb.social’s post is pretty good for now: (emphasis added)
https://lemmy.world/comment/3754441
Nope, my pointed disdain for backwards, illogical, regressive, exclusionary, predatory cults is showing. I don’t have a problem with religious people as long as they don’t force their shit onto others. Nationalist Christians are trying to force their bullshit theocracy onto the whole country, and that’s very fucking far from ok.
For the record, I was raised catholic, and I noped the fuck out of that bullshit once I got old enough to ask incisive questions. Maybe you should too.
It took going to a Bible College for me to break it down. That doesn’t mean that I have forgotten all of the good-hearted, well-meaning Christians that I met along the way. I haven’t forgotten all of the assholes either.
Yes I know, there are plenty of busybody assholes that identify as Christians, just like there are plenty of busybody assholes that identify themselves as atheist, gay, straight, athlete or gamer. Some people just feel the need to tell others how to live their lives even when they don’t really understand them. It doesn’t mean that we should act like everyone in that group is the same.
That sort of prejudicial reductionism is the real enemy. It is the thing reasonable, free-thinkers should be fighting against, not turning around for our own use.
Your point seems to be that people should not generalise an opinion on a large group of people. But you fail to ask the question of when passivism becomes guilty by failing to act. Germany was held accountable for the atrocities of the holocaust. They moved on. They educate in schools in an attempt to prevent this from reoccurring. What is happening in the US with republicans can only persist if people support them, and polling suggests there is support there.
That is indeed my exact point.
That is actually one of my main concerns with the direction lemmy is heading. At some point when the bias becomes extreme enough we need to start calling out those that are crossing the line. If it seems like I am not pointing enough at the extremes of the republican side, it is only because their voices are few and far-between on Lemmy. Typically when I find them, they are already buried in down-votes and comments. I usually a downvote to the pile, upvote a few other comments, and then move on.
In principle, I agree with this, but in practice it seems to be having questionable long-term results. The rise of the extreme right seems as prevalent there as it is in the US. Though some of that may just be overreporting because of the general interest in Germany when it comes to right-wing extremism.
I think this issue is a bit more complex than that. I think it has to do as much or more with people being forced to support the side they feel less negative towards even if they don’t really agree with that side. Here is an interesting if imperfect analogy I read relating to it:
Excerpt from https://lemmy.world/comment/3742406 from /u/Grumpy@sh.itjust.works
My point was not about authoritarian. It is about the lies that are being told to the masses to convince them that being turkeys for Christmas is actually good for them. The lies have gone from extreme into the ridiculous. I watched Trump tell a crowd that climate change is not true and that he can sort out the forest fires tomorrow. He wants to make use of the wasted overflow pipes in cities. Where do you start on that one? Trump has caused murders literally; people died in the insurrection. He is affirmed as being a rapist in judicial hearing. In the UK we call this out as being a nonce. There were republican candidates who said they would follow Trump if he was elected while in prison. Worse still, this is only a minor take on the whole story. Boebert committing sex acts in front of kids. The open gerrymandering in states across the US. The attacks on the judicial system and civil employees. The way they used public servant wages as blackmail instead of using democratic leeway.
How far down the rabbit hole do you have to go before thinking that there is something wrong here, and I have to use my position to prevent more of it?
Apologies, my intention wasn’t to imply you meant Authoritarianism is the main problem, but rather that I thought polarization was. Guess that is what I get for using part of someone else’s comment instead of writing my own.
I see your point. Trump is a lying, liar, who lies. The problem is America has mostly shifted from voting for someone to voting against someone. Trump vs Clinton was an unpopularity contest that America lost, and maybe the world too.
There are undeniably die hard trump supporters out there, but many people that voted for him in the last two elections, and who will likely vote for him again, aren’t really supporters of his, they are more against Biden and Democrats.
Between their hatred for the Democrats and the fact that “we got him this time” was turned into a meme four years ago, there are a good portion of Republicans that have started to treat anything negative about Trump as another attack to be dismissed. Even when they see a video of his own words, it is dismissed as taken out of context, a misquote, a deep fake, whatever works for them. However anything seemingly positive is laid at his feet.
The biggest problem at this point is attack ads and court cases just further convince the die hard supporters that he really is trying to “drain the swamp” and all the attacks are the response of the swamp. The individual issues that ridiculously pile up for a neutral observer are all just proof of his righteousness in their minds.
Have you seen a version of this article where anti-trump conservatives had to stop running ads against Trump because they were helping him or doing nothing? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/anti-trump-super-pac-says-attack-ads-are-backfiring/ar-AA1hsIwq
Trump is definitely a problem, but he’s also a symptom of the larger problem of polarization. In the past, moderates were able to keep things in balance, but right now being a moderate is nearly a crime to both wings. Republicans tend to call them “RINOs” and Democrats tend to call them “basically Republicans”.
