Remember Kenneth Eng? He’s the young gentleman whose column in a San Francisco Asian-American paper headlined “Why I Hate Black People” caused a certain amount of agitation back in late February and early March. Though it was that article that led to his column being pulled, it turned out that in previous writings he had also lobbed large quantities of idiotic, racist invective at any number of other ethnic and cultural groups — whites, Latinos, Muslims, working-class people, fellow Asians accused of self-hatred — on grounds, apparently, of some combination of inherent inferiority and complicity with some kind of conspiracy to devalue and degrade Asian people in America.
So then the Virginia Tech massacre happens and, returning to the Eng thread here, commenter “A Black Muse” asks the following question:
Ok, now, I’m just waiting for the Cho/Eng connection. Did you read about the disturbing behavior Cho exhibited prior to his rampage? Did it remind you of anyone? About two weeks ago, Eng posted reply to the FoxNews video to drone on about a concept he has no understanding, and in the middle of it states that the killing of cashiers, teachers and lawyers would make little difference to the world as they are people of limited awareness and impact on the world. (wtf?) […] The day after the shooting, Eng posted another video LAUGHING about it and congratulating Cho!
Well, now the connection is complete, per this article in the Village Voice today that contains comments in which Eng gives props to Cho for his actions and suggests that Cho may have read Eng’s “works” for inspiration. Behold:
Eng likes to believe that his own hate-filled writings about non-Asians motivated Cho, and as far as we can tell, he’s serious. Eng also claims to “admire” Cho for the worst individual mass-murder in American history, and tells the Voice that he, at one time, planned to go on his own killing spree while he was a student at NYU, but couldn’t afford a firearm.
“It’s speculative but I think that there is a good chance that Cho may have read my work,” says Eng. “I might have had something to do with [the VT shootings] because it’s kind of conspicuous that [Cho] would shoot all these people so shortly after AsianWeek published all my articles.” Cho, in his manifesto, railed against “you,” making no reference to race. But Eng believes he understands why Cho felt compelled to commit the murders and applauds him for doing so. “A part of me wishes I was Cho,” says Eng, who is the same age as the murderer, 23. “He is my hero.”
Hero, or if not that, then perhaps at least a meal ticket: It’s my understanding that Eng has been shopping around a book proposal in which he says he would defend Cho as being the “real” victim of the Virginia Tech tragedy. Apparently he’d already been planning to write a book after the AsianWeek fracas, suggesting to publishers that they’d make money capitalizing off the controversy; by that logic, of course, that opportunity is all the richer now. Now, Eng is very clearly one highly disturbed cat with a clear track record of unhinged bigotry and megalomania, along with some horrible writing, and as low as the publishing industry can get, I have (some) trouble imagining any reputable press would back this project. Still, this one bears some watching, as Eng seems if anything proud of his accomplishments thus far and ready to take it to the next level when what he really needs is professional help.
Wow, I’d never heard of this guy before. What a pompous ass. It seems like he’s harmless because he said himself that killing people would make little difference in the world. I think he’s just going to the extreme in terms of looking for attention. Thanks for the post, Siddhartha.
What a crazy f*ck. It’s disgusting that hate gets him off.
OMG!!!
That is about all I have to say about that…
^It sure as hell isn’t women that’re getting him off. Methinks that women aren’t that crazy or desperate enough to even approach him.
Oh jeez…when are they planning on passing that law to throw loons like this behind bars and treat them or kick them for all I care. Really when are they going to pass that law? This guy should be first in line. He’s lucky he lives in America. If he tried this shit in Asia they’d probably find him the next day hanging from a tree by his nuts!
Thank God he was a poor college kid and couldn’t afford a firearm…it seems from his age that he went to NYU when I did…
Ugh…
His Wiki page casts doubt on his claims of being a published author. He clearly thinks piggy-backing on the VT shooting will land a book deal.
Gross.
It is not entirely surprising to read this. It has happened before in a variety of ethnic groups, colored or not. Amongst a subsection of all displaced peoples, is the idea of revenge and respect, whether justified or not. Whilst we beguile ourselves to believe in this era these issues would not get support, there will always remain aspects within people who will be attracted to these destructive forces. Darling Anne Coulter comes to mind.
The stupid thing is to believe these people do not exist and to think they are all mad psychotics. Harboring within a variety of blindly ‘endorsed’ individuals is the capacity to exert significant destruction whenever the appropriate variables emerge.
a publisher will certainly sign him if he’s controversial. weirder shit are sold on the market cause they generate profit.
certainly sick though.
