Putting words into my mouth saying they deserved it. At no point have I suggested he deserved to get shot, similarly with the above scenarios, of
@NotThatSoph 1 - Maguire's sister didn't deserve it, Rihanna didn't deserve it, Heather Heyer didn't deserve it, but those are moral judgements.
This is cold hard truth. For as much as we say victim shaming/victim blaming is wrong (and it is), there's no conceivable way that it's 100% possible that any party in an event didn't do
anything. Not '
anything wrong' but '
anything'.
As
@NotThatSoph surmises, if Harry Maguire's sister isn't anywhere near that Albanian then no, she doesn't stabbed with a straw and no Harry doesn't get into a fight. It might've happened a different way but causality means that events leading up to it conspired for that to happen.
Rihanna doesn't enter into an argument with Chris Brown then no, he doesn't beat her up. Maybe he beats her up another time but not in that instance.
Heather Heyer doesn't go to the Charlottesville protest, she doesn't die. Maybe the driver kills someone else but not her.
By the same token, the Albanian bloke has the choice not to hit on her, he has the choice not to stab her with a straw and the choice not to start a fight with Harry Maguire over it.
Chris Brown has the choice not to hit Rihanna
The guy who ran down Heather Heyer has the choice not to do so.
For this event, the police have the choice not to shoot him at any point, but that choice is directly influenced by the actions of the guy who ended up getting shot. It's not his fault that he decided to walk back to his car and reach into it, thereby increasing the chances that the police think perhaps he's reaching in for a weapon, perhaps he's gonna dive in the car and hit the accelerator, perhaps ANYTHING, but the fact of the matter remains that he DID walk back to his car and he DID reach into it.
We can white knight our way through this and never, ever in a million years suggest the victim did anything at all.
Or we look at reality unfolding and say 'yep, he died because he went to his car and leaned in, the officers assumed completely incorrectly or perhaps completely automatically about what would happen next and shot him repeatedly in cold blood at close range and it's fecking terrible all round'
I'm coming across as an asshole and you know what? I'm fine with it. I'm fully in agreement that he didn't deserve to die, I've stated as such. I'm fully in agreement that American policing is fecking terrible and racism is rife in every level of society but I'm not blind to the situation. He didn't get shot just standing there so both he and the police did something that set in motion the shooting,
There are always choices and always causes. If you make the wrong choice at the wrong time then your number might come up, unfortunately in this instance, EVERYONE made the wrong choice and it caused a terrible event to unfold