Ya know, I think there may be a few academics here…
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Of course, but how many have been tasked with analysing the physiological makeup of the shooter in relation to a case study and also come to BB for information?
'Cuz, like… the only thing that will protect you from a bad gay guy with a gun is a good gay guy with a gun.
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“Taking inspiration from” is far, far different from “under the direction of”, “carrying out the plans of”, or “member of”. That many of these groups are rivals or enemies reinforces the idea that he was working on his own, with his own reasons. This matters, especially if you’re going to try to tie the event to an entire religion containing many different sects and varieties of beliefs.
And I strongly doubt that the idea expressed was as simple as that he was “not actually a terrorist”, but since you haven’t actually provided a source…
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Self-loathing, religious guilt, and anger over prior rejection may have been the primary motivators for his actions, but that will not play well in Trump’s efforts to cast blame on all Muslims, so don’t expect him to address this new information in his daily barrage of Islamophobic speeches.
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I’m totally with you on this. That this guy couldn’t get a date just makes it that much more tragic. If he’d had a knife or a typewriter he would have gotten his ass well and duly kicked. It’s the weapon, no two ways. He shot a little over a hundred people in a mater of minutes. A hundred people, christ!
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This is an extreme example of what happens when the venom hate-mongers spew is internalized. It’s happening every day to gay kids who have intolerant families and belong to religious communities that despise the LGBT community. So it is very, very important.
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who cares about his sex life
The reason anyone does is that he cited his anti gay beliefs as a motivation for the killing. That makes the fact that he’s gay pretty damn important, or at least interesting.
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He visited gay clubs, and used gay apps to ask about the locations of gay clubs. That sounds like recon to me.
What about the fact that he was asking people out on dates? And presumably sleeping with people sometimes too? What was he studying then?
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No, the guy said that he was “not sure that it was a terrorist act”, and the host had him repeat that statement. The host seemed very surprised by that statement. This was CNN this morning.
A current strategy of ISIS in particular is to publish instructions on how the faithful living in the west should carry out terrorist attacks in their country of residence. The less actual contact between the Caliphate and the operative that occurs, the less chance of discovery by authorities. The old way was for people to travel to the middle east and attend a terrorist training camp and receive personal indoctrination. Now, much of the guidance is available online, including methods of target selection and ways to avoid detection.
And I absolutely am not trying to “tie the event to an entire religion”. But you cannot understand or combat Islamic extremism without understanding that Islam is an important component of their beliefs. I don’t think it is a case of either believing that Islam is a religion of peace, or that Islam is just about brutality. Nothing is as simple as that. The thing with ISIS followers throwing LGBT persons off of high buildings is literally following instruction given in the Hadiths. But we should be able to talk about that without expecting the people at your hometown mosque to start doing the same. I am sure that they are very nice people, and deserve that same respect as anyone else.
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Its always going to happen that way. Its what frames the news for people as they integrate it, and they speak about it.
Current themes and events stick around that way. Its someone else today, you’ll be doing it tomorrow. The illusion of continuity. People create narratives as shorthand to understand experiences.
As for protesting against yet another tragedy being turned into political hay… I’m all with you. A million someones with nasty political agendas are making decisions about how to spin the media attention in their favor.
But to our credit. No part of the tragedy is wasted… we use every piece of film footage and detail and historical record to find support for our preconceived notions… a million people are going… SEE! I was right all along right now, each with a little beautiful opinion like a snowflake. Every one a little different, and all together they make no fucking sense at all.
Its why we have to ban the internet. Clubs. Gays. Muslims. And whatever other scapegoats are out there to threaten to ban. People don’t change their minds. They change their perceptions to match their minds.
Then they don’t have to rethink everything. Clever monkeys.
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Not to mention that he was doing this for three years and drinking alcohol.
I have to disagree with @anotherone on another point. There are a number of backgrounds he could have come from - extremist forms of fundamentalist Islam or Christianity would be some of the more likely places (I mean, they are similar in a number of ways), as well as other extremist political persuasions. I would have been much more surprised if he was Quaker or Sikh. Mentally unbalanced people exist in every society, and they act in irrational ways that are associated with that culture. Like plane crashes, I think it’s very rare that something like this can be traced to one cause and it’s troubling to see ways in which it wasn’t inevitable, but rather anything that he was born with was reinforced by upbringing, position in society, worldview, treatment by others, reaction by others to warning signs, availability of weapons and their perception in society, where people can go if they have mental problems or what messages they hear and are susceptible to etc.
It takes a village to raise a child and it takes an active community to reinforce its values. There are mentally ill people and religious people in almost every country, but actions like this are not evenly spread.
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I had not heard that he was sleeping with people, but that would just indicate to me that he was conflicted. I would have to believe that most extremists living in the west are conflicted.
IIRC their motto is “Armed gays don’t get bashed.”
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A man with no solid ties to militarized terrorist group should be treated as having solid ties to a militarized terrorist group in order to classify these groups as being a danger to the US
People can be terrorists without being in a terrorist groups, and lone gunmen have been a relatively common terrorist occurrence in the US since it became a country. There are, in fact, many brown terrorists that are distinct from other brown terrorists.
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The quote you just cited was not from me.
And yet it’s accurate.
No, it is not an accurate statement of my beliefs, so do not connect it to me. All of these issues are nuanced and complicated. The most I would go towards your statement would be to say that
Lack of concrete evidence of direct communication and direction by known terrorist groups does not necessarily preclude his having acted on their published instructions.
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I’m not seeing how assuming direct communication with militarized terrorists groups without evidence is at all productive.
No one is saying this is not a terrorist, people are saying this is not an ISIS directed attack. I’m not sure what you are insisting on saying it must be tied to “radical Islam.”
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