#Pittsburgh Shooter

[girlactionfigure]

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, Robert Bowers, who murdered 11 Jews in 2018, has been handed a death sentence by the jury.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A Pennsylvania man who killed 11 people in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history meets the requirements for the death penalty, a federal jury found Thursday.

The panel in Pittsburgh reached that conclusion after two hours of deliberations, weighing the fate of Robert Gregory Bowers, 50, who was convicted last month on all 63 federal charges in the Oct. 27, 2018, massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue.

The panel is scheduled to return to court Monday to continue the penalty phase with testimony about potential aggravating and mitigating factors that could end in jurors' recommending the ultimate penalty for Bowers.

The government is seeking the death penalty, and U.S. District Judge Robert J. Colville would have to impose it if the panel ultimately recommends death.

The jury filled out an 11-page verdict form and found that Bowers met baseline criteria for capital punishment.

It found beyond a reasonable doubt that Bowers met aggravating factors, such as creating "a grave risk of death" to multiple people, carrying out the crime with "substantial planning and premeditation," targeting old, "vulnerable" victims and killing and attempting to kill "more than one person in a single criminal episode."

“We are grateful for the jury’s effort to reach a just decision today,” Jeffrey Finkelstein, the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, told reporters outside the courthouse.

“The Federation does not have a position on the death penalty. But this was an act of antisemitism, and the defendant deserves to answer for his crime,” he said.

The shooting 4½ years ago in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh shocked the nation.

The massacre killed Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Cecil Rosenthal, 59; David Rosenthal, 54; Bernice Simon, 84; Sylvan Simon, 86; Daniel Stein, 71; Irving Younger, 69; and Melvin Wax, 87.

“I also hope that the next phase of the trial, which will allow the families of the victims an opportunity to speak, will give them a sense of relief and fulfillment," Finkelstein said.

The community and even loved ones of victims are not unified in opinion about whether Bowers should be put to death, Finkelstein said.

“There is some divide, not only between congregations but also among the victims' families," he said. "There's always different opinions."

The defense argued that Bowers is psychotic and that he has brain abnormalities, leading to his deadly actions.

But the government maintained that Bowers, a truck driver from nearby Baldwin, was a bigot who understood what he was doing.

He was active on social media, ranting about immigrants, pushing conspiracy theories and threatening Jews.

“This was an act of antisemitism, not an issue of mental illness," Finkelstein said. "This was hatred toward Jews. I want to thank the jury for all of their incredible work."

A representative for the U.S. attorney's office in Pittsburgh declined to comment Thursday afternoon. Bowers' defense lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

[ephemeral-winter]

literally no one asked me but unpopular opinion as a jewish person i don't particularly care about the leonard bernstein bradley cooper prosthetic nose thing. being accused of antisemitism and of being in bad taste has never stopped hollywood before and will not stop them in the future. moreover the family (who are VERY protective of the bernstein image*) has issued a statement saying they're fine with it so who am i to judge and furthermore like of the many actual issues facing jewish americans today people being weird about our noses is simply not one that's got me pressed

*i interned at a museum when they had a big bernstein exhibit up and the main curator got a call from one of his daughters like every day lol

[thejewishlink]

Pittsburgh Mass Shooter Sentenced To Death For Slaughtering 11 In Synagogue

The gunman who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers will be sentenced to death for perpetrating the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. The perpetrator, Robert Bowers, had expressed hatred for Jews and white supremacist beliefs online before meticulously planning and executing the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue. On…

[dragoneyes618]

"Perhaps presenting all these facts has the opposite effect from what we think. Perhaps we are giving people ideas.

I don't mean giving people ideas about how to murder Jews. There is no shortage of ideas like that, going back to Pharaoh's decree in the Book of Exodus about drowning Hebrew baby boys in the Nile. I mean, rather, that perhaps we are giving people ideas about our standards. Yes, everyone must learn about the Holocaust aso as not to repeat it. But this has come to mean that anything short of the Holocaust is, well, not the Holocaust. The bar is rather high.

Shooting people in a synagogue in San Diego or Pittsburgh isn't "systemic"; it's an act of a "lone wolf." And it's not the Holocaust. The same is true for arson attacks against two different Boston-area synagogues, followed by similar simultaneous attacks on Jewish institutions in Chicago a few days later, along with physical assaults on religious Jews on the streets of New York - all of which happened within a week of my visit to the Auschwitz show.

Lobbing missiles at sleeping children in Israel's Kiryat Gat, where my husband's cousins spent the week of my museum visit dragging their kids to bomb shelters, isn't an attempt to bring "Death to the Jews," no matter how frequently the people lobbing the missiles broadcast those very words; the wily Jews there figured out how to prevent their children form dying in large piles, so it is clearly no big deal.

Doxxing Jewish journalists is definitely not the Holocaust. Harassing Jewish college students is also not the Holocaust. Trolling Jews on social media is not the Holocaust either, even when it involves photoshopping them into gas chambers. (Give the trolls credit: They have definitely heard of Auschwitz.) Even hounding ancient Jewish communities out of entire countries and seizing all their assets - which happened in a dozen Muslim nations whose Jewish communities predated the Islamic conquest, countries that are now all almost entirely Judenrein - is emphatically not the Holocaust. It is quite amazing how many things are not the Holocaust.

The day of my visit to the museum, the rabbi of my synagogue attended a meeting arranged by police for local clergy, including him and seven Christian ministers and priests. The topic of the meeting was security. Even before the Pittsburgh massacre, membership dues at my synagogue included security fees. But apparently these local churches do not charge their congregants security fees, or avail themselves of government funds for this purpose.. The rabbi later told me how he sat in stunned silence as church officials discussed whether to put a lock on a church door. "A lock on the door," the rabbi said to me afterward, stupefied.

He didn't have to say what I already knew from the emails the synagogue routinely sends: that they've increased the rent-a-cops' hours, that they've done active-shooter training with the nursery school staff, that further initiatives are in place that "cannot be made public." A lock on the door," re repeated, astounded. "They just have no idea."

