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What this ultimately amounts to is the worst actors using a blanket justification to carry out revenge fantasies against whatever marginalized group they're fixated on.

If you happen to be part of any of these marginalized groups, now would be the time to get armed and get dangerous. It would be great if we lived in a functioning society where this wasn't necessary, but the failure of so many of our institutions is slowly rewinding our social fabric back to wild west times.

I always knew there was something wrong with that these people were doing but couldn't exactly put my finger on it and never talked about it because people would've yelled at me and used false dillema arguments like many people who criticized them back them recieved "You support pedophiles you removed"

There's one in the white house. Why don't they seem to care about that one?

There's one more angle to this - apart from the raise in vigilante violence and messing up with police operations which both are very valid.

Just as we stopped getting TV feeds constantly equating pedophiles to child molesters, those guys stepped in to fill the void.

Pedophiles are not inherently child molesters. This kind of equation is not only wrong, it also adds to promoting dangerous behaviors among them.

Plenty of pedophiles will never abuse a single child, knowing full well it is dangerous and harmful for minors to be engaged in such relationships. However, the more we equate pedophiles to predators, the more people, especially in the emotionally vulnerable groups like teen pedophiles, will actually accept themselves in this role. Among those who stands against this anyway, plenty will become suicidal, not seeing an option to live a non-offending life.

Current methods of therapy aimed at reducing child abuse rates go very strongly on this - pedophiles should face message of them not being inherently dangerous, not the message of them being an immediate and imminent danger. Not only this is scientifically correct, it is actually useful in making these people safer for others.

I monitor far-right groups pretty intensively and a good chunk of Paedophile Hunters are key organisers of said groups.

Its also not uncommon for far-right groups to be family operations where the adults will groom their teenage children into organizing and encourage their children to date other, often older, fascist organisers.

Nazis: If you support LGBT you're a pedophile. And we're already coming for you.

People, for some fucking reason: Pedophiles get fucked, do what you want to them, erase them at any cost!!

"Please hold this paper target in front of your face while I shoot at it."

"Sounds dangerous but I see you are aiming at the paper so I should be fine."

Pedo accusations don't come from concerns for kids but from enpowerement to do violence and the ability to righteously attack.

This inversion from concern for others to desire to cause harm through paranoia derived justifications is becoming a real problem.

If someone steps in to stop them attacking the innocent they will claim those people are defending pedos.

We're going to have the stupidest of wars on our hands.

Oh. They're just gonna call people pedo and attack them even though they're not. It's extremely obvious.

Lots of people in the comments are failing to see the issue with this, so allow me to illustrate. Fair warning, this will not be an easy read.

So let's imagine you really hate trans people, gay people, and liberals. Unfortunately for you, none of these are crimes (yet), so you can't just go around assaulting and killing these people indiscriminately, as much as you'd like to. So what are you going to do?

Well, the best hate campaigns start with a shared enemy, and nobody is more hated than a child predator. Best of all, you can do pretty much whatever you want to them with no recourse. What are they going to do, call the police? Nobody is going to speak out against what you're doing, because if they do, you can just say that if they don't support you, then they must be defending child predators!

Now that we have a precedent for violence, it's time to expand our scope a bit. Since hunting pedophiles is a-ok, now you just need to label anyone you don't like a pedophile. You could say gay and trans people are pedophiles and groomers. And again, if anyone opposes you, just call them a groomer too!

But maybe that's not enough for you. No, you want to make sure that you can target anyone who disagrees with you. Well good news, because you can just join a group of people who believe that anyone who dislikes Donald Trump is a deep state pedophile. You don't even need evidence anymore, and there's a good chance the cops will be on your side! Happy hunting!

Seriously though, this vigilante "justice" should not be celebrated. Yes, we need to take child predators off the streets, but there is a process for that. Denying anyone due process opens the door to denying it to everyone.

I had a friend who was visiting Florida, and this vigilante group from some church setup a Grindr account to catch gay men. They made a profile of a guy in his 20s, had convos and planned to meet, then asked him to talk on some other platform, where his profile said he was underage. Keep in mind, this is just a fictional person. And the Florida court loves to toss LGBT in jail, so beware out there.

Vigilantism is on the rise regardless, Either because the police are incompetent / carefree about the complaints. or because individuals are overzealous, dont undrestand or agree with the law, and decide to cosplay as the punisher.

I’m going to be honest, I’m suspicious of every single ‘pedophile hunter’. They are going after a demographic that people will not rush to defend, even if innocent.

Also, these ‘hunters’ probably have something shady going on in their own lives, and this is some form of projection that they also profit off of.

Does a criminal arrest and conviction not matter to anyone before ganging up to take someones life?

You would think an allegation serious enough to take someone's life would be at least charged by some law enforcement agency, many of these crimes require they are reported by law, and a mandatory arrest must happen if it is reported. There should be no way for anyone to be free, needing to be hunted, without a criminal history. No distinction is made between someone with a criminal history and someone without, the allegation has become enough to destroy reputations, careers and lives. History is full of situations where an other type of label and class with no rights or due process is created. Then it is applied to people as needed to eliminate them. With LGBT stuff specifically, you see the lines between these labels being blurred. Even in Russia they have blurred the lines between LGBT, child abuse, domestic terrorism and dangers to national security. It doesn't take much imagination to see it be applied in the U.S. QAnon was proof that anyone can be labelled by a large number of people with real actions taken to harm them, without any kind of formal process or charges. Just rumors that lead to vigilantes.

At some point, there is no difference between that, Daniel Penny, or Luigi Manigone. From every side, we all agree that summary executions are acceptable. The end result of this is a break down of civil society as the justifications for extrajudicial murder expand to include as many things as necessary... Even if you take something like the damage Kendrick Lamar did to Drake's career and reputation, I believe his legal defense over defamation is that it was meant as a joke. How many people would consider using these methods if they saw Drake? A lot of time has passed since that song was released, where are the criminal charges to match the damage done to him?

In Austria the 'pedophile hunters' targeted gay men who were not pedophiles. If 'pedophile hunters' would actually care about their cause, they would storm the next church...

Vigilantes taking the law into their own hands with violence is always a sign of a healthy society. It also never leads to tragedy.

This is part of the reason why casual accusations of pedophilia have always disturbed me. Because it can lead even people who in most other circumstances would be considered pro-justice and pro-human rights into mini-Mengeles.

And I've seen people just throw out the accusation without even prompt or justification, just because they hate somebody (maybe for other good reasons) and want to see if it sticks. It's fucked up.

Then there's other cases like that one where that 18-year-old got jumped for being baited into going on a date with another 18-year-old, while under the impression that she was... at least 18. A couple of people posted about that already.