(Iraq ) Kurdistan rights body sues cleric over controversial take on female Kurdish fighters

12-01-2026
Rudaw



ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kurdistan Region human rights organization said on Monday that it is suing an Erbil-based religious cleric over remarks deemed disrespectful toward women, following comments he made in connection with the killing of a Kurdish female fighter in Syria last week.

A video widely circulated on social media showed Damascus-affiliated factions throwing the body of a female member of the Kurdish Internal Security Forces (Asayish) off a building during clashes in Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority neighborhoods, while hurling insults.

Asked about the incident in a recent interview with local media, controversial Kurdish cleric Mazhar Khorasani said that “in Islam, women must sit at their homes” and are meant “to pour tea for their husbands.”

The Independent Human Rights Commission of the Kurdistan Region (IHRCKR), which works closely with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), said in a statement that it is “pursuing the case [of Khorasani] through public prosecution and holding the aforementioned accountable before the law.”

Khorasani’s remarks “show great disrespect toward women and their role and position,” the IHRCKR said, adding that he “portrayed women as servants whose duty is only at home.”

The commission further added that the cleric’s statements were “completely against the foundations of religions” and urged the KRG’s endowment and religious affairs ministry, as well as the scholars’ union, to take action against those who disrespect others “under the name of religion.”

In a similar vein, Sleman Sindi, director of media relations at the IHRCKR, told Rudaw on Monday that Khorasani’s remarks violate Article 14 of the 2005 Iraqi Constitution, which stipulates that “all Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, origin, color, religion, sect, belief or opinion, or economic or social status.”

In a Monday interview with Rudaw, Khorsani said, “I apologize to the great and merciful God if I have had shortcomings toward my country, my [Kurdish] nation, or my religion.”

“To easily give up our cherished and valuable women to the enemy, to be held captive, killed... this made me upset,” he said, adding that, in his view, “women are not [meant] for war.”

The backlash against Khorasani followed deadly clashes that erupted on Tuesday in Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsood neighborhoods after the Syrian Arab Army and its affiliated armed factions seized the areas from the Kurdish Asayish.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Sunday that at least 82 people were killed, including 43 civilians, 38 government-aligned fighters, and at least one Asayish member. An estimated 150,000 residents have fled Aleppo’s Kurdish quarters, according to the Erbil-based Barzani Charity Foundation (BCF).

An internationally mediated ceasefire came into effect on Sunday. Despite this, several videos emerged online showing armed militants affiliated with Damascus rounding up, arresting, and verbally abusing dozens of Kurdish civilians. Social media users have also shared images and videos of relatives they say have gone missing amid the violence.

Khorasani told Rudaw, “I support the people of [northeast Syria] Rojava - they are all our family.”

“I did not insult that woman,” the cleric said, referring to the slain female fighter whose body was gruesomely thrown from a building, and extended his condolences “to her family and the families of all the victims.”


Ranja Jamal and Shahyan Tahseen contributed to this report from Erbil.

'Darkest period yet': Once a regional leader, Iraq is now failing to protect its women

A viral video of a mob attacking a teenage girl in Basra lays bare the devastating decline of women's rights in Iraq over 30 turbulent years

Hadani Ditmars
13 January, 2026
The New Arab

Iraqi women woke up to the new year with horrific images of a mob attack against a teenage girl in Basra, whose only 'crime' was to walk alone along the riverside Corniche on New Year's Eve without a hijab.

The news outraged Iraqis and resulted in the arrest of 17 assailants who grabbed, groped, kicked, punched and beat the girl as someone filmed the entire sequence on their phone. The video, which the girl's mother has pleaded to be removed from social media as her daughter is now suicidal, went viral and outraged Iraqi women.

Veteran Iraqi journalist and activist Nermeen Al Mufti wrote about the incident in Basra, saying, "Let's all demand that the maximum punishment be imposed on these barbaric scoundrels! We demand that the existing laws on harassment, the articles contained in the Iraqi Penal Law (396, 403 and 404), are no longer sufficient to punish such morally degraded criminals."

While there are many harassment incidents in Iraq, she wrote, "This particular incident can serve as a model for a real social and psychological study — for a deep search for solutions that may be a cure for the Iraqi society, which is in decline. Let the cries of this hurt girl be an alarm bell to initiate such studies, and for the legislators to introduce a new law on harassment."

The social decline Nermeen refers to began, she says, during the 12-year embargo.

Even during the UN sanctions, she wrote, men who harassed women were kept in psychiatric hospitals for three months, to make sure they were not a threat to women.

