After the news broke that unarmed jogger Ahmaud Arbery’s killers would face charges last week, calls for the conviction of Gregory and Travis McMichael started pouring in. A quieter call presented itself in the form of a Facebook page last week with the Facebook group titled “Justice for Gregory and Travis McMichael.”
The Facebook support group popped up on Facebook last week, around the time that murder charges were announced for the father and son, who are accused of fatally shooting Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, while he was taking a jog Feb. 23 in Brunswick.
The father and son were arrested Thursday, two days into the GBI’s investigation of the killing. On May 7, the group Christians Against Google changed its Facebook page name to Justice for Gregory and Travis McMichael, according to research done by blogger Neil Shenvi.
Last week, the page reportedly had more than 100,000 members, who purportedly sought to defend the McMichaels’ names.
“These 2 God fearing men were only trying to protect their neighborhood. This area has had a string of break-ins and this man fit the description and did not comply with simple commands. Our hearts go out to the McMichael family in their time of need. Amen.”
Credit: Screengrab from Neil Shenvi blog
Credit: Screengrab from Neil Shenvi blog
By Sunday, the public page was down, and, according to Shenvi, the administrators behind the page did not seem to have the ideology of “right wing Christians” and also seemed to mock those who took the page seriously. The group was started in 2017 to parody fundamentalists and facetiously bring down “Satanic” Google with prayer.
“Justice for Gregory and Travis McMichael” was created (or -more accurately- renamed) to poke fun at racist Christians and to inflame racial tensions.... Its small following reacted to these posts with laughter, recognizing them to be parodies. The group was renamed “Justice for Gregory and Travis McMichael” on May 7th, 2020.”
Though the original page could not be found on Facebook by Monday, a backup private page has been created by the same name. It currently has more than 14,000 members.
On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department announced it would consider hate crime charges against the McMichaels.
“We are assessing all of the evidence to determine whether federal hate crime charges are appropriate,” DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said on Twitter. “In addition, we are considering the request of the Attorney General of Georgia and have asked that he forward to federal authorities any information that he has about the handling of the investigation.”
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