Can’t people be legally liable for contributing to a murder? It may be that unless they outright tell the person to kill, they aren’t liable, but still, there should be something on the books, right?
He clearly needs to be institutionalized….here he is talking about dragons and shite. So bizarre that it’s almost comic. And this obsession with Sofia Coppola…like he’s trying to equate the Japanese stereotypes in Lost in Translation to his rants against blacks and whites.
what if this guy goes out tomorrow and takes out a dozen people? are we all going to say, “geez… he did write in his blog that cho was his hero… should have seen that coming.”
Bet he’d have no trouble buying a gun legally. If he thinks Cho was a hero, what’s to stop him from trying to become one too?
This guy is no better than the KKK types. Of course, he’s probably loving any attention he gets.
I am afraid that I’m going to strike a contrarian note about this:
[Emphasis mine] JoAT, I abjectly apologise in advance if locutions such as “that law to throw loons like this behind bars…” are merely conscious parody of Eng’s rhetorical style (the rancorous tone below is entirely abstract, okay :-)). But if not, I do want to point out that the issues underlying this post are serious enough that statements such as “that law…”, or “loons like this…” deserve a more rigorous gloss. What, for instance, are “this” and “that” ? Are we talking about a law explicitly prohibiting hate-speech, or something else ? I guess I have two reasons for asking this question:
a) I have a visceral reaction to the statements such as the one italicised above. Such statements are often made, or supported, by otherwise wonderfully reasonable people who happen to belong to what I call the Feelings Faction or the Moods Majority. Such statements are often prompted by gut-perceptions that have some truth at their root. But their very lack of nuance — in which the Moods Majority is uninterested — can translate into horrible policy. The astounding number of young black males who are in prison, many of them unfairly, has, at its root, a mandate to throw certain people “like this” — hindsight tells us how badly nuanced the “this” here was — behind bars.
b) Although we feel safe and are among friends (mostly) on this blog, could we please, pleeeease not let it all blithering hang out ? For which this (hyperlinked for rigour!) recent fracas supplies a reason. Although the quoted remark above is hardly that inflammatory, it does belong to the letting-it-all-hang-out category (unless it is JoAT’s attempt at parodying Eng’s style).
Now, on to “that law”. I haven’t seen any Mutineers on this thread raise the issue of gun-control. One could think about anti-hate-speech legislation as “that law” relevant to this case. But hate-speech can be a very tricky thing to define. For example: most Americans will agree that Eng’s writings are a case of hate-speech; but then why don’t many of Ann Coulter’s articles fall into that category ? And, given the peculiar enthusiasms of American prosecutors, it can be argued that sanctions on speech by individuals (as opposed to institutions, which do not enjoy the benefits of personhood) could willy nilly create the category known as thoughtcrime. In contrast, gun-control legislation would put an end to some of the tragic excesses of Eng-style rabble-rousing (note that many of these shootouts are carried out by individuals having no contacts with organised crime) . What do Mutineers think ? At the very least, if we support throwing “them” behind bars (or into psychiatric facilities), let us, for Heaven’s sake, define who “they” are — and what the legal case should be!
I refrained from highlighting this (from #5):
in my previous comment because it is distracting. But, as an Asian, I find this as bad a case of essentialization as some of PG‘s remarks. As I said in #14, could we please, pleeeease not let it all hang out on this blog ?
This guy is so sick and seems to be seriously disturbed or has absolutely no sense of humanity/decency. I’m sure he’ll get a book deal or something out of this, but I wish people would exercise some discretion and either a) not publish his crap, or b) not buy his crap. Honestly, he is not worth as much attention as he stirs up, and I think a conscious effort to avoid all of his violent, awful, hate-mongering seems like the best way to deal with it.
Commenting from Australia here, but from the way our media portrayed the shootings it didnt at any stage occur to me that the V Tech massacre was at all racially motivated. I guess the world really is a reflection of yourself and kenneth sees what he wants to see, the racism is in him hence he sees it outside etc etc
Somebody needs to write to O’Reily. It will be fun to see one crazy dog going after another!
Quite frankly, this guy has the mindset of a terrorist. If this guy had an arab name he would be in a cage somewhere in Cuba right now.
