I am not the only person who has noticed the similarities between the dangerously violent right wing extremist Anders Breivik's mass murder, and the mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado.
Both were introverted, shy, reserved, lacking ease in social skills; both were intelligent; both planned bomb explosions in conjunction with mass shootings where they calmly, unemotionally (at least in outward affect) shot people en masse that they did not know, and both were calm and relatively cooperative when they surrendered afterwards to law enforcement.
Both had accumulated a large amount of weapons and ammunition; both appear to have an idealized and apparently heroic view of themselves in their fascination with military or paramilitary clothing and gear.
Breivik had a distorted and delusional right wing anti-jihadist explanation; we have yet to hear the motivational explanation of the Aurora, Colorado shooter. But what does their explanation matter? There is no justification for their actions that makes sense; there is no pretext that is ethically sound.
I would argue here that the rage that fuels the violence, or in the case of those who are angry but stop just short of doing violence themselves, but actively advocate for it is what creates the factually flawed or completely fact-free premises the crazies come up with for their anger. I would posit that rather they are angry and resentful, and then look for some reason, some explanation, however delusional, for those feelings as both a vent for the emotions and a channel for them. The stronger the feelings, the greater the need for extreme causes. While the cart before the horse in the way we usually interpret emotions, it makes much more sense in explaining the hoaxes and frauds they embrace with such dogmatic enthusiasm.
I am not the first person either, to notice that the right wing extremists in the Tea Party and other parts of the increasingly extreme right are often characterized as irrationally angry, and often advocate for violence if they don't get their way, and that they are very pro-lethal force, especially every variety of firearm. That includes all of the right wing nut groups like the militias and other factions that have paramilitary subsets that are designated hate groups.
From the New York Times, back in June 2010: The Very Angry Tea Party
We have public figures like Michele Bachmann, Louis Gohmert, and their three stooges along with the rest of the extreme right wing that thrive and fund raise on Islamophobia and homophobia, without any accurate factual, objective reality based information as a foundation for their silly, but evil suspicions and vicious factually-unfounded accusations.
The mass murderers are not really that different from the murderer/ suicides, the obsessive stalkers and harassers, and just plain bullies who resort to violence to get even, to get revenge, to dominate and control others when they don't get their way. They just hate people on a larger scale, take their revenge, for whatever non-sensical reason, whatever bogus justification, on a larger group of people.
This is why Homeland Security was perfectly correct to identify threats from right wing extremists. Anders Breivik in Norway was one of those extremists. He was strongly influenced by our right wing extremists, some of whom were given praise and awards at the conservative CPAC year after year, for promoting that right wing paranoia, notably Islamophobia, to the right wing base.
Hate is hate; it motivates violence, and so does fear. The attempt to justify the unjustifiable is just the different colored paper and ribbons that the violence is wrapped in. Whether it is claiming that unions are killing people by not plowing the streets of New York City after a blizzard - a false claim, or that there were 103 fictional ballots that were hinky in Dinky town - another false claim, or that the senior students in a Cleveland High School were bribed with ice cream and transported on three school buses to vote on ballots that only listed Democratic candidates - another false claim, or that the nurses and care giver unions were manipulating disabled people, including those with Alzheimers or those in a non-union group home - another false claim made by someone who did not witness any such thing because he was not there when the voting occurred, as determined by a grand jury and a law enforcement investigation; or ANYTHING coming from James O'Keefe and Breitbart,............all of these fear-mongering fake conspiracy stories are perpetuated by the right to gin up fear and distrust, which in turn create a sense of being a victim, of fear and suspicion.
If you want to create hatred, convince someone they are a victim, create fear, persuade them that someone else hates them or those they align with; it is a long-established propaganda technique. Play on people's emotions, and veer madly away from fact, from objective reality, from any aspect of the real world that contradicts the emotional message.
We see it in the right wing media, and we see it rampaging across the right wing blogosphere. The only difference between the politically motivated mass murderer and the privately motivated mass murderer is what imagined wrong makes them angry and vengeful. There is no valid justification for their actions, but they persuade themselves they are right, and as noted below, that everyone else is wrong.
The motive doesn't really matter, because it never legitimately justifies the act. From MSNBC.com:
From MSNBC.com:
There are exceptions – Jared Loughner, who shot and killed six people in Arizona in 2011, gravely injuring then-member of Congress Gabrielle Giffords, was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Mental health experts say people with mental illness are not any more likely than anyone else to become violent, however.
Mass murderers “often times feel that they are right and everybody else is wrong,” Fox said in a telephone interview. “They really tend to externalize blame, to see other people as responsible for their problems."
They are often socially isolated. “They tend to be a failure at life,” Fox added.
12 dead, 59 injured in Colorado movie theater shooting
Such well-planned attacks are rare and not meant to make a statement, Fox said. “They basically want revenge,” he said. “Contrary to the common misperception that these guys suddenly snap and go berserk, these are well-planned executions.”
read more here
Both were introverted, shy, reserved, lacking ease in social skills; both were intelligent; both planned bomb explosions in conjunction with mass shootings where they calmly, unemotionally (at least in outward affect) shot people en masse that they did not know, and both were calm and relatively cooperative when they surrendered afterwards to law enforcement.