Sadly, none of the 17 men charged in the Basra attack have been sentenced yet, and all remain at large, technically free to harass other women. The governor of Basra has dismissed the incident as "nothing to make a fuss about" and said, "this kind of thing could have happened anywhere in Iraq," denying that it was particularly a Basran issue.

Unfortunately, he was correct. Sadly, this was not the first male mob attack against a young woman in Iraq, with high-profile cases occurring recently in Sulaymaniyah and elsewhere in the country.

When the country protected its women

This latest mob attack is a grim reminder of the decline in the status of Iraqi women, who, before the UN embargo and 2003 invasion, enjoyed one of the highest statuses in the Arab world, on a par with Tunisia.

They once benefited from state-subsidised day-care, education and health care, including reproductive health, at a time when many American women could not even access birth control.

In the early 80s, nearly half the doctors and half the civil service were women, and Iraq was the first country in the Arab world to produce a woman judge, an ambassador, and a government minister.

I remember reporting from Iraq in the 90's, when in spite of social collapse brought on by sanctions, Baghdad was still a safe place to walk alone and un harassed with or without hijab — much better than say, Cairo.

I recall an ominous turning point in 2002, as the regime lost control and the "mama Stata" was replaced by extremist Islam and criminal gangs, when I was interviewing people in a Baghdad market.

Even with my Ministry of Information-appointed "minder" on hand, I was grabbed by a man who disappeared into the crowd. A few minutes later, things turned ugly as the crowd threw rotten fruit at my minder, and we managed to escape in a taxi just in time.

Fast forward two decades, and now, according to the UN index, more than a million Iraqi women and girls are at risk of gender based violence, including honour killing.

According to UN Women, only about half of the legal frameworks that promote, enforce and monitor gender equality under the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) with a focus on violence against women, are in place.

Even getting accurate statistics is daunting, as state bodies dedicated to women's rights that existed before 2003 have never been fully replicated, so most are underestimates. Still, they are damning evidence of the decline in Iraqi women's status.

As of December 2024, 27.9% of women aged 20–24 years old were married or in a union before age 18. Women and girls aged 10+ spend 24.1% of their time on unpaid care and domestic work, compared with 4.2% for men.

Women of reproductive age (15-49 years) often face barriers with respect to their sexual and reproductive health and rights: despite progress, in 2018, only 53.8% of women had their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods.

According to UN Women, only 41% of indicators needed to monitor the SDGs from a gender perspective were available, with gaps in key areas, in particular: violence against women and key labour market indicators, such as the gender pay gap.

In addition, many areas — such as gender and poverty, physical and sexual harassment, women's access to assets (including land), and gender and the environment — "lack comparable methodologies for regular monitoring. Closing these gender data gaps is essential for achieving gender-related SDG commitments in Iraq."

While the American invaders facilitated the rewriting of the Iraqi constitution along sectarian religious lines, weakening the old civil code that had championed divorce, property and child custody rights, legislation passed last January under Prime Minister Sudani's watch effectively legalised child marriage.

The amendments give Islamic courts increased authority over family matters, including marriage, divorce and inheritance. Activists argue that this undermines Iraq's 1959 Personal Status Law, which unified family law and established safeguards for women.

Iraqi law currently sets 18 as the minimum age of marriage in most cases. The changes passed let clerics rule according to their interpretation of Islamic law, which some interpret to allow marriage of girls in their early teens, or as young as nine, under the Jaafari school of Islamic law, followed by many Shia religious authorities in Iraq.

Proponents of the changes, which were advocated by primarily conservative Shia lawmakers, defend them as a means to align the law with Islamic principles and reduce "Western influence" on Iraqi culture. The "Coalition 188" – a group of women activists and lawyers – continues to advocate for the repeal of this law.

Sudani's Iraq

According to activist Awatef Rasheed, who works in Baghdad as a consultant on gender issues, a de facto ban on using the term "gender" has undermined efforts to advance the cause of Iraqi women

In August 2023, the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission (CMC) issued a directive banning all media outlets and internet providers from using the word "gender". The commission also ordered that the term "homosexuality" be replaced with "sexual deviance".

This was a regulatory directive from the media commission rather than a law passed by the Iraqi parliament at that specific time. However, this directive was part of a broader anti-LGBTQ+ campaign that preceded the passage of an anti-LGBTQ+ law in April 2024, which explicitly criminalised same-sex relations and transgender expression.

"Within the last four years," Awatef told The New Arab, "Since Sudani came to power, gender equality in the larger context of human rights and freedoms has declined. First, he outlawed the term gender and then, even though there is still a huge need for the UN, he asked the UN to leave Iraq."