He is young, this rabbi - younger than me. He was realizing the same thing I realized at the Auschwitz exhibition, about the specificity of our experience. I feel the need to apologize here, to acknowledge that yes, this rabbi and I both know that many non-Jewish houses of worship in other places also require rent-a-cops, to announce that yes, we both know that other groups have been persecuted too - and this degrading need to recite these middle-school-obvious facts is itself an illustration of the problem, which is that dead Jews are only worth discussing if they are part of something bigger, something more. Some other people might go to Holocaust museums to feel sad, and then to feel proud of themselves for feeling sad. They will have learned something officially important, discovered a fancy metaphor for the limits of Western civilization. The problem is that for us, dead Jews aren't a metaphor, but rather actual people that we do not want our children to become." 

- Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present

[swissboyhisch]

All-Star Love

Pairing: Matthew Tkachuck x Lemiuex!Reader

Summary: The NHL All Star weekend is always fun. But bring in a romance... Then that's when it becomes interesting.

Word Count: 1742

Warnings: None I think. Please tell me if I'm wrong.

A/N: This comes from a fanific I've written myself. I adjusted it for this but I loved this idea/scene.

THE MASTERLIST JOIN THE TAGLIST HOCKEY DISCORD

All-Star weekend 2020. This year it was being held in St. Louis. You had arrived on the Pittsburgh plane with Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang and Tristan Jarry since you were currently working with the team. Despite being Lemiuex’s child, you had earned yourself a position as an assistant coach at such a young age. You grew up playing the game. Now you were also the captain of the Canadian Women’s team. 

The last few years, you had attended the games alongside Sidney, who was an older brother after he lived with you and your family after he was drafted in 2005. It was a staple weekend in the season schedule. You had the chance to see all the friends and players you were close with and get to have some fun. Often you could even find yourself doing media stuff. 

This year the NHL had introduced the Elite Women’s 3 on 3. You were the youngest on the Canadian team by 5 years. They also have allowed the women on the teams to compete in the skills competitions. You had been placed into the Shooting Stars event. This meant that you were competing against your boyfriend, Matt, and his brother, Brady. Others in the skills competition include Mitch Marner, Patrick Kane, Tyler Seguin, David Perron, Hillary Knight, Danid Pastrnak and Ryan O’Reilly. 

Right now you were dressed in a pair of jeans and your team jersey. Standing in line waiting to be called to the stage where you’d be shooting from. With Mitch, Matt and Brady in front of you, the four of you were chatting and laughing. Each of you were excited to shoot off the platform. 

“Now your Gatorade Shooting Stars… from your St. Louis Blues, number 57, David Perron!”

The arena came to life, all cheering on one of the home team players. Perron, with his son in his arms, made his way up the stairs from ice levels. Handing out beanies and high fiving the fans as he went up to the platform.

“From the Toronto Maple Leafs, number 16, Mitch Marner.” 

Mitch followed Perron up the steps. Handing out hats as he went. Matt stepped forward to the bottom of the stars, looking up at all the fans. He had a hand on your lower back. Brady had let your stand next to your boyfriend whilst you three waited.

“From the Calgary Flames, number 19, Matthew Tkachuk.” Matt follows Mitch up. “From the Ottawa Senators, number 7, Brady Tkachuk.”

“The Canadian Women’s All Star, number 11, (Y/N) Lemieux.”

As you walked up the many stairs, you handed out rolled up t-shirts to fans. It was weird to have this many cameras in your face though. If you were honest, the walk up to the platform looked a lot shorter from the bottom. Especially the amount of stairs you had to climb. You reached the platform and waited for the rest of the players to join herself,Matt, Brady, Mitch and Perron. When everyone had gotten there, it went straight into the competition. First to shoot was Perron. He scored a total of 14 points. Mitch was next on the platform. He scored an awesome 22 points.

“Our next shooter, Matthew Tkachuk,” Nick started. “Your brother Brady is following you so we thought, hey, why not get one more Tkachuk up here. Why not bring up your Dad. Give it up St. Louis, for all-star Kieth Tkachuk!”

Yourself and Brady grin, tapping your sticks as you watched Keith join Matt on the platform, an arm around his shoulder with a wide smile on his face. Nick motioned for Brady to join them as well. You decided to give him a light shove as a joke.

“You should be up here as well,” Brady commented as he joined his brother and father.

You laughed at Brady’s comment. Sending a wink to Matt as well who had the biggest smile on his face.

Keith turned to face you, giving you a joking look, “I think we’re missing someone up here.”

“I ain’t no Tkachuck,” You reply. “Enjoy the moment, big guy.”

Matt stepped forward from where he was standing, holding his hand out for you. “Well, maybe we should change that, hey?”

“What?”

Keith, Brady and Nick stepped back from the platform and Matt grabbed your hand, pulling you to the centre of the platform they were standing on. Your hands flew to your mouth as you watched Matt slowly kneel to one knee and open a ring box. In the box sat the most perfect engagement ring you had ever seen.

“No way,” you breathed, looking at Matt who had the biggest smile on his face.

“You’ve been my best friend since we met all those years ago right here in this very arena. When little (Y/N) bumped into me as she ran to get away from her dad. You’ve been considered part of this family since then but I think I need to make it official, make sure you don’t stand out too much with that last name. Will you do me the greatest honour of changing your last name from Lemieux to Tkachuk?”

You nodded, too shocked to answer in words. The arena roared to life when Matt stood up and kissed you. He pulled the ring out of the box as you dropped your gloves. You cried as Matt slid the ring on your finger. Once he had sealed the deal, you lunged at him, wrapping your arms around his shoulders excitedly.

The players around them and on the bench, as well as the whole arena, were screaming and cheering. Mitch and Brady made sure they were heard over everyone else. 

“I can’t believe you,” You laughed as you pulled away from Matt. Brady was the first to hug you congratulations. He had the biggest grin as well. The smile gave him away. “You knew!”

“Of course I did,” Brady chuckles, “I helped choose the ring.”

Brady was interrupted when Keith pulled you into a hug. “I think you should just keep your last name, it’s more recognisable.”

“Tkachuk is better, that's for sure.”

Nick soon joined the happy group. You were tucked into Matt’s side like usual. Nick held his hand out to Matt who shook it happily before handing Matt a new jersey. It was a grey All-Star Canadian jersey like you were wearing. You grabbed it from Matt, checking the back which now had Tkachuk on it.

“Oh my god,” You grinned, pulling off your current jersey for the new one.

