Huh? Most lynchings, both against either whites or blacks, were a result from vigilante justice. It was completely illegal, but a result from accusations of rape or murder, not witchcraft.

> Most lynchings, both against either whites or blacks, were a result from vigilante justice. It was completely illegal, but a result from accusations of rape or murder, not witchcraft.

The fact that the accusations were of rape or murder doesn't make the murder any less ritualized.

I would argue that the United States death penalty is a form of ritualized murder.

It is highly ritualized. The last meal, final words, gathering others to watch... really the only way that you could say that it isn't ritualized murder is if you want to nitpick about "when the government does it, that means it is not murder".

It's not about who does it, it's about whether there is a sufficiently fair establishment of guilt. In a developed country anyone calm and reasonable enough to be part of establishing a trial is extremely likely to let the government handle the trial. But it's entirely possible to have a fair hearing without involving the government. Once you've shown guilt of a sufficiently heinous crime beyond reasonable doubt then from my point of view it's not murder to kill them. It doesn't matter who is doing that killing.

There are other, simpler circumstances where you can show guilt to a reasonable degree, such as self-defense. If someone is shooting at you you can shoot back, for example. No murder.

As I said, you can object to the terminology "murder", but that is as far as the objections can go.

My objection is to comparing it to lynching. Not on a technicality based on who is performing the act, but based on the existence of a fair trial. Versus a mob acting on mere accusation.

Fair enough, though it is essential to remember that the problems with lynching are not just that the court system is not used. There have been many lynchings that occurred after the trial and a guilty verdict (for example, the infamous lynching of Jesse Washington, where he was dragged from the courtroom immediately after being sentenced to death.)

Of course trials at that time and place were anything but fair, but we don't generally refer to those state-run executions as lynchings (perhaps we should).

Well, if the mob wants to drag a guilty person out of the courtroom and kill them via firing line or guillotine or proper hanging or some other quick method, it's less than ideal but acceptable. Torture is a completely different issue, and can never be justified as punishment.

How could that possibly be acceptable? Not just the fact that it remains mob justices, post trial or not, but what about appeals? Errors? New evidence?

And how is any of that not torture? Seems like your definition of torture is just "doesn't result in death."

Sometimes appeals are needed but that's getting far too into the picky details of the court system. And if the evidence was wrong somehow it's probably not going to get fixed: justice is wrong sometimes and the only solution is to never jail anyone, that is not a debate for this conversation.

Anyway torture, simply defined, is an act causing extreme pain in someone. And not just for five seconds. Hanging-done-wrong can be torture. Many ways of killing someone are torture. But the fast methods are not. Tell me your definition if it can somehow apply to the use of a guillotine.

> really the only way that you could say that it isn't ritualized murder is if you want to nitpick about "when the government does it, that means it is not murder".

Well, the real definition distinction is that when it is legal it isn't murder, and I think that that distinction is more than just semantic, as I think it ties into some substantive differences in the social forces at work.

That's not to say that there aren't also areas of substantive similarity between that form of ritualized killing and others including ritualized murder.

I said "ritualized abuse/murder" which speaks to the act, not any specific dressing the people committing it have chosen to rationalize it with.

Probably around the start of civilization since it appears in the old testament to stone people for various crimes[1]. United States also had witch trials in the 1600s in Salem Massachusetts. Europe had theirs with the Catholic Church (sometimes even digging up heretics after they were dead to burn them[2]). Also for many years executions were public display in many European Countries as well as the earlier days of the United States. Pretty much every culture has had some sort of ritualized murder/executions (whether deemed legal by the state/tribe/official body or otherwise).

[1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Actions_punishable_by_death_in_...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_wycliffe

Human sacrifice is far more ancient than the modern state, coinciding with primitive religion. As sick as it may be, I think its primary purpose is in-group cohesion, regardless of the religious or political narrative pretext. A cadre who have knowingly committed murder together is one whose members will have strong bonds of loyalty to one another.

See also: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/religion-politics-and-self-sup...

This is where my original question was going.

To question whether there's some lower level function to this behavior. If it's developing consistently, independently I would think there's some base, primal desire being satisfied through it.

It's an arresting question, I think.

You only have to look at the Salem Witch Trials to know that this has been going on for hundreds of years, and probably much longer than that. Any social group eventually develops its leaders and outcasts. Combine that with the human instinct to understand misfortune by casting blame, and you get situations like this.

I understand crowd frenzies (riots, lynchings, witch-hunts) as fear of becoming the focus ("better them than me") and the willingness to be a spectator while not seeing the line between watching to know and enabling an event gone horribly wrong. I'd also like to think only sociopaths are the main actors, but apathy and simple mistakes all add their weight to such events.

Where? Anywhere you find people, you'll find wretched crap like this.

How? As a species we're real good at hurting each other.