Meth and anti-government extremism not mutually exclusive

Census-taker Bill Sparkman was found hanging from a tree in a cemetery with a noose around his neck and the word "Fed" scrawled on his chest. The authorities haven't determined whether the death was a homicide or a suicide.

Richard Benjamin asks whether Sparkman was a casualty of Methland, USA or a victim of anti-government bile. That's a false dichotomy.

If Sparkman was murdered, whoever killed him committed an act of political violence. It doesn't matter whether the killer was also trying to protect a drug operation. The perp took a page out of the old fashioned lynching playbook--stringing up the victim and defacing his corpse as a warning to others.

Clearly, whoever did this wanted to send a message. Someone who simply wanted to conceal a drug operation wouldn't dispose of the victim's body in such a spectacular fashion.

We tend to think of drug traffickers as non-ideological capitalists--but it's worth nothing that the drug trade funds militias and insurgencies all over the world.

Comments

[Gary]

You said.... The perp took a page out of the old fashioned lynching playbook--stringing up the victim and defacing his corpse as a warning to others.

• The victim was not lynched. As a matter of fact, his feet were on the ground. Ever heard of erotic asphyxiation? May not be the case here, but sounds strikingly similar to Carradine's death.
• Who are you quoting for the victim being "defaced".

Please do not leap to conclusions.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Gary, as I said in the post, the authorities haven't determined the cause of death. Sure, an autoerotic asphyxiation accident is another hypothesis to keep in mind, along with suicide and murder. Which is why I prefaced my claim with if Sparkman was murdered. Nobody's jumping to conclusions.

Where did I get the idea that his corpse was defaced? Someone wrote "Fed" on his chest with a felt tip pen.

If someone strangled Sparkman with a rope and suspended him from a tree with a message scrawled on his chest, that's a page out of the lynching playbook. Deal with it.

[Alon Levy]

Drug growers would be as willing to send a message as militants. Unlike cops, census workers don't invite massive crackdowns when they're killed.

[Gary]

If someone strangled Sparkman with a rope and suspended him from a tree with a message scrawled on his chest, that's a page out of the lynching playbook. Deal with it.
You overlook the issue of the feet being on the ground and the rope was not taut around the neck.
Plain and simple..... very few folks in that area have cable tv and have much less use for cnn, fox, msnbc, etc. The area he was found in, was a known haven for meth labs and it is most likely that he was judged to be an undercover informant, etc.
Trying to make this about politics is absurd. One other thing... using a felt tip pen and writing "fed" on his chest does not constitute defacing, imo. A body left in the wild for approximately 3 days would be naturally defaced, however. Now deal with that!! Oh, BTW.... he was found bound with duct tape and wearing only socks. His clothes were in the bed of his pickup truck.

[The J Train]

This happened about 40 miles from me.

Meth is a distant third when it comes to illegal drug operations in eastern KY. #2 is pot, which isn't as big as it was 10-15 years ago but is enjoying a resurgence thanks to the recession and a really wet summer. #1, by far, is prescription narcotics. They don't require the physical production space that the others do, but there are plenty of hollers and ridges that are known as places where you can go and find some pills, and I wouldn't want to be a stranger snooping around there.

Lindsay's right that there's no dichotomy here. Most people who commit political violence like this do so because they believe their way of life could be taken away. It doesn't minimize it when that belief is more specific, or even when it's based in reality.

The danger comes in associating this anti-government act with the current right-wing anti-government frenzy. I'd bet that the people who did this have never heard of Michelle Bachmann and think Tea Parties sound pretty gay. I'd bet that these guys hate the feds because their daddies grew pot, their granddaddies ran shine, and their greatx4 granddaddies shot at both sides in the Civil War. It's unfortunate (and a bit of a stereotype), but some people have so little engagement with the outside world that attitudes like that can survive for generations.

The irony will come when they catch the guy who did this and he turns out to be on food stamps. Damn feds!

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Scrawling messages on a dead body isn't defacing it? Sure, whatever. You write on a wall, you deface it. You write on a corpse, you deface it.

So, first your theory was autoerotic asphyxiation. Now you're hypothesizing it was a murder, but it wasn't political.

Like J-Train said, not every political act has to do with American electoral politics. This may have been a political act the way that certain Mexican narco-murders are political. The drug traffickers routinely dump mutilated bodies with messages on them in public places to intimidate authorities and the general public. The point isn't just to get rid of the suspected snitches, it's to get rid of them in a way that communicates who's boss and scares the hell out of everyone else.

Once you get to the point of symbolically strangling a guy in a cemetery and defacing his body with anti-government graffiti, you've entered the realm of the political.

[Alon Levy]

Lindsay, the problem is that Northern and liberal stereotypes of Southerners are incapable of distinguishing those two sets of people. J-Train is right - the sort of anti-government frenzy that goes on in Appalachia has little to do with partisan politics. The problem is that the media portrayal of this murder comes close to those stereotypes, as if everyone in the South hates the government in the same way and wants to see federal officials killed.