“Hey, have a look at the photo up on the board you guys.” There was a photo of Keith kneeling by the bench in front of a young Brady, Matt and yourself. You had attended the weekend with her father and hung out with the boys. One of the rare times you got to see the Tkachuk brothers as a kid. “How exciting is it to be on this platform being here, history in the making, with your sons and soon to be in-law?”

“I’m so proud of these guys,” Keith stated, smiling at you three. “They’ve earned being here. Matt and Brady grew up here, watched me play here. I mean, Matt met (Y/N) just outside the home change rooms in this arena.” At that, there was a picture of Matt, Brady and Taryn, the youngest Tkachuk, standing with Keith now on the screen.  “I love these guys. I know they love the Blues deep down.”

“Oh, we’re excited to have you here. 18000 people wanna know, how many pucks can Tkachuk chuck, chuck? So why don’t you have a go at this.” Keith took Matt’s stick from him as the three young adults stepped back. “Come on, Keith Tkachuk everybody!”

Keith shot the puck, nearly getting it in the 10 pointer net. “Not a lot of love for that arch there Tkachuk,” You chirped as he turned to give Matt his stick back.

He hugged the three of you before Matt stepped up to the platform. But only after a kiss from you. Keith’s arm wrapped around your shoulder as they watched Matt drop his gloves.

“How characteristic…” You giggles, stopping when he pulls off his Calgary jersey to reveal an old St. Louis Cardinals jersey.

“Who’d he fight?” Keith laughed. “He won’t touch you.”

“He’ll fight me,” Brady mumbled from beside you.

The three of you chuckled as you watched Matt take his first shot. As he took his next few shots, you listened to Brady and Keith chirp your boyfriend, well now Fiance. Matt ended up with 24, getting a 10 on his last one.

“Look at you go,” You smiled, pecking Matt when he switched spots with Brady. 

Brady stepped up to the plate. Matt pulled from under his dad’s arm into his. Having you stand in front of him with his arms around you. When Brady took his first shot, Matt laughed at the fact his brother didn’t do anything special as a tribute to their hometown. 

“Next up we have the last of the three musketeers.”

You stepped onto the platform, with a good luck kiss from Matthew. You had 7 shots to hit the targets laid out on the ice below. With the first shot you hit a 5. After your 6 other shots, you came to a total of 24 as well. Tie with Matthew. After everyone else had taken their shot, it was only Matthew and yourself that had the highest score. No-one had outshot you two. 

“Since you both scored an amazing 24 points, we go to a sudden death shootout. One shot. Highest score wins.”

Matt shot first, missing the arch but a hair. You shot next. The puck went flying over the arch. Actually hitting Jarry who was chilling at the end of the end with some of the other goalies. 

“Injure your goalie, why don’t ya?” Matt chirps as he steps up once again. 

Round two. Matt shoots and hits the 5 points. Only way for you to beat that was to score the same or hit the arch for 10 points. You took a moment before finally shooting the puck. It went straight into the arch. You grin, cheering as you turn to where Matt was standing.

“Better luck next time Tkachuk!”

He smiled, coming up to congratulate you. He pressed a kiss to your lips. “Next time, you’ll be a Tkachuk as well.”

TAG LIST:

@findapenny @mp0625 @hischierhaze @11zegras @lvrzegras @francesfarhadi @cixrosie @daisysthings

[hero-israel]

if the pittsburgh synagogue shooter had said he did it "for palestine" then progressives would have been crowdfunding his defense

Yeah, I've discussed how there are absolutely no standards left and people will settle for anyone killing Jews now.

And that goes double for every shmuck who says "all Israelis are colonizers, all colonizers deserve it" while they themselves are Americans. If Donald Trump had yelled "COLONIZER!" when he grabbed those women by the pussy, guess that would make it okay. Likewise when James Fields was ramming his car into the Charlottesville protestors, just say the magic word and now he's the good guy. John Wayne Gacy pretty much only killed white males, it would be so easy to rehabilitate him as a hero for the resistance! And of course, very much unlike Israel, in America there is no doubt whatsoever - no two-sided dialogue of any kind - that certainly the Jews are colonizers, we stepped off boats just like basically everyone else here, so the war cry is blatantly for our genocide here too. Much more blatantly genocidal than your average far-right anti-immigration group. This is the sort of brainwormed, futureless disease that is online leftpol.

[soberscientistlife]

WTAF? White supremacists have no place in our country.

[christianstepmoms]

My first day of work after first moving to Pittsburgh was in Squirrel Hill, just one block away from Tree of Life, the day the shooting happened. I remember how quickly I went from admiring the beauty of Squirrel Hill, a overwhelmingly and proudly Jewish neighborhood, to my shop locking up and just silently watching the news as it was happening. I didn't even commit my managers name to memory yet.

This morning, just before noon, the shooter has been, rightfully, found guilty on all 63 charges against him. He faces, and will likely receive, the death penalty.

"Fuck your optics, I'm going in"

It's days like this that make it so difficult to be an abolitionist because you can't fix people like this. There's no going back. You let him out, and he'll do it again. There's a rot of evil in this world that you just can't rehabilitate away.

I hope the survivors and families of the victims find peace in today. They bear burden and pain that I can't even begin to imagine and wouldn't wish on anyone.

[robindaydream]

Going to temple has been hard recently.

I attend a progressive Reform synagogue. Pronouns on nametags are common. A bunch of trans people attend regularly. They're always talking about social justice of one kind or another. And they've even openly criticized Israel in the past. They're definitely not radical leftists, honestly they're pretty mainstream liberals, but this isn't the kind of place where they're eagerly calling for more Palestinian deaths or claiming Israel can do no wrong.

When the Rabbi whom I've admired for over a year has talked about the attack on Israel, she is very clear about what was done and who did it. And she will talk about that at length in a very emotional way. She's clearly grieving and I don't begrudge her that.

But when she addresses the Palestinians deaths, if she does at all, it's fast, vague, an afterthought. Sad things are happening in that region. People are dying, from what we couldn't say. Sometimes with a vague mention of human shields. And it segues into a furious denunciation of Hamas, calling them terrorists and saying they want to eradicate the Jewish people.

And then today was the five year anniversary of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh. And she talked about how the shooter claimed Jewish people were seeking white genocide. And then she talked about all the protests around the world accusing Israel of genocide, and said they sounded just like him. I was at home, watching the livestream on youtube. I wanted to cry.