Now she says, anyone working for gender equality is harassed by the government, including those who worked for UN Women.

While things are difficult for Iraqi women everywhere, Awatef, who advises the Iraqi government on IDPs, says that internally displaced women who face impoverishment after losing their government subsidies and are still often unable to return to their homes for security reasons, are doubly impacted by gender issues.

While some government proponents proudly point to the 25% quota system for women in parliament as a sign of progress, Awatef says it's a "fake system."

"There is no space for liberal women who speak a feminist language. They are effectively voiceless, brought in by heads of political parties who ask them to toe the line. They are totally submissive to the conservative religious parties.”

While Western countries are more concerned with stability and security in Iraq, Awatef feels they have abandoned Iraqi women, just like George W Bush, who paid lip service to feminism in the build-up to an invasion that made life miserable for women.

"There needs to be a firmer statement from the international community," she told The New Arab.

"They need to tell the Iraqi government to give voice to women who seek gender equality and freedom."

The 'darkest period'

According to Iraqi academic Ruba Ali Al-Hassani, SJD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and Research Consultant at King's College London, domestic violence is on the rise throughout Iraq, as are online verbal attacks, character assassination and death threats.

The trend, she says, can be partially attributed to "the militarisation of society since 2003."

Moreover, she says, the latest election saw "a much lower turnout rate for women throughout Iraq, which points to greater female distrust in the political system than in previous election cycles." This is not surprising, she notes, after the Personal Status Law amendments were passed, "as they heavily disadvantage women's and girls' rights."

Women in Iraq, says Ruba, are "gradually being ousted from many public, recreational spaces, where sexual harassment has been gradually growing. Where women and girls expect to feel safest — in their homes — we are witnessing a rise in domestic abuse."

Now, she told The New Arab, "It is the darkest period of time for women in Iraq's history."

As I reflect on Ruba's dire pronouncement, I recall my last trip to Iraq in May. En route to Babylon one morning to visit the temple of Ninmakh, the Sumerian mother goddess, currently being restored to its former glory by the World Monument Fund, I met her contemporary counterpart.

My driver had brought along his mother, a formidable woman only a few years older than me. She turned out to be a treasure. After a week spent dodging gropers and mukhabarat, I relished the opportunity to speak with a lady who, like so many of her generation, had witnessed Iraq's shift from secular to sectarian.

She immediately opened up to me about her past — she studied English at university in the 80s and once ran a tourism agency — and current realities.

"Now," she told me, "the men are taking advantage of the situation, marrying several wives and abandoning them and their children."

Even though her husband was killed by Saddam's forces in 1991, his remains were found in a mass grave near the same potholed highway we were driving on, "things were better before for women," she said.

As we approached the domain of Ninmakh, she embraced me, wished me luck on my journey and smiled, saying, "Don't worry. You are strong – like an Iraqi woman!" And with that, I went to pay my respects to the ancient mother goddess, as my new friend continued down an uncertain highway.

Hadani Ditmars is the author of Dancing in the No Fly Zone and has been writing from and about the MENA since 1992. Her next book, Between Two Rivers, is a travelogue of ancient sites and modern culture in Iraq. www.hadaniditmars.com

The Glee You See From Fascists About State Violence is a Sexual Fetish

Kenn Orphan

January 14, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

There is a psychology at the root of what we are seeing behind the behavior MAGA fascists and far-right media these past few weeks that isn’t being addressed. One which is behind how they so openly defend the murder of an unarmed woman. Or how they cheer on the Trump regime’s imperialistic fever dreams. And all of this, while none of it improves their own life circumstances in the least.

If these people were to be transported back in time to when slavery was the law of the land, they would have adored the overseers and the bounty hunters and applauded any violence against runaway enslaved people or abolitionists. If they were transported back to 1930’s Germany, they would have cheered the Geheime Staatspolizei as they beat and rounded up communists, Roma, queer people and Jews in the streets. It isn’t a new script. It is the same story of grievance played out in a new setting.

The people who are most susceptible to this are notorious for suppressing sexual desires. And thus, there is an enormous amount of repressed fetishism happening within the celebration of ICE violence. They find unchecked, unaccountable power enticing. Its sadism is intoxicating because it allows them to disassociate from the crushing weight of their own inner turmoil. And because virtually none of them have ever taken the time to examine their own shadows, they project them onto everyone and everything.

This psychology of sadomasochism is not the kind one finds in consensual BDSM relationships or communities. Quite the opposite. The people who participate in consensual BDSM do it because it is cathartic. Because it is fun. Because they trust their partner.

