510 - (FREE TO READ) Mailbox: "Somebody help me!"
A US reader asks about involvement in 3rd party situations
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Many thanks to “J” who sent this email:
“Hey Jeth, hope all is well with you Sir. I just watched this video of a stabbing on a muni bus in Portland, and immediately thought of you... or rather your page. And how you describe all the ways shit can go left real fast, the positional disadvantage of such close, restricted proximity, and that some times standing up for a 3rd party that is considered vulnerable can have life changing/or even ending results.
I'd love to read your break down of the incident, as well as any recommendations for such 3rd party interventions against "Bullies" to stay safe.
Love your page. Hope you're training is going well. J”
J, thanks for the two videos that you sent me, they triggered a quite interesting rabbit hole to throw myself down and thanks also for pointing out that you think of the journal rather than me personally when you hear about stabbings haha!
Note for readers
Several of these videos have embedding or age restrictions on them and so won’t play here on Substack - they’re worth clicking on as there’s loads of info that can be seen in them.
Here’s the first video that J sent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdmi51CS22A (CLICK TO GO TO YOUTUBE)
This is a follow up video, with more information that I found:
Some thoughts from watching these:
Firstly, I can’t remember how many times I’ve sat on public transport and then there’s a palpable “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” visible on the faces of other passengers as the tedious and obligatory “Nut “ gets on and proceeds to start their performance. It’s part of the joy of the urban conurbation experience.
In the video, Mini skinhead has approached The Nut On The Bus (TNOTB) who appears to be screaming abuse at two women seated away from him , argued and by doing so, the two women that seem to have been the nut’s focus for shouting have the sense to get up and leave to another part of the bus.
The TNOTB continues yelling but is still seated and just mouthing off.
Mini-skin and the tall guy by the door (who has the sense to stay there) are both disengaging from verbal contact with the nut who continues to yell.
A fork in the road leads to a knife on a the bus
3 mins .44 secs is where Phone Guy approaches and films TNOTB from behind and sits next to him and has the phone slapped away and the standing confrontation starts.
Before this there is just words and exchanges. Phone Guy is the one that triggered this escalation.
The urge to involve oneself as some sort of self elected authority, while thinking that a phone will protect you or scare/subdue a person into complying into your vision of how behaviour should be is a fundamental error of judgement.
The encroachment I believe is registered as a physical threat by TNOTB and this is what gets the ball rolling.
The small skinhead is then right in there again and starts to crowd TNOTB and gets shoved away for it. He then escalates further by throwing his rucksack down and squaring up to TNOTB.
(He should have put that bag to better use as a shield against the stabbing he was about to play a part in triggering).
He gets in his face and makes heavy eye contact.
Phone Guy gets shoved back , the skinhead grabs and throws TNOTB over on some seats and then shoves him down again into a seat as he tries to stand.
Self defence?
This point would be good to rethink the idea of self defence not for the passengers involved but for TNOTB. He may well have had genuine reason to believe that he was about to experience physical violence from multiple males. This is quoted too in the video:
One guy was long haired, the other was shaven headed. There were periods in Portland’s history from the 70’s where there were problems with bikers and more notably in the 80’s with extreme left and extreme right wing skinheads. Now to most normal people this wouldn’t probably flag up but to a mentally ill, politics obsessed individual who might have grown up there? Their appearances would just feed a delusion, especially when backed up with confirming aggressive behaviour.
I’ve written many times here on the journal about what we represent to others is communicated very quickly via the way we look as well as our presence, actions, words and so on.
These qualities don’t always have to make sense as they are highly subjective.
It therefore becomes very easy to inflame a situation in ways that some may not even be able to understand, simply by inserting ourselves into a situation. You think you appear justified and expect a certain reaction, but you may well look totally different to the other parties involved.
In combination with:
Allowing for the fact that anything will be said in court as defences, now there’s TNOTB’s possible life experience and it’s triggered anxiety added to mental illness, attention seeking, adversarial behaviour and a carried knife.