Eng is a disturbed opportunist. This is taking things to an upsetting low. I want to tune him out (again), but then Sandeep made a solid point in comment #12.
Also agree with Samjay:
Damn straight.
FR. what year did u graduate? im nyu class of 2001!
When I saw Cho’s video, it immediately reminded me of Kenneth Eng’s FOX interview…and then I saw he was on youtube (via angryasianman) and it horrified me.
Why isn’t anyone putting this guy under a watchful eye?
This scumbag makes OJ’s book deal look classy.
Gross. Why is he being interviewed on FOX? Oh, I get it.
In #14, GB writes-
While I perfectly understand the slippery slopes of criminalizing thoughtcrimes and assorted agent provocateurs, the current boundary line demarcating thoughts and actions leaves me queasy. There should be accountability for “hate speech” of the sort Eng indulges in, as also the ‘soft’ purveyors of ratings sluts including Village Voice and Sepia Mutiny for giving it the prominence it does not deserve. The only currency Eng wields is notoreity unless he is also an unhinged trust fund baby and it is our dharma to rob him of that.
The worst thing anybody could do to this guy is ignore him. I suggest we just pretend he doesn’t exist.
ugh i hate that this guy even gets media attention. not blaming you siddhartha, but really who is this guy? he’s a crazy dude who happened to score himself a column in a generally reputable publication and now he’s someone that should be reported on? i can picture him getting off on his everytime his google alert with his name in records another mention on the web. ugh ugh.
Let’s keep in mind that he had a column in AsianWeek. So someone believed he was credible, and his words did have a certain currency as a result. We may all think he’s a publicity hungry loon, but he does need to be exposed as such before he convinces someone again that he should be a voice for Asians.
“He clearly thinks piggy-backing on the VT shooting will land a book deal.”
Sad but possible…didn’t the moronic, beyond stupid Judith Regan think highly of her ‘OJ’ grab till Murdoch nixed it
Actually, Judith Regan is many awful things but she’s not stupid. Her ego got in the way of her business acumen on that one. People might have thought the book was horrible, tasteless, and crass, but they would have been curious enough to buy it. She shot herself in the foot by shoving OJ (and herself) into the spotlight, so people began to follow the money trail.
Ron Goldman’s dad fought for (and won) the rights to the book and is shopping it around now. See here.
Publishers might be interested in a bio of the Cho guy. Sadly, people are interested in reading and watching stuff about crazypsychokiller people. Catch any episode of CSI or Law&Order SVU? But hopefully all agree that Eng’s proposal smells foul. He takes Cho’s rants against “you” and twists it to fit his own racist agenda. He is all ego, ambition and delusion to the extent that he admires crazy people (who can at least plead insanity as a reason) while he himself is not.
This guy is an idiot, but I have a feeling that Cho was inspired by a trilogy of Korean movies about revenge.
This Cho guy was a wannabe writer and it is clear to me, by reading little excerpts from his crappy school essay’s, that he tried so hard to write like the guy who made these movies.
On top of that, some of the poster’s for the movie “OldBoy” had the main character holding a hammer, like he is about to hit someone with it and guess who else sent out picture’s of himself holding a hammer in a threatning manner? That’s right, Cho!
I solved this case. Now give me another one!
like the cho case, i think the government should nothing in response. no gun control. no hate speech laws. no fbi suveilance. don’t force him into an institution.
private parties should take action. the university should’ve contacted his parents to express their concerns. his parents should send him to a therapist. if he’s clinically psycho then we can talk about restricting his civil liiberties.
he may go on a shooting spree, but that’s the price we pay for a free society.
AHHH Damn it!!! I just googled my theory and other’s have mentioned it! Cant I be original just one time? I actually thought I just came up with some original idea. I actually thought I had niche to be a detective.
You know what I am, with my good bag and cheap shoes? I look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with little taste. Good nutrition’s given me some length of bone, but Im not more than one generation from poor indian trash. And that accent Ive tried so desperately to shed: pure West Punjab. You know how quickly the girls found me, all those tedious sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars, while I could only dream of getting out, getting anywhere, getting all the way to the F.B.I.
Points, if you can figure out what movie I sort of quoted above.
Bingo!
I am simply shocked at the way the media has completely shielded his parents from any moral responsibility for Cho’s actions. It’s almost as if they are not to blame at all.
By no means am I suggesting that they bear any legal responsibility, and the Virginia PD is rightly giving them security.