But the kind we see among far-right and fascist groups is solely about demeaning those who have not submitted to the state or to a mob. This is a dynamic that extols an arrangement of power based solely upon punishment and cruelty against a dehumanized other. In this way, the supporters of ICE violence or the Trump regime’s cruelty are positioned as the voyeur, and thus derive pleasure from observing the pain meted out on a scapegoated and dehumanized other, on those who dissent, or anyone who gets in the way of power.

This plays out most especially in misogynistic terms. Patriarchal authoritarianism serves as the foundation for fascist psychopathology. Conservative patriarchal religion provides a framework for both the repression of sexual desire and human sexuality in general, and the oppression of women. And violence, from the burning or witches to the denial of reproductive rights, has often been the result. Fascism merely draws on this dark history of misogyny.

We see this clearly in the murder of Renee Nicole Good. A woman stood in the way of a man’s power. Her wife mocked him. Although they presented no danger to his life, they signified that they did not recognize his dominance. Thus, Good had to be punished. Shot in the face, which is the most intimate form of murder. That Good was later revealed to be in a lesbian relationship provided more ammunition for MAGA fascists. She was swiftly painted by far-right media as a traitor to her gender.

Wilhelm Reich wrote more about this in his book The Psychology of Fascism:

“More than economic dependency of the wife and children on the husband and father is needed to preserve the institution of the authoritarian family [and its support of the authoritarian state]. For the suppressed classes, this dependency is endurable only on condition that the consciousness of being a sexual being is suspended as completely as possible in women and in children. The wife must not figure as a sexual being, but solely as a child-bearer. Essentially, the idealization and deification of motherhood, which are so flagrantly at variance with the brutality with which the mothers of the toiling masses are actually treated, serve as means of preventing women from gaining a sexual consciousness, of preventing the imposed sexual repression from breaking through and of preventing sexual anxiety and sexual guilt-feelings from losing their hold. Sexually awakened women, affirmed and recognized as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian ideology.”

― Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

White supremacist, Nick Fuentes, said: “You should not seek sex because if you seek sex you will become gay because sex is a gay act.” He elaborated on this thought with: “the straightest thing you could do is to never have sex.” The homophobia and sheer absurdity of these statements aside, it underscores the sexual repression at the heart of fascist thinking. It is a belief that sexual pleasure itself is to be rejected. It may appear contradictory, but it goes hand in hand with the notion that the only role women play in society is to bear and raise children. It is also why transgender people are so often a target of far-right malice. Their very existence is a challenge to an order that they see as essential and God-ordained.

The contradictory nature of fascist thinking is a primary feature. It is how many of them could express anger about the Epstein Files, while ignoring that their leader, Donald Trump, figures large in their pages. It is how they can express devotion to religious institutions which have covered up child abuse for decades, while condemning drag queens. In sum, fascism is more about optics, than facts. It is about upholding traditional mores and myths, and strict gender roles, than human equality. It is about charismatic heterosexual male strongmen rather than things that are considered feminine, like empathy and kindness.

The seduction of state violence is nothing new. And it will always attract a segment of the population, mostly disaffected men. But the American project, with its characteristic predatory capitalism and Calvinist Christian patriarchal roots, has allowed it to grow and become emboldened. Racialized, Indigenous and queer women have known this violence since the first European set foot in North America, often meted out to them by white women who enjoyed a certain measure of privilege in a racist society. This is not to say white women were not also brutalized or treated as property, they were. But racialized and queer women have never enjoyed the same privilege.

As we see more and more incidents of ICE violence and the subsequent praise it receives from fascists, primarily fascist men, we should take time to understand the corrosive pathology at the root of it all. Fascism channels its sexual repression into aggression and absolute submission to charismatic male leaders and grand narratives about nationalistic glory. It thrives on the denigration, humiliation, torture and murder of dehumanized others. And it targets young men.

Understanding this may help us realize where it is coming from, how to oppose it effectively, and how to help a new generation of boys escape a similar fate.

Kenn Orphan is an artist, sociologist, radical nature lover and weary, but committed activist. He can be reached at kennorphan.com.

Archive.orgia801703.us.archive.org/29/items/WilhelmReichTheMassPsychologyOfFascism_20170308/Wilhelm Reich - The Mass Psychology of Fascism.pdf

The Mass Psychology of Fascism

. THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY. OF FASCISM. By. WILHELM REICH. 

Reich shows how every form of organized mysticism, including fascism, relies on the unsatisfied orgastic longing of the masses. The importance of this work ...

