What does "lynch" mean? This is an extrajudicial massacre

In the late Soviet years, since the fifties, ideological struggle has been difficult. Information about life in the United States filtered through the Iron Curtain, international exhibitions, foreign films and short stories of a few lucky people who had been abroad, gave a definite idea of life in the "States", often distorted, but almost always painted in fabulous tones. The material and food abundance of the "free world countries" had to be countered with something. "In America, Negroes lynch!" This expression was one of the most serious arguments on political information and other public events designed to establish in the mass consciousness the advantages of socialism.

Lynching and Racism

So, in the United States there have been repeated extrajudicial killings, with the victims most often becoming colored citizens, now they are called blacks, and we have a colloquial speech using the word "Negro", and without any "negative" shade. In general, these actions give an idea of what a Lynch court is. There are cases when an angry mob killed a tram driver, under whose wheels a pedestrian got caught. Other recorded episodes showed racial or national prejudice, because of the suspicion that the Italian ("they are all Mafiosi") or the Jew ("drink the blood of babies during their rituals") was immediately suspected of being killed. But most often black Americans were hung or burned (and sometimes both). Such aggressive racism had its own background.

Lynch first, Charles

The morphology of the word is ambiguous. "Lynching" in English means beating with a stick, and in this version the concept of group lynching is very close to the essence of the term. But the methods of killing defendants, as a rule, did not include such labor-intensive operations, they acted more simply: they tied a noose, threw one end to the nearest bitches, and the other - to the prisoner's neck. But another version, connected with the figure of the historical, judge Charles Lynch, is more believable. He did not invent anything new, in fact, but simply applied a simplified trial in the conditions of war (then the United States fought for independence), with the only difference being that the military and all other crimes were accelerated in the ordinary district court, not the tribunal. According to one version, the local residents who were present at the execution of the verdict said: "they are lynching." This did not mean that the condemned person was executed, the punishment was different, and the color of the decision of Charles Lynch did not depend.

William, Lynch the second, and the planter, Lynch III

These stories also occurred during the War of Independence. Captain Lynch, being a man of military and decisive nature, the gaps in the unsettled justice system was decided simply. He created his own judgment. The situation in the country was complicated, the solutions needed quick and effective. He judged as he could, but, apparently, is not always fair.

Still there was a planter Lynch, who perceived blacks as a working cattle, and also not particularly tormented by doubts. His trial was swift, the verdict is cruel, in general, the decisions differed little from those that the embittered crowd would accept. It is possible that it was he who gave his name to the process, during which a person, not always guilty, lynch. This means that there is no way to justify the possibility. You can only prepare for death.

The Lynch Court and the Ku Klux Klan

The Lynch Court reached its peak in the second half of the nineteenth century. The social tensions that prevailed in the United States after the Civil War, the uncertainty of the situation of the enslaved colored population and the defeat of the rights of whites in the South, together gave rise to a social and ideological vacuum that the racist organizations willingly filled (the John Birch Society, the Ku Klux Klan) . They made it clear to everyone, and first of all colored, that despite the equality enshrined in the Constitution, nobody canceled segregation, and if the norms of conduct are not respected, the guilty will be lynched. This, in other words, meant: "niggaz, know your place!"

This situation actually existed until the sixties of the last century, until the US Presidents Kennedy and Johnson began to struggle with segregation and racism. Today, the meaning of the word "vigilante" requires clarification, it is used when they want to expose someone's brutal and brutal arbitrariness or the arbitrariness of an angry mob.