Twitter users dragged actor Liam Neeson after he a confessed to once roaming the streets in search of a random Black person to kill. Neeson said his desire to commit a racist murder was prompted by the rape of a female friend by a Black person.
See Also: Kroger Shooter’s Black Son Opens Up After Dad Kills 2 African-Americans
“I went up and down areas with a cosh (British slang for a heavy stick or bludgeon), hoping I’d be approached by somebody — I’m ashamed to say that — and I did it maybe for a week, hoping some black bastard would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could…kill him,” Neeson told the Independent in an article published on Monday.
Neeson’s repulsive comment came during a media promotion for his new film “Cold Pursuit.” In the movie, a snowplow driver, played by Neeson, seeks revenge against the drug dealers he thinks killed his son.
“I think audience members live to see [that violence on screen]. They can kind of live vicariously through it. People say, ‘Yeah but violence in films makes people want to go out and kill people.’ I don’t believe that at all,” said in the interview. “I think the average moviegoer thinks, ‘Yeah, punch him. Punch him.’ And they get a satisfaction out of seeing somebody else enact it, and they leave the theatre and they feel satiated in some way.”
Neeson apparently thought it was somehow alright to make that confession without facing a backlash–as long as he admitted that his racist rage was wrong.
“It’s awful. But I did learn a lesson from it, when I eventually thought, ‘What the f**k are you doing,’ you know?” he stated.
Neeson, 66, underscored that he had grown up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a decades-long period of unrest and violence, that helped him to understand the primal drive for revenge. But that desire for revenge ultimately leads to more bloodshed.
But Twitter users would have none of it.
“Liam Neeson so racist that he thought he could tell that story in good faith and get a “Wow that’s so moving” response,” @shadinaAdia posted.
Here’s how @BizPears reacted: “Well, I’ve seen it all now. Liam Neeson admitted to going around trying to find a black person to kill because someone he was close to got raped by a black person, and the journalist spoke to a psychologist to help contextualise his racism and included it in the article? WILD.”
Scoll down to see how some other people responded on Twitter.
