Dylann Roof Learned the Exact Wrong Lesson From Trayvon Martin

Dylann Storm Roof’s name will deservedly go down in infamy as one of America’s most depraved and retrograde serial killers.

He should also go down in history as one of the least competent interpreters of that history.

By this point, nearly everyone knows that Roof’s self-described moment of racial “awakening,” so to speak, was the Trayvon Martin case, in which the 17-year-old teen Trayvon Martin was shot in self-defense by George Zimmerman. Roof, in his nauseating manifesto, says he first came to be a racist when he read about this case on Wikipedia, and, to paraphrase him, didn’t see what the big deal was. From this simple, and pretty standard read on the case, he then somehow moved onto believing that blacks were serial rapists out to rape white women and steal America from under its presumptively white population.

This isn’t just crazy; it’s mind-bogglingly stupid.

Let’s back up.  When the Martin story first broke, I wrote one of the earliest articles expressing skepticism of the official media narrative that Martin was a helpless victim, and also pointing out holes in his suspension record. For my trouble, I got tarred by Media Matters as an apologist for racism who thought Martin deserved what he got. Neither of these things was true, but given that I worked for Glenn Beck at the time, I presume the smear was really targeted at him, with my reputation intended as a casualty of war. No harm done, I suppose, since both Beck and I emerged from it unscathed.

I bring this up because I want to establish my credentials as someone who was one of the most pro-Zimmerman media voices, even at a time when it was politically inconvenient to be such. With hindsight, I believe my initial suspicions were more than vindicated, and that Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict was the only outcome that could’ve been reached in the case without entirely miscarrying justice. More than that, I genuinely believe Zimmerman was innocent of any wrongdoing and did defend himself.

So having established that I would’ve agreed with Roof’s initial read that the protests and racial anger that were stoked by this case were entirely unwarranted, let me now explain in painstaking detail why his jump from that to defending white nationalist racial hatred was literally the exact opposite of the lesson a pro-Zimmerman observer should’ve taken from the Martin case.

Here are the facts of the case, as Zimmerman’s defenders saw them: Trayvon Martin was known to be a hothead who was chronically in trouble with his school for acts of petty violence. There was evidence that he was a drug user, which probably fueled his instability. Moreover, Martin was an imposing 5’11’’ with a football player’s body, while Zimmerman was a dumpy, out of shape man who stood a meagre 5’7’’. It’s quite plausible that if Martin attacked Zimmerman, the latter would’ve been helpless to defend himself with anything but his gun.

Flash forward to the night when Zimmerman followed Martin while making his neighborhood watch duties, only to later end up shooting Martin in self-defense. There is ample evidence that Martin had a motive to attack Zimmerman.

That motive? Homophobia.

Even the star prosecution witness in the Zimmerman trial, Rachel Jeantel, admitted that Martin was frightened that the “cracker” Zimmerman was a gay pedophile who was following him with the intent to sexually assault him. It is reasonable to conclude that Martin, who we’ve established was easily angered, would’ve seen this as an excuse to teach a lesson to the man he thought was trolling for sex. Zimmerman panicked due to being helpless against the stronger Martin, who was apparently beating his head against the pavement, if forensics are any guide, so he shot him.

If the narrative I’ve just outlined is correct, then the key ingredient that led to Trayvon Martin being shot is not his blackness, but his homophobia. According to the most pro-Zimmerman narrative it is possible to construct, the minimum thing we know about Trayvon Martin is that he attacked another man blindly out of fear of the other man’s sexuality, which he saw as predatory, and his own bigotry got him killed.

Now, ask yourself this: If my narrative is the truth, then who does Dylann Storm Roof resemble more? George Zimmerman or Trayvon Martin?

Dylann Storm Roof was the aggressor in his case. So was Trayvon Martin.

Dylann Storm Roof feared his targets’ sexuality, and even accused them of harboring the desire to “rape our women.” Trayvon Martin also feared his target’s sexuality and saw it as carte blanche to attack him.

Dylann Storm Roof operated outside the law in order to protect against what he saw as external threats. So did Trayvon Martin.

Furthermore, in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin trial, it was not pro-Zimmerman forces that transformed into the sort of lynch mob that Dylann Storm Roof idolized. It was, instead, the New Black Panther Party, who were staunchly pro-Martin, and who even went so far as to put out a bounty on Zimmerman’s head. Zimmerman’s defenders, on the other hand, squarely put their faith in the criminal justice system — the very thing Roof apparently believed was insufficient to defend the white race, hence his affection for extralegal hate groups like the Klan or Skinheads.

The scale of misinterpretation required for Dylann Storm Roof to read about the Martin case — a case where his own side’s interpretation is that a bigot got himself killed by being a bigot — is mind-boggling. It’s like reading the story of the Scopes Monkey Trial and concluding that, in order to live up to the spirit of Clarence Darrow, you should censor what is taught in public education.

Ultimately, Dylann Storm Roof most likely saw in the Martin case what he, in his viciousness and hate, wanted to see. But that doesn’t mean we should excuse his utter inability to comprehend the case as even Zimmerman’s defenders understood it to take place. Nor does it mean we should reopen that caustic old wound because this sick, twisted and vile young man decided to open so many new ones with his spray of bullets. Dylann Storm Roof has taken the lives of numerous innocent people. I hope we will not allow him to take what should be remembered as a triumph of truth and justice with him, too.