But it's a good progressive synagogue. And at the end of the sermon, just like every week, the Rabbi expresses gratitude that this Shabbat gathering is happening on the lands of the Duwamish people. And like every week she pledges our continuing dedication to learning about our indigenous neighbors and supporting indigenous rights.

I hate it. I don't know what to do.

[radicalreports]

Extremists Links: Neo-Nazi White Supremacists Fantasy of 'Ethnostate' in New England

The latest reporting on extremist groups within the Radical Right.

This New England neo-Nazi group is getting bigger and scarier, experts say. Most troubling: Military vets fill its ranks. [Boston.com]

These Nazis Want to Turn New England Into a White Ethnostate [Rolling Stone[

Lawmaker calls for crackdown on neo-Nazi training camp in northern Maine [Maine Beacon]

Neo-Nazi leader establishes training site in Maine [ABC News]

Extremist watchdog explains New England white supremacists galvanized by Trump [NPR]

The Synagogue Attack Stands Alone, but Experts Say Violent Rhetoric Is Spreading [The New York Times]

‘Begin to heal’: Pittsburgh reacts to the synagogue shooter’s death sentence [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

After USA TODAY investigation, watchdog report says military failed to screen extremist recruits [USA Today]

Recruiters skipped steps to screen out extremist enlistees, IG says [Army Times]

Watchdog Warns Recruits Are Not Being Properly Vetted for Extremism Ties [Military.com]

Pentagon watchdog finds lapses in screening of applicants connected to extremist groups [The Hill]

Texas extremist group Patriot Front sued over Boston attack of Black man [The Dallas Morning News]

Boston man files lawsuit seeking to bankrupt white supremacist group he says assaulted him [ABC News]

‘Patriot Front’ White Nationalists Sue Leftist Activist for IDing Them, Getting Them Fired [The Daily Beast]

Far-right Patriot Front members sue leftist activist for allegedly leaking their identities [The Daily Chronicle]

Patriot Front resurfaces in Birmingham [Alabama Political Reporter]

A new network of hate groups in the Pacific Northwest targets smaller Pride festivals [NPR]

Saratoga Springs public safety commissioner provides report on weekend Proud Boys march [The Daily Gazette]

New video believed to show Proud Boys in Saratoga Springs [NBC News]

White supremacist Robert Rundo extradited from Romania to US to face charges [The Guardian]

A new high tide of antisemitism in America [Axios]

Fatal stabbing of NYC gay man is being investigated as a possible hate crime [NBC News]

Teen suspect charged with hate crime murder of dancer at Brooklyn gas station [ABC News]

Oklahoma man given maximum sentence for Shawnee hate crime [NPR]

White supremacist banners appear in Louisiana’s capital city [Associated Press]

Banners promoting White nationalist group Patriot Front alarm Baton Rouge community [The Advocate]

White Supremacist Banners Removed in Predominately Black Baton Rouge [The Messenger]

White ex-officers in Mississippi plead guilty to racist assault on 2 Black men during raid [CBS News]

'We're going to find you': Pensacola police and FBI investigating antisemitic vandalism [Pensacola News Journal]

Pensacola police arrest 4 teens in connection to string of antisemitic vandalism [Pensacola News Journal]

Neo-nazi recruitment flyers found outside Middletown homes. LGBTQ+ organization notified. [Newport Daily News]

Read more here.

[beardedmrbean]

A self-proclaimed white supremacist was sentenced to more than six years in federal prison Wednesday for making online threats toward the jury and witnesses at the trial of a man who killed 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

Hardy Carroll Lloyd, 45, of Follansbee, West Virginia, was sentenced in federal court in northern West Virginia for his September guilty plea to obstruction of the due administration of justice.

BOY, 13, CHARGED FOR ALLEGEDLY PLOTTING MASS SHOOTING AT OHIO SYNAGOGUE: REPORTS

Lloyd admitted that the actual or perceived Jewish faith of the government witnesses and victims in the trial of Robert Bowers prompted him to target the jury and witnesses.

The U.S. Justice Department described Lloyd as a self-proclaimed leader of a white supremacy movement. Prosecutors said Lloyd, who was arrested on Aug. 10, sent threatening social media posts and emails along with comments on websites during Bowers’ trial.

Bowers was sentenced to death in August in the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history after a jury determined that capital punishment was appropriate.

In May 2022, the Texas Department of Public Safety offered a cash reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to Lloyd’s arrest after he allegedly posted a series of comments online threatening to carry a firearm onto the Texas Capitol grounds and challenge any police officer who tried to "take enforcement actions" against him. A statement from the department said Lloyd was a convicted felon. ______________________

hope he has a rotten time in there

[mariacallous]

On Oct. 27, 2018, my husband and I went on a nature hike. We were on a weekend visit to the college where our daughter, the youngest of our four children, had just started as a freshman. I silenced my phone and tucked it away, hoping no urgent work-related matters would interrupt us.

My phone began buzzing in my pocket, but I ignored it. After the fifth buzz, I realized that something was wrong. I looked at my phone. My staff was feverishly sending news reports: “Emergency situation at US synagogue,” “gunman opens fire at US synagogue,” “Pittsburgh police confirms active shooter at synagogue, multiple victims reported.”

“We’ve got to go back right now,” I told my husband.

I sat with my laptop in the passenger seat as he drove.

As I dug through those early details of the event, my mind kept going back to the evening before, when our daughter sat across from us at a nearby restaurant with a grim expression. She told us how she and her friends from the college’s theater club were putting on a play with LGBTQ characters and how the local Ku Klux Klan caught wind and held a demonstration outside of the building. The professor running the production tried to calm the cast and crew before the opening night, but their fear couldn’t be dissolved. It was 2018, and right outside of the halls of the music theater was an organization notorious for lynching and bombings that was laser-focused on our daughter and her friends’ performance.

“How is the Klan not illegal?” she asked me and my husband. “Aren’t they a terrorist organization?”

I’ve spent many years digging through the details of terrorist attacks and gory executions, but I’ve never grown able to stomach the images. I sat in the passenger seat scrolling through information about the synagogue attack, and that same wave of disgust was creeping up as strong as ever.