The Pathology of Power: How America Learned to Love State Violence

The comments celebrating Renee Good's death reveal a pattern familiar to anyone who has studied authoritarian movements. It's the same impulse that filled Roman coliseums & medieval execution squares.

By Tim Hjersed

January 13, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Screenshot from Jay Town’s tweet on X

There’s a scene playing out across American social media that should disturb anyone with a functioning conscience.

A woman lies dead, killed by federal agents while serving as a legal observer. The video evidence is clear: she was waving ICE vehicles forward, her SUV was moving with its wheels turned away from officers, and the fatal shots came from an agent standing to the side with ample space to disengage. Yet in comment sections across the internet, thousands celebrate her death with gleeful acronyms like “FAFO” – Fuck Around and Find Out.

This isn’t an isolated pathology. It’s the same reflex that defended George Floyd’s nine-minute murder under a cop’s knee. The same impulse that mocked Eric Garner’s final words – “I can’t breathe” – as he was choked to death for selling loose cigarettes. The same sickness that turns every police killing into a referendum on the victim’s character, clothing, compliance, or decisions made in fear of state violence.

What we are watching is a culture that has learned to reflexively sanctify the trigger pull, to treat human life as disposable when it inconveniences power, and to experience vicarious pleasure in watching the state kill people who step out of line.

This is what moral rot looks like when it reaches the core.

The Psychology of Victim-Blaming

The comments celebrating and defending Renee Good’s death reveal a psychological pattern familiar to anyone who has studied authoritarian movements: the sadistic pleasure derived from watching power crush the powerless. It’s the same impulse that filled Roman coliseums and medieval execution squares. What should disturb us most is not that such impulses exist – they are part of our evolutionary inheritance – but that contemporary American culture actively cultivates and normalizes them.

When someone types “Yep, still a good shoot” with a meme of Tom Cruise grinning that says “Deal with it” in response to footage of a woman being killed, they are engaging in a form of participatory violence. They are experiencing the pleasure of dominance without the moral burden of pulling the trigger themselves. The state becomes their instrument, and every killing becomes a validation of their worldview: that those who do not perfectly comply with authority deserve to be killed.

This is victim-blaming in its most lethal form. Just as rape culture asks “But what was she wearing?” police violence culture asks “Why didn’t she just comply?”

Both deflect accountability from the person wielding power to the person experiencing violence.

Both manufacture justifications by scrutinizing the victim’s behavior rather than the perpetrator’s choice to commit violence.

Both require us to accept a sick logic: that somehow, the victim brought this on herself.

Rape culture follows a familiar script:

• “She was drinking”
• She shouldn’t have been at that party”
• “She went to his room”
• “She was flirting with him”
• “She didn’t fight back hard enough”
• “She didn’t say no clearly enough”
• “Why did she wait so long to report it?”
• “She has a history of…”

But let’s be absolutely clear. As the late Dick Gregory put it: “If I’m a woman and I’m walking down the street naked, you STILL don’t have a right to rape me.”

You see, the clothing was never the issue—the rapist’s choice to commit violence was. Police violence culture operates identically: absolutely nothing Renee Good did warranted lethal force. She could have been blocking traffic, she could have been scared by the assaulting officer trying to suddenly force her door open, she could have tried to drive away—none of it justifies lethal force.

Both systems train us to ask the wrong questions.

Not “Why did he choose to rape?” but “What was she wearing?”

Not “Why did the officer shoot someone driving away?” but “Why didn’t she comply?”

The interrogation always flows toward the victim, excavating any detail that might transform violence into something the victim brought upon themselves.

And just as crucially, both systems ignore the role of the aggressor in creating the crisis they claim justified their violence. Seconds before Renee Good was killed, the situation was calm. Her final words to one officer were “It’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” Then another agent dramatically escalated—yelling “get out of the car” while forcefully trying to open her door, creating the very fear and panic that preceded her attempt to leave. No one asks why he chose that escalation. No one questions why he transformed a de-escalated moment into a chaotic confrontation. The focus remains laser-fixed on her response to the panic he created, never on his choice to create it.

This is the pattern: agents of power escalate, then claim the victim’s reaction to that escalation justified further violence. She panicked because he made her panic. She tried to leave because staying felt dangerous. Then they killed her for the fear they manufactured and called it self-defense.

A Culture of Normalized Violence

This pathology didn’t emerge spontaneously. It was carefully constructed through decades of policy choices, media narratives, and cultural conditioning.

