The Book I Can't Read
How Murder Becomes Political
In my last dispatch, I said “we” are not afraid. But I, personally, am afraid. I’m afraid of a book.
I had promised to post some live as-I-read-it reviews of the book Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country.
I’m not talking about the very similar statement by North Carolina Republican Mark Robinson. During a campaign event—oops I mean a sermon at a church—Robinson said the quiet part out loud. After ranting about crime, he said “Some folks need killing.”
Robinson was expressing the authoritarian impulse in its purest form. Because he feels frustrated by “murdering and raping” and the slow pace of the justice system, Robinson simply wants to kill the bad guys. He later pretended that his remark was a reference to the army killing our enemies in wartime. But Robinson specifically mentioned that “the boys in blue” have to “go handle it.”
That’s death-squad ideology. Send “the boys” to kill people. It’s not just a North Carolina crazy-guy problem. This impulsive, threatening rhetoric is now part and parcel of American politics.
It’s the same impulse behind the new book by Patricia Evangelista. Her title is a quote from the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte: “Some people need killing.”
Evangelista is writing about the same murder campaign in the Philippines that I wrote about in the New York Times Magazine in 2017. She was something of a mentor to me, taking time to discuss cases, introducing me to other reporters, and literally guiding me into midnight crime scenes of the most horrible kind.
But I’ve run into a problem. Turning every page is just like torture. I’m dreading the next chapter, the graphic details of killings, the helpless feeling she conveys of a journalist who knows very well why and how the killings are occurring, but isn’t capable of stopping them or even getting the public to care.
It has taken me three months to get halfway through the book. My reading has slowed to the point that sometimes I can only do a few paragraphs, or read the same page over again a week later. Every time I turn the page, I move closer to the scenes in which I myself was present. I know they are coming. Evangelista wrote about them at the time, often publishing one or two days after I visited a murder scene with her. She was an example of how to remain composed amid conditions that are beyond understanding. I think her motivation in exposing Duterte’s role in the murders is respect for the family members and survivors. The aunts, fathers, sisters, and friends who tended to crowd into the nocturnal murder scenes, wailing, or confused and silent.
I am reluctant to go back there, in memory or literature. I already did this once. An entire chapter of my book The Black Pill is a recreation of the scenes of these murders.
But it has to be done. I had to write it. She had to write it. Others had to write and photograph it. We will keep on writing and photographing. And I will keep reading.
Citations:
His rant: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mark-robinson-north-carolina-some-folks-need-killing-1235054081/
My article: THE LIST, on vigilante killings in the Philippines, from the New York Times Sunday Magazine: https://nyti.ms/2jAFRSv
Her book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612869/some-people-need-killing-by-patricia-evangelista/
We all need to take a pass on some things, so we can maybe focus on others. That’s my hope anyway.
I get it! On a much much smaller scale, it's like reading some current events - I feel like I already know, and yet, should I still read about it incase there is more to learn. I can imagine that being 10,000 times worse for you if you already lived the experience.