We needed to determine who was behind the attack. Both jihadi and far-right terrorism were plausible, given that Jews were the target. At the time, jihadis were still calling for attacks following then-U.S. President Donald Trump’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital the year before. Meanwhile, white supremacists were particularly outraged over U.S. policies regarding Latino migrants, which, like other issues, they always managed to blame on Jews.

Once the shooter was named as Robert Bowers, we immediately identified his online presence—and motive. Prior to his attack, the 46-year-old made a final post on a so-called free speech social media platform called Gab, which provided white supremacists an increasingly appealing safe haven, especially as major social media platforms ramped up their censorship efforts. Bowers’s post accused the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)—which the synagogue’s Dor Hadash congregation had recently campaigned with—of trying to “kill” white people by bringing migrants into the United States.

“Screw your optics, I’m going in,” his post ended. This line was a statement addressed to the far right.

In the decade before his attack, violence was a controversial topic among white supremacist and neo-Nazi communities. For every white supremacist who cheered on Charleston, South Carolina, church-attacker Dylann Roof or Norway attacker Anders Breivik, there was another who saw their violence as harmful to the public’s perception of their cause—or, as it was more commonly put, their “optics.”

White nationalists were having this exact optics debate in the aftermath of the Aug. 12, 2017, “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which was, as most recall, a disaster—with fights between protesters and counter-protesters and a woman killed and others injured in a vehicular attack.

“Make sure you do what worked so well in Charlottesville,” a user wrote with vicious sarcasm on Stormfront, a popular white nationalist forum. “Whites brawling with each other in the streets was such good optics.”

This was where Bowers’s “screw your optics” declaration came from. He was declaring his rejection of an optics-driven far right and the nonviolence it espoused.

Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue just five minutes after three separate services had begun. Armed with an AR-15 rifle and three handguns, he opened fire in the entrance. Some people at the synagogue initially mistook the shots for something more innocuous—perhaps “a coat rack falling over” or “a senior citizen falling [who] might have needed help.”

Eleven people were killed in the attack, and six people were injured. Those killed ranged in age from their mid-50s to late 90s.

Bowers’s embrace of violence was strewn across his Gab profile. In those last few days before his attack, he reposted threats against the HIAS by “Farmer General,” a popular neo-Nazi Gab account with Nazi swastikas and Waffen-SS bolts in its very name. Farmer General posted them to a Gab group called “Gabstapo.” Farmer General’s posts showed pictures of HIAS refugee advocates while exclaiming, “How about GTFO [get the fuck out] jews!”

“Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us?” Bowers wrote while posting information of an HIAS event that month. He posted HIAS’s list of participating congregations, threatening, “We appreciate the list of friends you have provided.”

As details of Bowers and his attack emerged, far-right extremists were all the more joyous. Far-right message boards and social media platforms were flooded with celebratory memes and posts justifying the shooting and hailing Bowers as a hero. I had been tracking white supremacists for a decade by then, but I had never seen a post-attack celebration so massive. Bowers had tapped into something horrifying. A harsher, uninhibited contingent of the far right felt it was finally having its day.

This widespread embrace of Bowers’s “screw your optics” declaration was chillingly similar to the sentiments expressed by the Islamic State and its supporters after its rise to power in the early 2010s. Although the “jihad” of groups like al Qaeda was primarily framed as a struggle against oppressors, the promise of a caliphate—a fundamentalist form of Islamic statehood and governance—was the light at the end of the tunnel. Al Qaeda and its spiritual leaders led the jihadi community with a grand vision of gradual steps toward establishing a caliphate. However, decades of not getting a caliphate made room for the Islamic State, once al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, to become a loudspeaker of dissent against its perceived incremental and pragmatic approaches.

“The al Qaeda of today is no longer the al Qaeda of jihad,” the Islamic State declared to the global jihad community in April 2014, three years after U.S. Navy SEALs killed then-al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

The Islamic State was, of course, paving the way to declare its own so-called caliphate just a couple of months later in June 2014, something that drove jihadi scholars, spokespeople, militants, and others to cry bloody foul. Al Qaeda chided that “the announcement of such a serious step” as declaring a caliphate required far more scholarly consensus. Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen called the declaration “unjust,” warning it would lead to “breaking of relationships” across different factions.

None of the condemnation mattered though because the Islamic State’s bold move worked. Factions around the globe pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and jihadis from all over the world flocked to its territories. The Islamic State’s movement was energized. It was no longer waiting around for the old generation to take things further.

And just like the Islamic State’s supporters, a very loud and dangerous portion of the far right was now ready to challenge the status quo of their own movement. For decades, the far right’s leaders played the political game, but the United States and other Western countries were no closer to ethno-statehood. The United States, which elected its first Black president in 2008, was seeing growing racial and ethnic populations while strictly white populations were, to the far right’s dismay, lacking growth.

With these changes came cultural anxiety. Amid escalating culture wars and refugee crises, polling across the United States and Europe showed growing senses of “white solidarity” and fear of “foreign influence.” The West’s new changes—and the anger they were causing—served as proof to many in the far right that their long-standing movement establishments, and all of their concerns with optics, were failures. Weak. Useless. It only took a disturbingly zealous extremist like Bowers to come along and say “screw your optics” to ignite a flame to this percolating anger.

Now add to that the immeasurable power of social media.

“Screw your optics, I’m going in” became an instant mantra in far-right social media spaces, spread across countless memes, artwork, and posts. Bowers’s act was, to many in the far right, the only way to “fight back” against the changing world they saw as an existential threat to their race, something the old guard of the movement didn’t have the stomach to take on.

“Fight or Die,” said a user on Stormfront in the immediate aftermath of Bowers’s attack. “No other choice. … They have imported so many 3rd World scum they can not keep pushing White people and not expect people to push back.”

The optics camp was still chiming in, but they were suddenly on the defensive by a much louder, and seemingly larger population of terrorism advocates. Alex Linder, owner of the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network forum, exclaimed bluntly, “Violence works.”

“Voting etc won’t do anything—not unless there’s a White Racial Loyalist armed force,” he stated.

To those in the far right still trying to characterize Bowers as a stain on the white supremacist movement, one Stormfront user wrote:

Here is a thought.

Maybe a non medicated, healthy minded, normal, average White man finally said enough is enough.

Where would he go to seek vengence?

A synagogue.

