Dylann Roof’s rambling “Manifesto”
MOTION DENIED
I was there every day of the hate trial of Dylann Roof, as sketch artist. I sat through the whole thing. He had every chance to defend himself. All he did offer was a strangely detached, yet spiteful “manifesto,” which incidentally reads like it was taken from Project 2025. I attached his words to one of my many sketches I did of this young man. He was stone cold and was asked repeatedly to look at survivors who wanted to forgive him. He never gave them the satisfaction.
Instead he was obsessed with not wanting to call what he did as hateful, which only intensified his hate and made him even more maniacal. This casual affect comes out in his rambling manifesto. The thing I learned most about hate, working on this trial, is that hate is quiet, it is almost modest, at least Roof’s brand of hate. One could even call it gentle in its affect. rather matter of fact, almost passive. As he said, “he had to do it.” as if he were just an unwilling vessel for hate. That is how hate presented itself to those of us trapped in the courtroom with him. When the jury was out, he was quite affable, yucking it up with his lawyers, who had to endure his casual pretense, just to make it through the excruciating fiasco, I imagine.
I sincerely hope, after all these years, he has had the opportunity to make it right with his soul. I personally know of at least one person who had regular visits with Roof in prison, trying to get him to ask forgiveness from God for what he did. I believe in redemption and perhaps he will or has asked to receive forgiveness. I hope he has. No one should die without having at least been given the opportunity to become right with the maker. But in this life, he most certainly deserves to be executed. And even as much as he deserves it, I still would prefer to let him spend his life behind bars and live with what he’s done. But Earthly justice has been served and he must soon pay the price, a choice of being shot by a firing squad, electric chair or a chemical stew. Maybe by the time his time comes, they will have found a clever new way to execute someone.
Unless someone commutes his sentence.
Here’s the part where it gets controversial, so the faint of heart should turn away at this point. One might consider what I’m about to say a stretch, but I’m not so convinced: I have a strong feeling that if Trump were to read his manifesto, study his case in the cursory way he studies everything, he just might grant Roof a full pardon, or at least a stay of execution, because “there are good people on both sides,” etc. And, based on his blanket pardons of all the criminal actors on January 6th, it is not inconceivable to me that he might recognize a kindred spirit in Roof. They both have an easy way with dismissing their hate with an almost casual matter-of-fact-ness that it almost makes it seem okay. Normal. I feel the need to point out a strikingly similar dull affect they both display when using hateful rhetoric.
In his manifesto, which he read aloud as his closing statement in the trial, Roof expressed his one hope that at least one Juror might sympathize with his then radical position. I think if Roof had received a new trial today (MOTION DENIED), he might very well find at least one sympathetic juror who would relate to his beliefs, which include suggesting DEI has gone too far, that blacks have been given more opportunities than whites, that blacks are discriminating against whites, Blacks are the real racists, that people of color, especially immigrants, are the cause of most of our problems. I think ICE agents and lots of MAGA are beginning to feel that they also “have to” do something to stop those “others” from taking “their country” away from them. Roof’s manifesto finally has become a rallying cry to action. It is as if he finally got what he wanted, if not an all out race war, at least a world that has normalized hate.