OMG… Dude had a rhodesia and apartheid SA flags on his jacket.
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My point is that the network that supports and drives these kids are intended to appear as if they don’t actually exist. But they actually do. The lone wolf narrative is intended to protect those networks and the leadership of those networks. It functions on the notion that human beings have free will and agency in their decision making, but they provide them with the ideological reasoning to do it. And now that’s being reinforced by dog whistling right wing radio.
Sure, he could be. But what are the chances that every single white dude that does this just happens to be mentally ill while every Muslim who reacts to Muslim children being drone bombed is perfectly rational?
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Not a church, but a temple…
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I see what you are saying. Unfortunately the 1st Amendment means you can have a forum where people are free to spew all the hate they want and wallow in it.
ETA:
I’d contend that just about anyone who goes on a random shooting rampage, especially as a loner, is mentally ill. At least the high profile cases recently all point to that.
People who commit terrorism or join ISIS have other reasons, including cohesion/brainwashing, but also they see it as fighting for an ideal for a better life. You can train normal, rational, sane people to fight for something (like in the Army), even give their lives (suicides bombers), etc. So I do see a distinction.
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I’m only mentioning this because I know you’re in Atlanta, but a few years back John F. Sugg wrote some interesting pieces on the local White Supremacist scene for Creative Loafing (Example). Mainly the Stormfront types. A running theme was a tacit sub-actionable support for violence, including descriptions of “Lone Wolf” attacks as an indispensable strategy.
Side note: It’s a real pity about Sugg. He was a real hard-hitting journo, but now he works for Scientology. Damn shame.
EDIT: The article linked had a photo credit for Sugg, but this was one actually written by him. CL has a number of articles on the local facist/neonazi/racist scene. All you need is some Google.
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And I said nothing about banning books or forums or whatever, so there is no need to trot out the first amendment on me, thanks. I’m pointing out the connection, which are well known and studied. I’d also suggest reading the article @ActionAbe posted from the loaf about these groups in GA.
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Agreed, but it’s not necessarily an either/or thing. Committing a hate crime because you’re crazy and alienated and seeking to make a mark on the world while killing yourself, OK, certainly I see that the crime and hate and murder are symptomatic of mental illness, but it’s still a hate crime.
He’s a murderer, and probably crazy, too, it seems to me. People can call him a terrorist if they want, that word’s been stripped of meaning at this point by the actions of the world’s governments anyway.
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Some words you seem to be ignoring:
“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is hate crime,” Police Chief Greg Mullen told a news conference.
Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of church shooting victim Pastor Clementa Pinckney says she spoke with one of the survivors “and she said that he had reloaded five different times… and he just said ‘I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.’”
Where do you think these ideas come from? Just how strong do his “ties” to overtly white supremacist groups have to be before you lose your grip on the same old tired, racist “lone wolf” bullshit?
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Uh, okay. If you say so.
I’m going to offer the dude some sympathy, not because he is human. That’s irrelevant.
But because I am.
I also happen to believe the only sympathetic thing to be done is to hold him fully accountable for his acts, under due process of law.
I guarantee he’s hooked into that network.
on the continuum of being aware of it to running it, where do you assume he is? Do you have an org chart for them?
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Knowing about a persons ideology does not necessarily mean that we know their specific motivation. If a person hates a certain population of people and kills some, perhaps they simply wanted there to be less of these people. It seems more obvious than assuming that their intent was to induce a particular emotional state.
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Not saying you’re suggesting banning books or anything. Just that when it comes to some how controlling ideas we don’t have a really good way of doing that with out getting all fascisty.
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So you’re a mental health expert capable of diagnosing a specific disease and set of symptoms by Internet? Because positive claims require positive evidence.
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I agree that there’s no real reason to jump to the conclusion that he is mentally ill, but I think @ActionAbe’s contribution to the discussion is still really valuable. Getting involved in back-and-forth speculation about whether or not this guy’s actions were a result of mental illness in some sense is not particularly productive, and I think @ActionAbe made a really effective argument as to why the stock phrase “mental illness” is not helpful for understanding events like this.
Stock narratives like “mental illness” in response to apparently ideological killings are, I think, intended to cause ineffectual squabbling about whether or not the “ultimate cause” of the killing was the ideology or some unspecified mental illness. I like @ActionAbe’s approach of confronting the narrative head-on, disarming it, and continuing the discussion outside of the “mental illness” frame.
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The problem here isn’t controlling ideas - it’s acknowledging them. People don’t even want to acknowledge that this guy is racist, that there are tons of others like him, and that our media and culture defends this kind of BS.
No “But he has black friends”, no “but he’s mentally ill”, no “he was so quite and nice”, no “he was a lone wolf”. Just getting people to acknowledge that he was a murderous, racist bastard, that major media likes to sympathize with white murderers while at the same time smearing black victims, and that there are plenty of others like this guy out here who support him and share his ideas. People aren’t asking for camps to be set up, they’re asking for the basic facts of the situation to be acknowledged.
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Please review to whom you have addressed that comment, kind sir. You have made a mistake.
I want to know who this guy’s barber is, and if charges will be pressed.
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He might have but most people learn either divisive racism from their parents or they learn to treat people as individuals.
yes, let’s pre-judge an entire race based on the actions of some. That’s a good idea. Racism isn’t a white thing, it’s a human thing. Sounds like you have enough of your own to deal with.
So FOX made his parents racist and then they made their son racist? Pull the other one. You wanna hate FOX you go right ahead but my bet is on the parents being from a long line of bigoted pieces of shit.
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That is a problem. Mental health issues are race-blind, anybody can get one. Or more, they come in clusters.
I would. The T-word is dangerously overused.
That does not make the killer any less crazy in head. Nor calling muslim attackers “terrorists” makes them any less crazy.
But then they are a symptom.
Yes.
Though in that case it was more along the lines of fighting back using asymmetric means. Longer story there.
Neither is mutually exclusive with any other.
…enough for now, too much text here at once and I got Real Work…
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Giving a racist white mass murder sympathy … How daring!!! How brave.
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