Now, facing three guys is arguably a disparity of force against him and would possibly explain why he drew the folding knife to defend himself - he hadn’t drawn it previously until that escalation point. He had also, from what I can see as there are edits in the video, remained mostly seated whilst ranting. It was the Phoneguy’s interaction that got him stood up and combative.
I do not know the local laws in Portland for knife carry or self defence and offer no opinion on this other than this is what happened but it is understandable that this individual may well have interpreted events this way.
“Hit me again”
When someone says this to you, not hitting them again may be the difference between things staying verbal and things going further.
He is shoved back/ hit again.
He is yelled at by the skinhead.
The video is censored but another angle online briefly shows TNOTB’s right hand raise and thrust stab Mini-Skin in the front of the throat.
No matter what he thought he was doing - paving a way to hell with good intentions? Phone Guy was the petrol on the fire here and he unwitting killed himself and another man. He suddenly appeared very close from behind and started filming the guy rather than hanging back.
I feel that the Mini-skin was seemingly very triggered by the comments and wanted to fight but bit off more than he could chew.
I’m unable to see enough in the video to have any comment about any actions if there were any, of the third man that was killed.
The TNOTB seems like a mentally ill attention seeker who was gifted being the centre of attention by Phone Guy and Mini-skin, both of whom seem to be suffering a bad case of “white knight syndrome” (see post #260).
See also:
None of the other passengers engage physically with TNOTB and none are harmed. The guy by the door, who had verbally engaged in a far more reasonable and smart way without encroaching was unharmed. He was threatened with the knife outside the bus but backed away and the nut left. In terms of who got stabbed, this seems to be very much about the fight that broke out and that fight could have been avoided.
I watched Mini-skin get interviewed and he seems far from normal in his delivery and mannerisms, even allowing for PTSD and dealing with the press, a really strange interview.
Given the time period that this happened in and what happened afterwards there, I thought that having him address the people of Portland was very odd.
Odder still, these two men had met before and it was hostile then too.
Mini-skin can be seen in this video (similarly dressed like a member of Auntie Fur) confronting the same man weeks before.
Again, he is in a place he doesn’t need to be in, right in the centre of a confrontation and seems very agitated and aggressive here too without the excuse of women to defend.
A chain of events and decisions that would leave him screaming “Somebody help me!” on a bus just a matter of weeks later:
Different country, same result
A second email from J, showing yet another situation that ends the same way via Active Self Protection.
First, here’s an interview with the guy that survived (just) after confronting an individual on the the train about loud music.
The interview says that he was defending women etc , again I would say that there were other triggers for his challenge to his soon-to-be- attacker than this, but hindsight is not 20/20… and you now need to pay for your medical care, so spin the story a bit…
Back to J’s breakdown video below. This has good points in it and readers here will see similar advice given as to what I regularly say here.
“Sharing your moral outlook” is a nice way to put it, though it omits that the individual may hate you on sight and has been brainwashed to see themselves as a “king” wherever they go, it’s not just about naively projecting your values on to them.
I found the comment by the second guy in the above video about getting involved and how he “would have been there”, completely at odds with the reality of modern western society.
Anything to add?
J asked in his email if I had any recommendations for dealing with 3rd party incidents.
John Correia and and the Active Self Protection channel have been producing great content like this for years and I agree with the points that he’s made in the above video.
I would add though, that considering YOUR communication with people in terms of how confrontational it is would be a critical thing to consider.
Wading straight in with commands and abuse, does that work with anyone else in your life?
Probably not, a violent armed individual will probably react even worse.
Insulting the aggressor is the most basic de-escalation NO NO.
Sometimes aggression can work, I have used it, but many times it will make things worse and you must be aware and ready to back up that plan if it fails with physical force. And even then, to be aware of what that really means outside of sports and dojos.
That guy by the door in the first video was reasonable, said his bit and then refused to engage further as he didn’t need to.
Better still, unless there is dire physical need to react to someone in a public place, to the best of your ability - do not get involved.
Thanks to J, for sending this question in.
Jeth