Many parents tend to be quick to take credit whenever their children are ultra successful – be it the Williams sisters, Lindsay Lohan, Hillary Duff, Sanjaya Malakar etc etc. And the media goes ga-ga over them. But they are nowhere to be seen when their children mess up, and the media blacks them out completely.
M. Nam
Listen, Clarise…
Did anyone watch the video of him with the dragons (Shireen, #11)? He’s as solipsistic and crazy a loon as I’ve ever seen on TV. He’s not a terrorist, he’s probably totally unable to get a job in a freakin’ McDonald’s, and he’s unable to tell when he’s being baited.
Dragons? What the hell was all that? Dragons? Whoa.
Oh, and ShallowThinker (#33): The Silence of the Lambs. Can I get a cookie? 😀
“Sadly, people are interested in reading and watching stuff about crazypsychokiller people.”
I want to believe journalists are wrong about this, and that most people are sick and tired of media’s attention on crazypsychokillers.
(When the broadcasting corporation WHNC(We Have No Conscience) aired Cho’s hate video, I refused to watch it, and felt only contempt for the TV execs who thought it was a good idea to broadcast what is, in essence, an infomercial for mass murder.)
“Her ego got in the way of her business acumen…”
That’s pretty much the definition of stupidity wouldn’t you say Publishing lifer? 🙂
Moornam # 34
I totally do NOT get your point.
Eng was crazy and you would like to blame his parents for what he did? Have some compassion and empathy- they lost a son too.
What do you want the media to do – hound them while they are still trying to make sense of senslessness? Whip up some anger and hatred against them too?
Once you are 18 you and only you are responsible for your actions.Unless Eng’s parents brought him up to hate everyone else ( unlikely, considering that his sister seems to have turned out ok) , what responsibility do they hold?
I have no patience with the current practice of blaming everything on one’s alleged lousy upbringing.Its just another way to avoid personal responsibility and accountability for one’s own actions.
Sorry ,I meant Cho NOT Eng in my comments # 39
Freudian slip …
holy cow! i just saw that eng video from #11. the guy is looney, seriously seriously looney. it seemed so over the top that i felt like he was playing a joke on the interviewer, but frankly i’m not about to give eng enough credit to pull that off. he’s clearly not smart enough.
Runa writes:
They are partially to blame. They brought up a monster into this world – they could have stopped it with better parenting. Their karma will catch up with them.
Oh please. I already mentioned that there should be no legal ramifications for them and that the cops are right in giving them protection.
Agree totally – but this is out of context. If Cho had blamed this on his upbringing, then I would say the same. But here, I am asking the parents to take a share of the blame. All I wanted them to do was to use media time and come on TV and say: “We’re sorry this happened. It is partly our fault. We messed up. When we saw that he was turning into a loner and anti-social, we should have immediately nipped it in the bud.”
M. Nam
I strongly recommend that one resists the temptation to think these people are outliers of the general population. They are more common than you think, circumstances can easily change and disrupt a personality from within or without. I do not think it is far fetched to bring up the psychology of SS soldiers as a poor but readily accessible example.
And no i am not talking from personal experience.
Moornam,
FYI:I am sure you know the parents /family already released a statement expressing their profound sorrow for Cho’s actions
By your logic then the parents of every mentally ill person are to “blame” for their offspring’s actions -which I do not buy at all .
And as I mentioned if its the parents to blame , why isn’t Chos’ sister spreading hate instead of – by all accounts -leading a productive and blameless life?
Where I will agree with you is that they erred in not getting him professional help he so obviously needed either because they did not realize or worse ignored the signs.
I do not see how their coming on Live TV helps in any case.
Glad to know that you and I at least share like views on personal responsibility and accountability .Let’s agree to disagree and leave it at that.
Gawker.com has the cover letter for his “project.”
There ARE laws against gathering people for the purpose of doing violence against others. Eng still has this website going: http://www.geocities.com/yellowskullgod/YellowSkull.html where he is attempting to recruit other Asians. (Warning, clicking the link to “what white people deserve” will gross you out.) And IF, they find some kind of connection between Eng and Cho, that is, if they find that Cho’s state of mind was influenced by that asshat, Eng, Kenneth will find that freedom of speech doesn’t excuse him from liability in the VA shooting.
I kinda wish the kid had the word “Dennagon” written on his arm. Eng would be in jail as an accomplice by now!