Just maybe it is not a false flag, slobbering lunatic that hates his mommy, but a man that sees the writing on the wall.

A man that knows how and what the jews truly are.

The American far right was now unapologetically embracing antisemitic violence.

The day of Bowers’s attack, there were 465,000 members on Gab. (In recent years, the company has put that count well past a million members.) Many of these users, even if not yet radicalized, would be exposed to users like Farmer General and the scores of other accounts posting the same type of content. For it to remain online would be a recipe for more violence, whether it be against Jews or other minorities threatened on the platform.

Yet law enforcement—and lawmakers—seemed to ignore these activities for the most part. Perhaps the most pressing concern was in the United States’ blatant double standard at that time: When an Islamic State supporter posted a message about attacking America, it resulted in an investigation. But when a neo-Nazi like Bowers and thousands of people like him posted messages urging the death of Jews and other groups, they received no attention from law enforcement or the companies providing them online venues.

The day after the Pittsburgh attack, my husband and I joined some family friends at their synagogue for a meeting on the event. It felt like a funeral.

The head of the congregation promised increased security around the synagogue, describing in detail the new fences and gates that would be installed and how the place would now be fully guarded.

It sounded like a prison—or a war zone.

The rabbi then consoled us. He talked about our history as Jews, about how suffering and perseverance were part of who we are. He told us that the solution to what threatened us lied not in anger and sorrow but in forgiveness and unity.

It is indeed sad how in the United States, a country founded on principles of freedom, a religious group can so easily be left to fend for its own safety.

As we all sat in that room, there were thousands of people elsewhere cheering on what Bowers did and calling for more. How could we address this problem if so few people even knew it existed? I wanted to see Jews—alongside Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists—protesting this unwritten contract that some peoples’ freedom of religion or safety takes the back seat to others’ distorted notions of “free speech.”

I wondered whether short attention spans and the indifference of our government policies, mixed with the far right’s new mantra of “screw your optics,” was laying the groundwork for a violent new normal.

It was.

Bowers’s “screw your optics” declaration was heard by extremists around the world. Just as so many of the Islamic State’s lone-wolf terrorists acted on its behalf without talking with a recruiter, far-right terrorism after Pittsburgh evolved into a radically new beast of its own: mass shooters from Europe and the United States to Oceania, who had never spoken to one another and didn’t act on behalf of a group, attacking with striking uniformity.

Less than five months later, on March 15, 2019, an image was uploaded to 8chan with a file name winking to Bowers: “Screw your optics.jpg.” It was accompanied by a manifesto and livestream link. The poster was 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, who carried out a mass shooting on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, that day. Tarrant’s attack provided a template for future attackers: a video game-like livestream of the carnage via a head-mounted camera and a manifesto filled with meme references and white birth rate statistics. More, he directly appealed to—and harnessed—the culture of his fellow 8chan extremists, writing: “[P]lease do your part by spreading my message.”

One month later, on April 27, another post appeared on 8chan stating: “It’s been real dudes. … I’ve only been lurking for a year and a half, yet what I’ve learned here is priceless. … Livestream will begin shortly.” It was a 19-year-old dean’s list college student named John Earnest, who shot up a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one person and injuring three people. Earnest’s attempt at livestreaming the attack failed, but his manifesto revealed his deep hatred of Jews and admiration of Tarrant and Bowers.

Just over three months later, on Aug. 3, 2019, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius posted his manifesto to 8chan and shortly after shot up a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. His writing cited Tarrant as an inspiration. Then came the shooting a week later at the al-Noor Islamic Centre in Baerum, Norway, by 21-year-old Philip Manshaus, who cited Tarrant, Earnest, and Crusius as inspiration. That was followed on Oct. 9, 2019, by Stephan Balliet, who livestreamed his attack with homemade weapons across Halle, Germany, killing two people and injuring two others.

Seen separately, all of these attackers seem miles apart—geographically and ideologically. Earnest hated Jews while his idol, Tarrant, didn’t seem to have a problem with Jews, even writing in his manifesto, “A jew living in israel is no enemy of mine.” Crusius defended Trump and rejected the label of “white supremacist.” He even stated, “the Hispanic community was not my target” before he read Tarrant’s manifesto. Clearly, a new kind of terrorism was taking shape.

These attackers’ incompatible (and often incoherent) ideological justifications didn’t matter because far-right extremists of the “screw your optics” current embraced them with open arms. Just as the Islamic State canonized its so-called lone-wolf attackers as “soldiers of the caliphate,” neo-Nazis and white supremacists dubbed their own attackers “saints.” This wasn’t a movement driven by ideas. It was about keeping the violent momentum going.

The chain of attackers grew link by link—sometimes in a wave, sometimes intermittently—all the way to the livestreamed shooting at a predominantly Black neighborhood’s supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on May 14. The attack by Payton Gendron, 18, was, like others, a reenactment of Tarrant’s massacre. As Gendron himself wrote, “Brenton’s livestream started everything you see here.” He described how not long after being radicalized, it was Tarrant who gave him the idea to join the same chain of terrorists, writing in part: “But then after browsing /pol/ [section of 4chan] one day I saw a short gif of a man walking into a building and shooting a shotgun through a dark hallway. … That person was Brenton Tarrant … I eventually found his manifesto and I read it, and I found that I mostly agreed with him. … I then found other fighters, like Patrick Crucius, Anders Breivek, Dylann Roof, and John Earnest. These men fought for me and had the same goals I did. It was there I asked myself: Why don’t I do something?”

But while Gendron expressed general racism, antisemitism, and a belief in a “great replacement” as those before him, he also exemplified a significant evolution in the far right since those attacks. His manifesto was filled with content sourced from popular QAnon and anti-vaccination conspiracists on extremist blogs like 4chan and 8chan, Telegram, and other venues. The “screw your optics” current had evolved as the far right did, attaching itself to the new conspiracy theories and rally cries emerging in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump presidency.

With every new copycat attack from ideologically incompatible actors around the world, the more everything once known about terrorism changed. What did terms like “terrorist network” or “lone wolf” even mean anymore? More pressing was a larger question: If there is no concrete agenda or cause driving these attackers, can it actually be fought?

Mass shooters like Gendron are products of movements created by the internet—and that exist almost entirely on it. They are shaped by extremist hives devoid of physical bases, coherent ideologies, and organizational structures. Take away the internet, and there’s barely anything left.

