7mo ago

A former Cornell student is sentenced to 21 months for threatening to kill Jews. Dai's lawyer calls his actions a 'misguided attempt' to garner support for Israel

www.npr.org /2024/08/13/nx-s1-5073786/cornell-university-student-sentenced-antisemitic-threats

The person who made all those anonymous threats admits they did it specifically to cause blowback against the pro palestine protestors.

"He believed, wrongly, that the posts would prompt a 'blowback' against what he perceived as anti-Israel media coverage and pro-Hamas sentiment on campus," she wrote.

19 comments

sucks to suck dude

Assuming this is being played straight by his lawyers, I moderately empathize. Early on in my autistic ass adulthood I would say ridiculous racist things thinking I was "satirizing" racism and the people hearing me say that would think "oh that's so stupid, racism is really stupid, haha hypercracker is doing a joke about racists" and it took me an alarmingly long time to learn that people actually just thought I was racist. lmao
- Just going to say that if I were autistic, I don't really think I'd want "I'm too autistic to not commit Zionist hate crimes" out there as a legal defense
- Its ok, mr Mullen
  
  using the Korean Jewish Bill Cosby defense to get off scot-free (:saul-your-honor: my penis is too small for me to have possibly committed these crimes your honor also I'm gay)
- The worst part for me was realizing the people laughing were just racist and not laughing at how absurd racism is.
  Racism is entirely nonsensical. There's no consistent way of determining whiteness, for example. It's silly to think poor people fleeing violence and famine in the global south are actually 5D chess scam artists who somehow draw social security, food stamps, take all the jobs, build mile-long tunnels beneath the border, and forge fake IDs. Why wouldn't they just do that shit from home? The examples are endless of these contradictory world views and my only response to it when I was younger was "Can you believe people actually believed this shit?"
  But no. They still believe this shit. It's how they justify stealing and murder. I'm inoculated because I'm only half white. Apparently others were not.
- he was saying racist things because he was actually racist, just not against the people he was threatening, so i think you're doin a lot better than him
- Whomst amongst us
  I’ve had comments removed from this site for “Anti-Semitic tropes” where I was very confused because I was like “Yeah, I was saying this anti-Semitic trope is stupid and ridiculous, I thought we were on the same page here”
- I think if you're white that's just in bad taste. Also the guy in question is actually racist against Palestinians (and presumably Jews too? There's not really any non-antisemitic way to twist "death threats against Jews" if the guy isn't Jewish himself), not trying to satirise racism.
  
  yes, obviously
- It took me far too long to realize suggesting a completely unviable solution as a joke wasn't being understood as a such. They just thought I was stupid. The cringe must be very strong whenever those memories come up.
  This dude had a fucked up motive though.
- It can be done correctly. It’s just that if your audience is just racist and you don’t reevaluate and double down, then you’re not very good at satire. Or if you don’t understand the topic and just doing surface level bits

is it just me or is there an element here of ableism too? Like he has to apologize for being autistic and at cornell just as much as he is apologizing for the bomb threats?
She said Dai has roughly another six months left to serve, based on his time in custody and good conduct. She pointed to a character letter submitted to the court by a corrections officer who described Dai as extremely intelligent, overly compliant and "kind to a fault, making him a victim to certain populations."
Peebles says Dai is "ashamed" of his actions, but also hopeful that he will get the support services he needs. She says he plans to voluntarily withdraw from Cornell and eventually pursue a vocation.
"He loves cleaning, he's discovered that while he's been in custody," she said, adding he's talked about potentially starting his own cleaning business.
not that there's anything wrong with starting a cleaning business but presumably he was qualified to go to college, why play this "oh he's not gonna even try to finish college don't worry guys, he's just gonna be a simple janitor" line?
Anyhow this isn't to say he didn't do a vile thing. just rubbed me the wrong way.
- Lol no he won't, he went to Cornell, he's going to become a business owner.

Dai, who was a junior at the time, posted the messages in late October, weeks after Hamas' attack on Israel and at a moment when both antisemitic and Islamophobic sentiments were running high on U.S. college campuses and across the country
They're talking about zionism, right?