Start with the militarization of American policing. When we equip local police departments with armored vehicles, automatic weapons, and training that emphasizes “warrior mentality” over community service, we shouldn’t be surprised when they treat citizens as enemy combatants. The weapons don’t just kill—they shape psychology. Officers trained to see lethal threats everywhere will escalate situations until their fears materialize, then cite the crisis they created as proof they were right all along.

Add qualified immunity, which shields officers from accountability for all but the most egregious violations. When cops know they can kill with minimal consequences – perhaps a paid administrative leave, perhaps a transfer to another department – the incentive structure actively encourages lethal force. Why take the time to de-escalate when you can shoot and face no meaningful punishment?

Layer on media narratives that frame every police encounter as life-or-death drama, every person killed as a “dangerous criminal,” every protest as a riot. Decades of “copaganda” shows like Law & Order have trained Americans to identify with the badge, to experience every limit on police power as a personal threat, to see civil liberties as obstacles to justice rather than its foundation.

The result is a culture of learned helplessness and moral resignation. We accept as inevitable what other democracies consider intolerable.

In Sweden, police are trained to treat lethal force as a genuine last resort. De-escalation is mandatory. Firing at vehicles is extraordinarily rare. Officers face real investigation and prosecution when force is unjustified. The result? Dramatically fewer police killings – not chaos, not crime spikes, but a society that manages to maintain order without treating human life as disposable.

American culture shrugs at deaths that would spark national crises elsewhere. We’ve been conditioned to accept lower standards through a systematic propaganda campaign that conflates criticism of police with opposition to public safety, that treats accountability as anti-cop bias, that frames every demand for restraint as weakness in the face of threats.

The Legal Theater of Justification

The excuses marshaled to defend Renee Good’s killing follow a familiar script, designed to create the appearance of legal justification where none exists.

“The car is a deadly weapon.”
Only if it’s being used as one. A vehicle moving away at low speed from an agent with space to step aside does not present an imminent threat. DOJ policy is explicit: firearms may not be discharged at moving vehicles unless the vehicle threatens death or serious injury and no other reasonable means of defense exist, including moving out of the path. The agent walked in front of the vehicle, then stepped aside while firing. He created the “danger,” had space to disengage, and shot anyway. Self-defense does not apply.

“Split-second decisions.”
Use-of-force policy exists precisely for fast moments. Training instructs officers to create space, move laterally, use cover, and avoid shooting at moving vehicles except to stop an immediate threat. If the officer had time to stand, aim, and fire from the flank, he had time to step back and disengage. Speed is not a license for killing – it’s a reason for restraint. Professionals in genuinely dangerous occupations make split-second decisions without killing people all the time.

“Failure to comply.”
Even conceding non-compliance, lethal force requires an imminent threat under Graham v. Connor and DHS policy. The video shows her SUV moving away from the officer, who simply steps aside. Mere resistance, obstruction, or failure to follow orders never justifies killing someone. If it did, every traffic stop could end in execution.

“Officer safety comes first.”
This slogan has become a blank check for violence. Officer safety is protected by tactics, not bullets. Do not walk in front of a running vehicle. Do not escalate a calm situation just because you are being heckled. Use calm language to reduce panic. Once the vehicle was in motion, the officer could step aside (he did) and reassess. Every option short of gunfire was available to an officer not pinned, not dragged, and not struck.

“He feared for his life.”
Fear is a terribly pathetic excuse for officers supposedly trained to behave professionally under stressful situations. I saw an apt comment from a woman who remarked, “If I shot a man in the head every time I’ve felt afraid, the streets would be lined with bodies.”

“We have to back our agents.”
Accountability is how you back them. Lowering the bar for deadly force endangers officers by teaching bad tactics and eroding public trust. The standard must be higher for the person with state power and a gun, not lower. Every unjustified killing makes the next officer’s job more dangerous by deepening the divide between law enforcement and the communities they’re supposed to serve.

None of these excuses are legal arguments – they’re narrative tricks designed to move the goalposts after someone is dead.

Bottom line: there was no imminent threat, no pinned officer, a vehicle moving away, and ample alternatives.

The justification for lethal force fails necessity, proportionality, and last-resort tests.

What We’re Really Defending

When someone rushes to justify clearly excessive force, they’re not really defending that specific officer’s split-second decision. They’re defending an entire worldview – one where authority is sacred, where questioning power is the real crime, where the “wrong kind of people” stepping out of line deserve whatever they get.

This worldview is not compatible with democracy. Democracy requires the capacity to challenge power, to resist unjust policies, to document and expose misconduct. When people are conditioned to reflexively side with the badge, to treat every limit on state violence as dangerous, to experience pleasure when protesters, legal observers, or anyone who “doesn’t comply” gets hurt or killed, they’re being trained to act like obedient subjects, not citizens.