I think even if we eliminate Trump, someone will quickly follow in his steps, and I am not convinced that it will necessarily be a Republican. Too many power-hungry people from across the spectrum have now seen that America is ripe for the taking by a certain kind of charismatic figure.
The only way to slow this down in my mind is to begin building a bridge between the two sides. As a start we need to first and foremost stop forcing centrists to choose a side. Then we need to find a few things we still agree on, before moving on to more challenging issues. If we cannot even find a few issues we agree with the other side, then we at least need to find some issues where the extremes agree with the moderates and build from there. If we cannot even do that then it probably about time to figure out whether we are going for French style political purges or a Roman style first princeps.
If we are throwing out the rule of law anyways them I am voting for the Governator! I am mostly kidding.
I lost you here. What position? Prevent more of what?
Also, sorry if this turned out a bit on the rambling side, I should have waited until morning to write this.
You are contradicting yourself.
Care to explain how?
No.
Most honest answer I’ve seen this week.
Christians love to play the victim, when you literally run the country.
Tangentially, my go-to aphorism when some American Christian starts whinging about how “persecuted” they are:
And to be clear: any Christian in the US claiming “persecution” should be viewed with the same seriousness as white, upper-middle class people claiming everyone racist against white property… because both of those claims are categorically bullshit. Nobody in the US wants to or cares about persecuting white people or Christians. We just want all the Nationalist Christians to get the fuck out of our politics and stop trying to push theocratically-derived laws on the rest of us, because just like we don’t want to live under a Sharia legal system, we similarly don’t want to live under a biblical (or Torah-derived, or any-other-religious-text-derived) law system.
Theocratic Christians are such a minority that the risk of this is nil. This is like conservatives fear-mongering about the US going Stalinist.
The US has never had a biblical law system and never will. (Certainly not in the near future, although with infinite time anything is possible).
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Bigots and manipulating sociopaths have a difficult time reconciling that they’re terrible people.
Ah, the ol’ “the anti-bigots are the real bigots” response? Is that where we are now?
They randomly accused people they have no evidence of for commiting a crime. So yeah, they are being a bigot.
Looks like they are both bigots from here.
Major cities have always been cesspools of violent crime.
It’s Philly, this is nothing new (Edit: since people love twisting words, I meant violence in general not the specific targeting of an activist journalist for Christ sake). I grew up in South Jersey (half way in between Philly and Atlantic City, NJ) and there’s always a headline on the nightly news about “X people were killed in a shootout today in West/South/North Philly today”, most people don’t see it though since Philly is overshadowed by NYC (anyone from Central Jersey and North gets NYC news). Everything but Center City has always been a shit hole for the most part.
Edit: I live in NYC for 5 years, it of course has shitty areas all over too. Everyone is trying to act like major cities are perfect, crime free areas. Did people forget that the Italian and Irish mobs ran NYC and Philly for decades?!
Having a home invader break into your house and gun you down is not a common occurrence, even in philly. It was a targeted attack.
I didn’t say that was a common occurrence, I was saying violence and murder is common in Philly. It’s literally on the news almost every night.
Of course this was a targeted attack.
What do you mean by “targeted”?
That’s not what they said.
You got selective reading or something?
No, it’s more like people are twisting my words. I simply meant violence and murder is nothing new in Philly. If you read the rest of what I wrote I clearly state that. Whose the one with selective reading?
They said shootings, not your very specific example. You got a reason for your shitty attitude?
This wasn’t someone gunned down in a shootout. This was a homeless and LGBT rights activist who was brutally murdered in his home.
Nothing about that is ordinary.
Is it “ordinary” for anyone in any career to be brutally murdered in their home?
If you were halfway between Philly and Atlantic City, you were too far away from Philly to pretend to be an expert. But keep using that weak anecdotal “evidence” to continue your ignorant views on urban areas.
Saying “Everything but Center City has always been a shit hole” gives you away. You have no fucking clue. Probably been at least a decade since you’ve driven within 30 miles of the city.
So apparently the ABC nightly news is “anecdotal evidence”. My aunt lives in Philly, my brother’s works there frequently, I’m pretty aware of how Philly is.
It’s sensationalist, absolutely.
edit: ok you’re right, the ABC Nightly News isn’t sensationalist. 🙄
I also like how immediately after you claim it’s not anecdotal, you talk about how you know people who live there lol
I mean, shootings in bad parts of Philly and Camden aren’t new, but they’re gang-related. This sort of crime detailed in the article is not common, even in Philly. This guy was targeted. Someone he likely knew was in his home, because no one had to break in (I highly doubt he didn’t lock his door), and 7 shots is overkill. Journalists aren’t being targeted like this on the regular.
Source: grew up 20 minutes outside of Philly in South Jersey