Actor Liam Neeson ignited a firestorm of controversy on social media after he described seeking revenge on “some Black bastard” when he found out a friend had been brutally raped.
“I asked, did she know who it was? No,” Neeson recalled. “What color were they? She said it was a Black person.”
Neeson described the incident to The Independent while promoting his latest film Cold Pursuit, in which his character attempts to avenge the death of his son.
The 66-year-old Irish actor said he walked the streets hoping to pick a fight with a Black man – any Black man – so he could kill him.
Neeson said he “went up and down areas with a cosh [a stick or crowbar], “hoping I’d be approached by somebody – I’m ashamed to say that – and I did it for maybe 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’s words caused a firestorm of condemnation on Twitter.com. He was the #1 trending topic on Twitter on Monday.
Outraged social media users accused Neeson of being a racist and a white supremacist.
One user, @IamGMJohnson, tweeted: “Liam Neeson is definitely a reminder that there are folks who walk around hoping to provoke Black people so they can kill us. A lot of them are in law enforcement and politics.”
Liam Neeson is definitely a reminder that there are folks who walk around hoping to provoke Black people so they can kill us.
A lot of them are in law enforcement and politics.
— George M Johnson (@IamGMJohnson) February 4, 2019
Others defended the actor, saying they might have done the same thing if someone raped their loved ones. Most agreed that no one knows how they would respond in a similar situation.
The funniest thing about the Liam Neeson article is that with he still doesn’t realise what he was doing was racist lmao he just thinks revenge isn’t worth it. He still thinks killing any black person would be revenge for a specific black man raping his friend ?
— The Gay Tupac (@NeferKira) February 4, 2019
Ellen is about to forgive Liam Neeson on her show and say "Look I've known this guy since 1862, haha he mistook me for a horse & carriage valet, and I gotta say, he hasn't got a racist bone in his body!"
— bolu babalola (@BeeBabs) February 4, 2019
I'm so curious about Liam Neeson's decision to say that instead of, you know, not saying that
— new year, same shrill (@theshrillest) February 4, 2019
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.
— Elizabeth Pears (@BizPears) February 4, 2019
Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images