[The J Train]

You overlook the issue of the feet being on the ground and the rope was not taut around the neck.

My hypothesis: his killers duct-taped him up, took him out to the tree to hang him, and learned that hanging somebody is a lot more work than they thought. So instead they just choked him to death with the rope.

Plain and simple..... very few folks in that area have cable tv and have much less use for cnn, fox, msnbc, etc. The area he was found in, was a known haven for meth labs and it is most likely that he was judged to be an undercover informant, etc.

The very first thing that any E.KY drug dealer is going to do with his drug money is go out and buy a great big television and a DirecTV satellite. (What did you think they were going to do with the money? Mutual funds?) This is a priority because a lot of Kentucky basketball games are on the various ESPNs these days. I'm sure some of them also discover Fox News.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

They have talk radio in East Kentucky, right?

[cfrost]

Echos of American Hero, Champion of the Common Man, and "Death Valley Days" host Ronald Reagan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x59wNGHe6iI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghUy5WhjIHk

(This is not to denigrate Boraxo handsoap which remains the best damn handsoap ever.)

[twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte]

Auto erotic asphyxiation is something that happens to people choking themselves while masturbating. That usually means they're naked, or at least from the waist down. And in private. I have seen straws grasped at, but that was just beyond all reason.

[cfrost]

He was found naked, so it could be an erotic asphyxiation death. If it were autoerotic however, with his feet and hands bound and hanging by his neck it would have been a pretty fancy trick.

[Alon Levy]

Auto erotic asphyxiation is something that happens to people choking themselves while masturbating.

No, erotic asphyxiation can happen in self-bondage, which doesn't have to involve masturbation or nudity. And it can be done in public - there are fetishes for doing bondage (or self-bondage) outdoors.

[Gary]

Yep, and as far as I know... it is all limbaugh. I have never heard any others mentioned.

Also, the erotic thing was meant as an example of a very remote possibility, not as a likely scenario. Just as saying the death had something to do with current anti-fed fervor that is gripping parts of the country, would be a very remote possibility, not as a likely scenario.

BTW, Piercy did make a good point about the basketball games and satellite TV. I have cable myself. We still have to suffer through football to get there, however.

[Cass]

Perhaps we have a new serial killer on the loose that is compelled (for reasons that defy understanding) to write the names of his victim's employer on their bodies after strangling them. Or alternately, if we go with the auto-asphixiation theory, it could part of the turn on: the old Frank-Nitti's-wife-ties-up-Elliot-Ness fantasy. Only after we've eliminated more likely possibilities can we even begin to entertain the truly fantastic idea that the word "Fed" provides some kind of clue for the motivation behind this man's murder.

[squashed]

One thing very surprising about all this and nobody mention. The type speech rightwing is using on TV is exactly the one used in mass appeal to terrorism.

How to incite violence, political polarization, delegitimation of government authority, use of religious rightousness, etc.

If one listen to taliban rethoric, the core is very much the same.

[The J Train]

You know, I'm honestly not sure if the usual talk radio assortment is on the air around here. Probably, but I've never sought it out.

And I don't want to make it sound like the current anti-government Teabagger-type rhetoric hasn't made it to EKY at all. A large majority of us have cable or satellite TV, and Fox News is probably as popular here as it is anywhere, maybe more than most places. But there is a narrow band of the population that isn't engaged enough with the outside world to let current politics affect their attitudes, and I'm betting that Sparkman's murderer falls into that group.

[Mad Hatter]

Talk radio is very popular along there. I'm originally a Ridgerunner from East TN and I travel I-75 through KY quite often. In addition to Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. there seem to be a lot of local wanna-bes preaching the same crap all up and down through eastern KY. Also, if you stop at many restaurants or hotels along the way a majority will have Fox News on the TV.

J Train I could agree with you about the motivation except for that damn "FED" drawn on his chest. I believe that if the type you talk about were involved it would be a simple "missing person" case and we'd never find or hear of Sparkman again, heh.

[ZH]

We tend to think of drug traffickers as non-ideological capitalists....

Really? Perhaps because of movie portrayals. But I've been to a few backwoods areas known for meth production and everyone was a also hotbed of far right extremism.

These are not the "law and order" crowd. We're talking about the same people who drive off road in national forests, shoot where there are "no shooting" signs, litter anywhere and everywhere, and in general have virtually no respect for any law.

Meth labs and white supremacists go hand in hand.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

ZH, I agree. I'm just saying that pop culture drug dealers and TV news drug dealers are usually portrayed as "strictly business" criminals who exist apart from the larger culture or a political agenda.

[Alon Levy]

Lindsay, only a few drug dealers are portrayed as strictly business criminals - maybe George Jung and Stringer Bell, but that's it. The rest, as noted by Ed Burns, are interested in power more than money nowadays. They're gang leaders, not capitalists.