It’s also worth remembering that it can be both: few of the mentally ill are so disconnected from reality or incapable of functioning(and those that are tend not to have much chance to go out in public and do crimes unless its an acute episode) that they lack opinions, goals, beliefs, etc. distinct from their identity as ‘mental patient’.
The better-balanced(or simply more risk averse) eurosceptic types aren’t going to be the ones murdering people in the street, especially in ways that get you caught; but purely-apolitical oh-he’s-just-crazy people tend not to murder politically salient figures during times of political controversy by pure chance all that often.
Even a fairly seriously unhinged person can still have enough politics to be nudged in terms of target; and even a raving ideologue tends to need some sort of dis-inhibition to do something as risky as that.
I agree with all of that, and I consider him to be a victim as well as a perpetrator. I stand by all of my points above though.
1 he is almost certainly criminally responsible
2 he is radicalised by racist rhetoric being mainstreamed
3 the conservatives have done this though none of them would ever support this action
Right now, “an history of mental illness” can be anything from “dealing with depression” to “he was mad”.
But the thing is, whatever degree of mental illness you want to abscribe to it, it was not that he was hearing voices that nobody else heard telling him to do something. He was hearing and reading voices, we all know who they are because we can all hear and read them, painting an apocaliptic vision of despair and rage over particular political issues and how everything is going to hell.
If you keep jacking up the anxiety of people over stuff for your own gains, dont be surprised if the ones that fully buy into your manufactured paranoia and decide the emergency is so real something needs to be done now arent precisely sane people. You have been preying on them and getting fat on their fear for years, you just wanted to keep the hypocrites that know is all a front for “I dont want those people here”
You know, the worst part of that Farage’s abomination of an ad is how the real people the EU has failed, deeply and to the point of extreme danger to their lives, are the ones in than road.
Well at least according to Souther Poverty Law Institute he bought gun manuals from known neo-Nazi groups. He also subscribed to magazine published by South African pro-apartheid groups. You could safely say this was the way he was radicalized. This was as much as act of terror as any recent attack executed by brown skinned fans of Isis or Al Quaeda. Yeah in my book you need to have some sort of mental issue to be subscribing to such an ideology. Still I doubt that would qualify for a clinical diagnosis. Also whatever mental problems doesn’t change the fact that there are numerous organized groups out there spreading their ideology of hate and actively inciting people to do such violent acts.
Plus historically European far right political forces are guilty of starting the worst devastations in history. Namely WWII and WWI.
Agreed. This is bullshit of the highest order. Let’s add it to the Comment Guidelines along with victim blaming and spamming. It’s the bullshitiest bullshit, and there’s no place for it among reasonable people. The only people for whom the tragedy is “fresh” are the relatives of the victims. They are going to talk about it, so everyone else gets to talk about it.
"Nazi regalia and far right literature found at home of suspect
We have more details about the suspect in the Jo Cox killing.
The Guardian understands that special police units that searched the
house of Thomas Mair found samples of Nazi regalia and far right
literature.
Sources say Mair was lucid when first questioned. A picture is now
emerging of a deliberately targeted attack in which he lay in wait for
the MP as she emerged from her constituency surgery on Thursday."
Interesting to note the way the last person who attacked an MP was described, and the way that Britain First members don’t like being judged as a whole by the actions of one person.
I wonder if their owner will have to stop being French for tax reasons if the UK leaves the EU.
Jeez, I still can’t believe how likely it seems that they will. Cameron is such a fucking idiot. Throwing the right of his party a bribe to keep power because he thought he’d not lose, and he’ll end up going down in history as the PM who destroyed the UK, and Boris fucking Johnson will end up in power.
I wonder who the people who think the state of their depressed postindustrial towns is due to immigrants caused by the EU will blame when Stoke-on-Trent doesn’t magically turn into utopia in a few weeks?
There’s a fallacy at work there. What you say is true, but in a rather vacuous way. Crazy people of any stripe don’t kill that often. If they kill someone who is not political, then whatever politics they have are ignored. If they kill someone political, one cites the rarity of the even to say that it was probably political.
It seems more reasonable to me to say that some people are just crazy, with their own particular quirks and triggers and vulnerabilities to suggestion. The trouble is that we treat the nut who shoots a gas station cashier as a robber, the nut who kills his boss as a murderer, and the nut who kills a political rival as an assassin. It’s rare that we have a person like John Hinckley who has both a highly visible victim and stated motive that are clearly logically divorced from any kind of reality. When only call someone crazy when we can’t put another label on them, rather than accept that a large number of violent crimes lie at the intersection of insanity and opportunity.
