By now we’ve heard that the shooter in El Paso was taken into custody alive after having shot into a Walmart killing at last report 18. This brings to mind my own failings, as I was within the same demographic: An angry white guy who wanted to make people hurt. Thankfully, I got out of that mindset. But I can speak that there is something that encouraged me to think that way.
Vigilante fiction.
Early Vigilantes
The idea of a man striking out against the law is an old one in Western media, with Robin Hood being possibly the first example in popular Western stories; the noble outlaw who steals from the unjust in power and gives to the needy and oppressed. Later stories in the United States focused on the idea of “frontier justice”, the idea that the only law was that which a man had to deal out himself. It was a powerful, resonating message through the ages; sometimes men must break the law in order to be morally right.
Early vigilantes were of course relatively simple in terms of morality: The bad guys are bad and the good guys are good. Robin Hood’s ploys against the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John are because of their vile ways to gain power and wealth in spite of the good king Richard as he was off crusading. The cowboy on the range is protecting himself and the simple farmers from bandits and desperadoes looking to make quick steals and slip across the borders of the territories. When the law is gone, or there is no law, one must decide for themselves where the line is.
Modern Vigilantes
Roughly around the 1920s-1930s, new vigilante stories were coming out that straddled a line between the Early and Contemporary stories. In this era some of the most well-known characters of fiction were born: Zorro, the Shadow, the Green Hornet, and the one and only Batman.
Some of these vigilantes, like Zorro, were still the dashing and devil-may-care rogues that fought the rich and helped the poor. The others, ala Batman, were more focused on punishing the wicked and criminals that plagued society. Compared to the idea of frontier justice, these vigilantes often operated within society, taking to task those which the law either couldn’t or wouldn’t hold accountable for their actions. Powerful mobsters, rogue politicians and cops, up to Nazis, Japanese spies, and dirty commies. The comics didn’t dwell on when these menaces were defeated, only on the fighting of them. Of course, while some of these vigilantes used weapons that wasn’t considered unusual. No one considered a gun a dangerous thing, and the vigilantes that didn’t use them had their tools as part of their gimmicks and styles. I mean can you honestly imagine Batman without his batarang?
Still, there was a new undercurrent being felt about them: The Law isn’t always your friend, sometimes it holds back what needs to be done. Sometimes, it’s corrupted. Others, too restrictive on what action needs to be taken. The cops on the beat are still good men, the judges respectable and fair, but the Law overall cannot act in time.
Contemporary Vigilantes
With images of crime and drugs on the news in the 1970s, the idea of the vigilante darkened considerably. The idea of the vigilante darkened considerably, going from a heroic man leaping through the skyscrapers fighting criminals in organized gangs to long hurt individuals who have been harmed by the criminals and abandoned by the system entirely. There was no cleverly-dressed hero, only people who were harmed and lashing out.
Now, here’s where we get to the influence on today’s young men. By now, one of the most well-known vigilante movies is The Boondock Saints. By now, you know the story: Two Boston brothers take it on themselves to cleanse the streets with holy guidance. When I watched that movie the first time, I loved it. It was action-packed, spoke to me as an Irish-Catholic, and even today the shootouts and fights are awesome to watch.
Then I got in trouble.
It’s personal and painful, and long-story short I got taken to task for my actions. I was a nerd, bullied, and treated as a social outcast and let my anger rule me. When I stepped back and took a second look, I slowly but surely realized that the image of the vigilante had become something I wanted to emulate: Taking to task everyone that had wronged me no matter what the system says.
Look at Taken. People fawned over it on first release, claiming it was a fine action movie and that Liam Neeson is a great action star. He is a fine actor, but by now everyone and their mother has pointed out that the movie is about a kidnapped virginal white girl whose father fights through a horde of racially ambiguous thugs and finished the movie by killing an Arabian sheikh. Uh, what?
Finally, we should talk about this little gem of a film.
Remember when this one first came out, how people fawned over the amazing cinematic techniques and use of the idea that what we see isn’t what is? Everyone talks about that. What fewer people talk about is this scene.
Small side note: I don’t care that the world is a computer simulation, a Škorpion vz. 61 is not dropping assault rifle casings when it’s fired and the SPAS 12 is a semi-automatic shotgun that doesn’t need to be pumped after each shell.
This is honestly something I pictured myself doing: Taking on everyone I felt wronged me, and being justified in doing it. I wanted to be this lone badass, two guns in hand taking the fight to them. All I saw was the cool choreography and awesome guns. I didn’t think until it was very-nearly too late that this is only fiction.
Now, the El Paso and Gilroy shooters believed that America was being invaded. That hordes were coming from the southern border to overwhelm white America and turn this nation into something that’s unrecognizable. Homemade bombs were sent to supposed enemies in Congress as the Tree of Life synagogue was stained with blood because the shooter thought that the Jews were the enemy and that no one else could stop them.
The vigilante has fallen from grace. There is no more heroic ideal in being a lone gunman trying to fight the entire world, you’ll wind up in jail or a morgue and leave people asking why you did it. I was lucky, I got pulled out of the fire. Meanwhile our current power holders would rather fund a wall than ensure federal money for mental health programs and efforts to stop white supremacy from spreading. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
We need to stop idolizing the modern idea of the vigilante. I mentioned before in a piece on the Punisher, that at the end of the day they’re just sad, broken, pathetic people who only carry on as they do because they have nothing else. Rather than fixing their lives, they’d rather break someone else.