This recapitulation of the actual argument being made by Anthony's supporters underscores that what we are seeing is two different and irreconcilable conceptions of right and two different conceptions of law. The supremacy of the one conception over the other is what is at stake here. Anglo-American law or the honor code?
Similarly, under Islamic conceptions of female modesty, the uncovered girl walking alone unaccompanied by a male protector has in fact consented to sexually servicing a man and his 24 cousins. It would not be possible to organize the 24 cousins for the ensuing gang rape in the absence of a collective understanding of the legitimacy of these actions. Female relatives of the gang rapists wouldn't publicly blame and heap scorn on the victims of their brothers and husbands and sons and nephews if we were simply seeing aberrant conduct understood to be criminal by the community. This is in fact a community value and a community acting out its values. The law being imposed upon them (to the partial extent to which it even is) is an alien force to whose power they will submit for now without recognizing its legitimacy.
That a woman can walk freely unaccompanied by a male protector and retain the right to say no to sexual activity is a recent innovation of a handful of societies.
That a man can have his manhood challenged without thereby acquiring a right to murder his challenger is a recent innovation of a handful of societies, still disputed within them to some meaningful degree, and entirely rejected by certain subcultures within it. The supremacy of this recent innovation is by no means assured for all time.
The Karmelo Anthony ordeal boils down to the simple fact that a non-trivial number of black people believe that they should be governed under a sovereign hood code, and any white person who is in proximity to a black person consents to be governed under hood code. This means that any interpersonal escalation, regardless of the degree of escalation, creates the grounds for the exercise of deadly force to defend one’s “manhood.”
They do not think they should be required to submit to the law of the white man. If Karmelo were being tried in a court applying “hood code” he would be completely innocent because he murdered in defense of his manhood. So it is not that they are just pretending they believe Karmelo is actually innocent, they genuinely do believe he is innocent, but under a different set of “laws.” They therefore understand this to be a “modern day lynching” in the sense that Karmelo is being forced to submit to the law of the white man, and therefore his right to murder on behalf of his manhood, which they do sincerely believe is his right, was “violated.”