The sickest element is the glee. Not grudging acceptance or tragic necessity, but celebration. The comments sections I’ve witnessed these past 48 hours reveal people who aren’t reluctantly accepting “a tough but necessary call” – they’re enjoying it. They experience the killing as entertainment, as righteous retribution, as satisfying proof that “our side” has the power and will to dominate “theirs.”

This is the psychology of fascism, and it doesn’t require jackboots or swastikas. It just requires enough people who have learned to derive pleasure from watching the state hurt the right people.

The Question That Matters

When someone tries to deflect criticism of a clearly unjustified killing by searching for hypocrisy – “But did you condemn mockery on the other side?” – they’re engaging in a familiar evasion. Whether any individual critic is perfectly consistent has nothing to do with whether this specific killing was excessive, criminal, and should never have happened.

But let’s be clear: as a student of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings on compassion and nonviolence, I opposed Luigi’s assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I condemned his killing without qualification, grounded in a philosophy that refuses to dehumanize our political opponents.

Yes, revelry and jokes about Charlie Kirk’s death disturbed me too—they reflect the same slide toward conditional empathy that corrodes a society’s moral foundation. But for every finger pointed at isolated reactions on the left, three point back at the systematic celebration of violence on the right: from the gleeful reactions to George Floyd’s murder to the countless MAGA supporters cheering the killing of 80+ victims at sea by Pete Hegseth, which legal experts called war crimes, murder or both. Even White House, DHS, and other official social media accounts now openly post memes mocking their enemies.

But consistency is beside the point. The real issue is what kind of society we’re building.

What kind of culture reflexively excuses excessive lethal force by police or our government at every turn?

Those in the comments hunting for hypocrisy would do well to turn their questions inward: what am I doing to make this world a more compassionate and humane place for our children to inherit?

What am I doing?

What’s my role?

Am I living in service to life and human dignity for all? Am I challenging illegitimate abuses of power, or serving it?

When you see footage of someone being killed by agents of the state, and your first impulse is to search for reasons why they deserved it, you need to examine what has happened to your moral compass. When you type “FAFO” and get a little dopamine hit, you have crossed a line that separates civilization from barbarism.

The Alternative We Refuse to Imagine

The most pernicious lie embedded in these defenses is that this is simply how things must be. That police work is so dangerous, we can’t expect better outcomes. That questioning lethal force endangers officers and invites chaos, or is “anti-American.”

This is learned helplessness and nationalist ideology disguised as realism. Other democracies prove it’s a lie.

Police in England, Germany, Japan, and Scandinavia face dangerous situations without killing people at anywhere near American rates. They manage this not because their citizens are more compliant or their criminals less dangerous, but because their training, policies, and culture prioritize de-escalation over dominance, view lethal force as a genuine last resort rather than a routine tool, and hold officers accountable when they exceed those boundaries.

The argument that “American gun culture makes this impossible” ignores that the most egregious police killings occur in situations that don’t involve suspects with guns. George Floyd wasn’t armed. Eric Garner wasn’t armed. Tamir Rice had a toy gun and was killed within two seconds. Renee Good was in a slowly moving vehicle. The vast majority of these killings are tactical failures, not unavoidable shootouts.

The argument that “police need better training” also miss the point entirely. Reports indicate Renee Good’s killer had extensive training. The problem isn’t a skills deficit—it’s a culture of violence. It’s fascism wearing a badge.

This becomes undeniable when you watch the video where you can hear an ICE officer calling Good a “fucking bitch” after she was shot, lying bleeding in her vehicle. When they refused to let her get medical help as she died, an officer replied, “I don’t care.” That’s not an undertrained officer making a tragic mistake. That’s an officer who wanted her dead, and who felt entitled to kill her because his feelings were hurt moments before.

Any honest police officer will tell you they have the capacity to engage, contain, and disengage without killing people. Other democracies prove this every day. American cops choose not to because they operate within a culture that treats such deaths not as failures but as features—acceptable, even desirable demonstrations of power. This isn’t about maintaining public safety. It’s about maintaining a specific kind of order: one where any challenge to authority, no matter how minor, no matter how lawful, is met with overwhelming force. Where the state’s monopoly on violence must be demonstrated repeatedly, viscerally, lethally, to remind everyone who holds power and what happens when you forget your place.

