We don’t produce a whole lot of murderers up here in Canada, but when we do, we go all out. I really think Luka Magnotta takes the gold star, though. Magnotta has been in the news all across Canada, and even caught the interest of international media. For those who have never heard of Luka Magnotta or the Gay Cannibal Killer, the tl;dr is that a handsome young gay porn actor lured a Chinese student into his home where he stabbed him to death, removed his limbs, sodomized the corpse and then attempted to eat it. Magnotta filmed the entire attack, then sent body parts through the mail to various members of parliament and to elementary schools.

Seriously, seriously twisted. A rare moment when I support the death penalty. He filmed himself doing it. There is zero probability of executing the wrong man.

Anyways, there has been endless pages of coverage of this case, including the latest development today, in which Magnotta withdrew his appeal of his conviction. The fact he was even permitted to waste our time and money filing an appeal is beyond outrageous!

I’m not so much interested in the gory parts of the Magnotta story as I am in the many psychological profiles that attempt to explain him. What drives a person to do this? The quick answer is – he’s a psychopath, with most people concentrating on the psycho part and ignoring the path. There is a path from birth to cannibalism. What is it? What does it look like?

Luka Magnotta left behind a blog that contains a page that is simultaneously captivating and horrifying. It’s called Media Propaganda, and although it was written long before he met his victim Jun Lin, it’s a premonition of his own media coverage and a strategy to defend himself from the indefensible. What is even more interesting is how completely Magnotta’s strategy mirrors the techniques of someone we know rather well around these parts: David Futrelle. It’s an almost play by play analysis of how Futrelle “covers” his subjects, always led by an instinct to preserve his ideology at all costs.

• Guilt by association – Elliot Rodger was an MRA (he wasn’t)
• Backstroke – systematically belittling the goals of the subject
• Misinformation – reporting information in such a way that the final message of the story is not true
• Over humanization – making anyone who has a valid disagreement look evil due to all the human suffering talked about in the story
• Name-calling – neckbeard, virgin, misogynist, fedora-wearer, blah blah blah
• He Said, She Said – repeating something endlessly in the hopes people will think it’s true
• Unproven “facts” – rape stats, domestic violence, false allegations, wage gap
• Lying – just making stuff up and refusing all evidence to the contrary
• Telling the truth, for a while – acknowledging some issues are valid and then engaging with the lies and half-truths and obfuscations again
• Not talking at all about something – women lie about rape is completely verboten
• Subtle inaccuracies/Dismissive tone – misstating a topic, often a serious one, and pretending any objecting or concerned view is silly, unrealistic, or just not necessary
• One one punch – pretending to represent both sides, but only supporting one side
• Volume – the same story over and over and over again
• Coordination – parroting what other journalists have said on the same topic
• Fogging an issue/total nonsense – Write a catchy headline and following it with a word salad that makes no sense whatsoever
• 2,3,4 – mentioning only one side of an issue 2, 3 or 4 times in the same article while pretending to be balanced
• Preemptive strike – opening an article with a forceful statement about what the “correct” view is
• Framing the debate – Creating two alternatives rather than discussing what the actual alternatives are
• Token equal time – adding a single phrase or sentence to an article acknowledging a different point of view
• Interpreting – twisting words and sentences to fit an ideology rather than what was actually intended
• Withholding information – a lie by omission
• Distracting/absurd metrics – deflecting the debate onto minutiae or trivia rather than discussing the actual issue

It’s like a play by play of every article Futrelle has ever written, no? Perhaps there are some similarities of mind between Magnotta, who knew he would eventually have to defend the indefensible and studied how to do that, and Futrelle who is similarly engaged in defending what is becoming more and more indefensible by the day?

There are a few other curious connections between the two men, as well. Magnotta was gay, which in my opinion only influenced the victim he chose. David’s enthusiastic defense of the film Salo or 120 days of Sodom that contains graphic scenes of children being raped, tortured, forced to eat excrement, mutilated, and then murdered makes me think he might have a similar sexual orientation, and perhaps an inclination to express that violently? We know he has friends who engage in violent fantasies of stabbing, shooting and killing men, then skinning them and boiling the remains for glue.

Magnotta had a weird obsession with cats and enjoyed killing them in horrific ways. To my knowledge, Futrelle harbors no animosity towards cats, but he is certainly obsessed with them. And then there is the fact that they could be brothers.

How weird is that? The resemblance is uncanny.

Are you laughing yet? I hope you are. Cherry picking can be such good fun! Propaganda works both ways, no? And surely we can agree that turnabout is fair play?

Lots of love,

JB