That said, more accountability must be demanded of the internet communication technology sector—and not just of a few fringe social media platforms that terrorists gather on, but the larger infrastructures giving them life: registrars, content delivery networks, web hosts, app stores, e-commerce services, and so on. And as the world’s successes against the Islamic State’s online radicalization machine show, it is no longer a question of what the technology sector is able to do, but how much it is willing to do.

Considering our current reality—in which the internet systematically turns susceptible minds and misfits into mass shooters—it is critical to direct efforts toward the root of the problem. What is born on the internet must be fought on the internet.

[mental-mona]

Good. I hope he eventually dies in jail once sentenced. (I’m not a fan of the death penalty, but I sure wouldn’t cry if that was his fate…)

[teddybasmanov]

I love professor Caltraxus, but the whole unlocked church thing immediately made me think of a bit I've just read in "People Love Dead Jews" by Dara Horn (tw: mentions of hate crimes):

The day of my visit to the museum, the rabbi of my synagogue attended a meeting arranged by police for local clergy, including him and seven Christian ministers and priests. The topic of the meeting was security. Even before the Pittsburgh massacre, membership dues at my synagogue included security fees. But apparently these local churches do not charge their congregants security fees, or avail themselves of government funds for this purpose. The rabbi later told me how he sat in stunned silence as church officials discussed whether to put a lock on a church door. “A lock on the door,” the rabbi said to me afterward, stupefied. He didn’t have to say what I already knew from the emails the synagogue routinely sends: that they’ve increased the rent-a-cops’ hours, that they’ve done active-shooter training with the nursery school staff, that further initiatives are in place that “cannot be made public.” “A lock on the door,” he repeated, astounded. “They just have no idea.”

This was my literal first thought.

But also the "reverse incubus" bit was very funny.

[eamonorus-blog]

Why TLOU2 fails as a morality tale.

Ok, it may feel like it's not necessary in order to talk about tlou2, but I want to talk about the first game first. Specifically, the ways in which it fails to be realistic, but why that isn't important in the same way the failure of the sequel to be realistic is.

Obviously, stories in any medium feature impossible scenarios, contrivances and fantastical elements all the time, and they don't have to ruin the story. They can either have a minor negative effect, or in fact be part of the appeal.

So, I feel like I have to explain why the way that tlou2 is unrealistic is a problem first, and a great case study of the opposite is the first game.

tlou follows in the footsteps of many tropes from the post-apoc genre. Most notably for my discussion, in the way the world is populated by hordes of kill crazed bandits.

To a degree, this is the inevitable nature of the medium. tlou is a third-person shooter, so it needs a lot of hostiles, and hordes of vicious killers with a bad sense of self-preservation are a great way to add that.

But I think there is more to it than that. Cormac Mcarthy's The Road has the same set up. As does the Fallout series. So, I think this is more a matter of genre convention than medium convention. Plenty of games are just about killing zombies, so there is no reason that the killing of human enemies couldn't be very limited or non-existent.

And why is this a problem? This is a problem because its not how people would really behave.

Of course, I don't know that for certain, but I think I have a good argument to make. The world of tlou is a pre-industrial society basically, and we know what those would be like. We can look at all of human history. And what we see is conflict, sure, but not just hordes of angry bandits without women and children that they look after.

Its human nature to fight, but its also human nature to cooperate and breed. The all male groups of criminals who focus on material possessions are not the natural outgrowth of a collapse of civilisation, but instead its continuation.

We ascribe the presence of sadistic Mad Max style raider gangs to the post-apocalypse because that is the kind of social ill that actually plagues us in the here and now, in our modern world. In the presence of urban gangs, motorbike gangs, etc…

Even if you look at African modern civil wars with child soldiers, those conflicts are still based around racial and tribal loyalties which distinguish them from the multi-racial rootless gang which tends to predominate in post apocalyptic fiction.

In the first game the biggest culprit here is the Pittsburgh group, with their lack of women and children, and hence any wider society that they are fighting for, and their total lack of regard for their own lives in chasing after Joel no matter how many of them die.

In the modern overpopulated world, life is cheap. Whether we are talking about gang warfare or full scale conflict. But in a post-apocalyptic setting people would be risk averse, respectful, and would only resort to violence as a final choice.

Steppe pastoralists like the Mongols, Scythians, Turks, etc… who had a low population and lived in vast nearly uninhabited wildernesses tended to adopt fighting styles that minimised casualties as much as possible.

And people living in a wasteland caused by some apocalyptic event would act in the same way. They wouldn't attack a stranger for no reason, if only to avoid entangling themselves in conflict, with another tribe who would seek revenge. Ofc course, like I said, conflict would still exist over territory, resources, women, etc…

But it wouldn't be the way it is shown to be in tlou.

But why is this not that much of a problem in my opinion? For starters, one of the central themes of tlou in regard to violence is that we all just do what we have to to survive. That that is what drives conflict. And that is what David uses to justify his actions, and what Joel does to.

So the game is diagnosing the way conflict works correctly, even if the gameplay is doing a bit of a sloppy job of getting that across.

But the main reason why it works is because the game ends with Joel choosing to sacrifice hope for a cure to save Ellie. By doing this the game would have us believe he is dooming humanity as a whole to more suffering, but what has the game shown us humanity consists of?

Certainly not the tough and brutal but nonetheless sympathetic and rational people who would really exist in such a world.

Instead it would be to save a bunch of trigger happy fascist police, a whole city of murderous bandits, random bandits who attack people trying to rebuild society, and a bunch of cannibals lead by a pedophile.

Yeah, no thanks.

Sure we meet some good people, and we like Jackson, but if we got a broader sense that humanity as a whole consisted of decent people who would really benefit from the cure, we might feel a bit differently about Joels decision. As it is, we have Tess, Sam and Henry die as a consequence of being bitten, and that's sad, but still, thats already happened and cant be changed.

Having the world of tlou be more realistic would make how we feel about Joels choice more complicated, and I dont think it would make the game worse, but as it is the games failing in this way just makes us sympathise with his decision even more.

So the game is actually leading us into being ok with the ending.

