• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, January 5, 2017

A video live streamed on Facebook appears to show four people physically and verbally abusing a mentally ill man in Chicago, including language suggesting that the attack was racially motivated. The attackers are African-American and the victim is white.

Chicago police stated that they have arrested four individuals, all ages 18, in connection with the attack, which was live streamed on Facebook on Tuesday. The group allegedly kidnapped the victim, who attended school with one of the attackers, from near his home in the Chicago suburbs, then drove him into the city in a stolen van. The half-hour video showing the assault was apparently live streamed from one of their houses.

In the video, the victim is shown bound and gagged, with a cord tied around his neck, while the attackers shout abuse including “fuck white people” and “fuck Donald Trump.” At times they kick the victim and physically assault him with a knife by cutting hair from his scalp. They also forced him to drink water from a toilet.

Police further state that the attackers sent text messages to the victim’s parents during the assault. He was later found wandering, partly undressed and in distress, in the same neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. In total police believe the group of attackers held him for 24 to 48 hours.

While disturbing in its own right, the video also demonstrates how social media platforms play a growing role in both documenting and contributing to the racial tensions roiling the country, by allowing individuals to broadcast outrageous actions and statements, which other social media users can record, amplify and disseminate to their followers.

In this case the video quickly went viral on social media and mainstream news outlets, thanks in part to political bloggers and publishers who presented it as a sort of rebuttal to the recent string of videos, many also live streamed on Facebook, showing police brutality against unarmed African-Americans.

The implicit (and sometimes explicit) message is that racial violence cuts both ways, and that opposition to president-elect Donald Trump is motivated by racial resentment against white people among minority groups. This effectively neutralizes the countervailing political narrative, which holds that Trump’s victory was due in part to racial resentment against minority groups among white people.

The controversy over whether the four attackers will be charged with a hate crime is also being cited as more evidence of a double standard in the treatment of crimes committed against whites and members of minority groups.