Resisting the Sickness

Part of staying human in a sick culture is resisting “the way it is” and demanding better. It means refusing to let your moral intuitions be overridden by narratives designed to justify the unjustifiable. It means recognizing that the reflex to defend state violence isn’t driven by law or evidence – it’s cultural conditioning.

When you see footage that disturbs you, that conflicts with official narratives claiming “imminent threat,” “domestic terrorist,” or “officer safety,” trust your eyes. Trust your moral sense that something is deeply wrong when the state kills someone who could have been easily addressed without lethal force.

When you encounter people celebrating that death, understand what you’re witnessing: not legitimate debate about a difficult judgment call, but the pathological pleasure of watching power crush someone who stepped out of line. These people are not guardians of public safety. They are apologists for bloodletting.

To anyone who truly believes what you saw warrants execution: you have absolutely zero respect for the sacredness of life and you should be considered a danger to the people around you.

That’s not hyperbole. A person who cheers the state’s right to kill someone for imperfect compliance has revealed something profound about their character. They have demonstrated that they value obedience to authority above human life. But that absence of empathy doesn’t confine itself to strangers on screens—it shapes how they treat everyone around them.

This mindset, if it’s not obvious, is not a foundation for a free society. It’s the psychology that enables atrocity – not just through deliberate malice, but through learned indifference to suffering when it happens to people we’ve been conditioned to see as “other.”

What Actually Needs to Change

The solutions aren’t complicated. Other democracies have already implemented them. The question is whether we have the political will to dismantle systems that serve power at the expense of human life.

Enforce the policies we already have. ICE’s own guidelines discourage shooting at moving vehicles. The officer who killed Renee Good violated them. But policies mean nothing without enforcement, investigation, and prosecution. Officers who violate use-of-force standards must face criminal charges, not paid leave and internal whitewashing.

End qualified immunity. When cops can kill with minimal consequences—perhaps paid leave, perhaps a transfer—the incentive structure actively encourages lethal force. Officers must face real civil liability for rights violations. If doctors can be sued for malpractice, cops should be sued for killing people who posed no threat.

Root out the infiltration. The FBI has warned for decades about white supremacists and far-right extremists infiltrating law enforcement. Any officer with ties to extremist groups must be immediately terminated and barred from law enforcement. Any agency that refuses to purge these elements should lose federal funding.

Abolish ICE. An agency whose founding purpose was mass deportation, whose culture celebrates cruelty, whose agents operate with near-total impunity, cannot be reformed. It must be dismantled. Immigration enforcement existed before ICE and can exist after—but not through an organization that has become a magnet for extremists and an incubator for violence.

Spiritual self-defense. We must retain our humanity in the face of relentless propaganda training us to deaden our hearts and minds. The machinery of justification isn’t just institutional—it’s psychological. Every “FAFO” comment, every reflexive defense of obvious brutality, every search for some detail that makes a killing seem reasonable represents a small victory for forces that want us compliant, obedient, and numb to state violence.

They need us desensitized. They need us asking the wrong questions. They need us identifying with the badge instead of recognizing ourselves in the person being killed. Resisting this requires conscious effort: trusting your moral intuitions when they conflict with official narratives, recognizing that the reflex to defend state violence is cultural conditioning, not evidence-based reasoning. Your capacity for moral horror at unnecessary death is not naivete—it’s the last line of defense against normalized barbarism. Protect it fiercely.

Choose Humanity

Choose to retain your capacity for moral horror. Choose to trust your eyes when they show you something wrong, even when authority insists you’re seeing it incorrectly. Choose to ask why the officer escalated rather than why she didn’t comply. Choose to recognize that her life had inherent worth regardless of her choices in those final seconds.

Choose to build a society where we hold power accountable rather than rush to excuse its failures. Where we demand de-escalation and restraint from those we grant badges and guns. Where we respond to unnecessary death with outrage and action rather than manufactured justifications and victim-blaming.

That choice—renewed daily in how we respond to each new killing, each new justification, each new celebration of cruelty—is what determines whether we’re building a democracy or a death cult.

There is no middle ground. Either human life is sacred, or it’s conditionally valuable based on compliance with authority. Either we hold power to the highest standards, or we grant it permission to kill anyone who inconveniences it.

Renee Good’s last words before the escalation were “It’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” She was calm. She was kind. And then an agent created panic, and another agent killed her for the fear they manufactured.

If that doesn’t fill you with rage and determination to demand better, check your pulse. Reach out to friends and family. You might have already deadened something essential to being human.

The machinery of propaganda wants you numb, compliant, and willing to accept that “this is just how things are.” Resist that. Fiercely. Your humanity depends on it. So does any possibility of building a society worthy of our children to inherit.