If we never met any hostile humans, just helpful kind people who are desperate to avoid being infected and need whatever help they can get, who are traumatized by losing loved ones to infection, we would feel quite differently about Joels final decision. In that hypothetical situation, making the world unrealistically OPTIMISTIC about how humans would behave in the post apocalypse, as opposed to PESSIMISTIC, would hurt the story, since it would lead Joel to seem more villainous and unjustified.

So, with that extended preamble out of the way, let me explain why lack of realism hurting the story is exactly what happens with tlou2

First off, tlou2 fixes the problem I mentioned in tlou. In the sense that the rabid, mad max style, casualty careless, all male bandit groups of the first game are gone.

Instead we have group conflict happening between rational, capable societies that fight each other over land, resources, normal stuff, stuff that makes sense.

This is a good thing as far as it goes, but unfortunately this increased realism is countermanded at every turn.

Lets start with the opening, with Abby leading the Salt Lake crew to Jackson to kill Joel. Right away we have serious issues.

As I just laid out, in the real world people fight each other over resources, land, women, stuff that really matters. And they fight on behalf of a broader group/society.

Even the modern criminal groups I mentioned beforehand do this for the most part. Sure, lone vengeance killing unrelated to a wider societal enemy or resources do happen, like with the few famous cases of parents who have killed someone who raped or killed their child before they could be sentenced.

But even that is very rare. FAR more common is revenge killings in the context of a gang war over territory. Which mimics the historical pattern of conflicts over history I have mentioned before. When people seek vengeance over a murdered parent, historically that is within the context of their parents' killer being a part of a group their tribe/society is at war with. If the killing is within their own society in most cases, there are social mechanisms to get justice.

By which I mean that the vengeace, while a very real motivator, is actually given the ooomph to be carried out because it serves the wider purpose of fighting your societies enemies.

We see this in tlou2 with the way Isaac talks about the back-and-forth conflict with the Seraphites. That is an example of a realistic conflict leading to realistic revenge being sought by both parties. The fight is actually over ideology, territory, etc… The vengeance is just a factor that comes out as the conflict escalates.

Let me reiterate, human beings are risk averse, and are only usually willing to resort to violence to defend their people, and/or for a big material benefit.

And Abbys quest for revenge has none of these factors. Joel was a lone individual. He isn't a member of a group the Fireflies have a vested interest in fighting, or who will continue to be a threat to them. Ideologically it would make sense for them to go after him to get Ellie, but the game dismisses that with the claim that Jerry was the only person who could make the cure, so that's a non-factor.

All of this has a cascading effect that makes going after Joel a terrible idea. Finding him will involve taking a bunch of people the WLF can't afford to lose, across country on a massive trek where they are liable to get hurt or killed, in order to kill one man who is no threat to them, and who they have nothing material to gain from killing, and in doing so risk aggravating any community that he has become a part of in the meantime.

The game itself, to its credit is well aware of all these problems. We are told that Isaac green lit this operation off screen with the claim that he "cares about justice"

Well, it looks to me like Isaac, as a person engaged in an actually plausible example of group conflict, cares more about winning and fighting for the survival and wellbeing of his people against outsiders. It looks to me like that is his value, not justice.

But he does agree to this for some reason.

But then we have all the reasons why people in the real world don't act like Abby does begin to raise their heads.

When they get to Jackson, Owen discovers that the place is big and thriving. There is no way their small team that Isaac for some reason granted permission to leave is going to be able to attack this place. And he rightly says that the others are going to want to leave after this. But Abby ignores him, goes off on her own, and miraculously finds Joel and Tommy, miraculously in the middle of a zombie horde so they can bond fighting them off and it makes sense for them to trust her.

It's also necessary so that she can plausibly convince them to come with her to their hideout, where, as many people have pointed out, Joel and Tommy seem shockingly unconcerned about why a large armed group would have come all this way to Jackson and not have introduced themselves.

The contrivances, character assassinations and almost plot holes here annoy people. But they annoy them especially because even if they can't articulate it like I can, they know that this kind of thing doesn't make sense for people to do in this world, and it doesn't make sense that they would succeed at it.

The blizzard, the infected, Joel giving out his name, they are all needed to happen because logic needs to be bent out of shape for this to happen in the first place.

Ellie choosing to go after Abby is just as stupid. Some people felt that way too, but others didn't, because yes, we are more invested in Joel than Abby, and the human instinct for revenge does kick in, which is of course the feeling Neil wants us to feel.

Abby has gone out of her way to be unreasonable and stupid, so we feel that Ellie is justified in doing the same back.

But that doesn't make it any less foolish. Maybe if we had seen Ellie grow and get attached to Jackson, as she probably would have, we would realise more how stupid she is being by risking all that going after Abby. But just like the masses of decent people that we would have needed to see in tlou to get us to really question Joels decision to save Ellie, we don't see that here.

tlou2 wants to be a commentary on the nature of violence, and why the cycle of violence is bad, but it doesn't actually critique the kind of cycles of violence that actually occur in the real world. Neil is fighting shadows, wagging his finger at a kind of human being who doesn't really exist, shaming us for doing something people don't actually do.

In terms of the games actually believable conflict, that between the Seraphites and the WLF, the game tries to a degree to be nuanced and "both sides" but it falls short because the Seraphites are so over the top evil, in a different way than the Pittsburgh gang maybe, but in a way that makes them just as unlikable and clearly coded as evil.

The only Scar characters that we are meant to empathise with are defectors, we clearly aren't meant to actually understand or sympathise with their perspective like we are with Abby.

The game is about different perspectives, but only for someone who is engaging in a self-destructive, stupid, act of vengeance, not for a religiously minded oppressed people fighting for their beliefs and their way of life against a superior enemy.

And this is why the game doesnt work as a tragedy.

The idea of a tragedy is that the protagonist has a fatal flaw, one they are given opportunity, time and time again, to correct and overcome, but the flaw is a part of their nature, and they fail to overcome it and perish.

But Ellie does overcome, she lets go of the pointless hatred she and Abby have engaged in. And she still loses everything. If she had killed her, and lost everything, just like Abby did after killing Joel, that would have been something, but no.

Either a story is a hero's journey, where the protagonist learns the lesson and triumphs, or a tragedy, where they do not, and fail.

But Ellie learns her lesson and still fails.

tlou2 chastises humanity for a sin it doesn't commit. That is its great failing.