Both had accumulated a large amount of weapons and ammunition; both appear to have an idealized and apparently heroic view of themselves in their fascination with military or paramilitary clothing and gear.
Breivik had a distorted and delusional right wing anti-jihadist explanation; we have yet to hear the motivational explanation of the Aurora, Colorado shooter. But what does their explanation matter? There is no justification for their actions that makes sense; there is no pretext that is ethically sound.
I would argue here that the rage that fuels the violence, or in the case of those who are angry but stop just short of doing violence themselves, but actively advocate for it is what creates the factually flawed or completely fact-free premises the crazies come up with for their anger. I would posit that rather they are angry and resentful, and then look for some reason, some explanation, however delusional, for those feelings as both a vent for the emotions and a channel for them. The stronger the feelings, the greater the need for extreme causes. While the cart before the horse in the way we usually interpret emotions, it makes much more sense in explaining the hoaxes and frauds they embrace with such dogmatic enthusiasm.
I am not the first person either, to notice that the right wing extremists in the Tea Party and other parts of the increasingly extreme right are often characterized as irrationally angry, and often advocate for violence if they don't get their way, and that they are very pro-lethal force, especially every variety of firearm. That includes all of the right wing nut groups like the militias and other factions that have paramilitary subsets that are designated hate groups.
From the New York Times, back in June 2010: The Very Angry Tea Party
By J.M. BERNSTEIN
Sometimes it is hard to know where politics ends and metaphysics begins: when, that is, the stakes of a political dispute concern not simply a clash of competing ideas and values but a clash about what is real and what is not, what can be said to exist on its own and what owes its existence to an other.
...what no other commentator I have read can explain, is the passionate anger of the Tea Party movement, or, the flip-side of that anger, the ease with which it succumbs to the most egregious of fear-mongering falsehoods. What has gripped everyone’s attention is the exorbitant character of the anger Tea Party members express.We tend to think of these people as crazy. Certainly a lot of their assumptions and beliefs are founded on factually inaccurate, even delusional theories, particularly the conspiracy theories - the birthers,the truthers, the one-world-order nutjobs, the Project 21 paranoid wackos, and so on. For a cross section of delusional conspiracy insanity, you have only to look at Glenn Beck. For those who promote paranoia without a factual basis, you have only to look at the right wing hysteria over non-existent voter fraud, or the panic over non-existent Sharia law in the United States.
We have public figures like Michele Bachmann, Louis Gohmert, and their three stooges along with the rest of the extreme right wing that thrive and fund raise on Islamophobia and homophobia, without any accurate factual, objective reality based information as a foundation for their silly, but evil suspicions and vicious factually-unfounded accusations.
The mass murderers are not really that different from the murderer/ suicides, the obsessive stalkers and harassers, and just plain bullies who resort to violence to get even, to get revenge, to dominate and control others when they don't get their way. They just hate people on a larger scale, take their revenge, for whatever non-sensical reason, whatever bogus justification, on a larger group of people.
This is why Homeland Security was perfectly correct to identify threats from right wing extremists. Anders Breivik in Norway was one of those extremists. He was strongly influenced by our right wing extremists, some of whom were given praise and awards at the conservative CPAC year after year, for promoting that right wing paranoia, notably Islamophobia, to the right wing base.
Hate is hate; it motivates violence, and so does fear. The attempt to justify the unjustifiable is just the different colored paper and ribbons that the violence is wrapped in. Whether it is claiming that unions are killing people by not plowing the streets of New York City after a blizzard - a false claim, or that there were 103 fictional ballots that were hinky in Dinky town - another false claim, or that the senior students in a Cleveland High School were bribed with ice cream and transported on three school buses to vote on ballots that only listed Democratic candidates - another false claim, or that the nurses and care giver unions were manipulating disabled people, including those with Alzheimers or those in a non-union group home - another false claim made by someone who did not witness any such thing because he was not there when the voting occurred, as determined by a grand jury and a law enforcement investigation; or ANYTHING coming from James O'Keefe and Breitbart,............all of these fear-mongering fake conspiracy stories are perpetuated by the right to gin up fear and distrust, which in turn create a sense of being a victim, of fear and suspicion.
If you want to create hatred, convince someone they are a victim, create fear, persuade them that someone else hates them or those they align with; it is a long-established propaganda technique. Play on people's emotions, and veer madly away from fact, from objective reality, from any aspect of the real world that contradicts the emotional message.
We see it in the right wing media, and we see it rampaging across the right wing blogosphere. The only difference between the politically motivated mass murderer and the privately motivated mass murderer is what imagined wrong makes them angry and vengeful. There is no valid justification for their actions, but they persuade themselves they are right, and as noted below, that everyone else is wrong.
The motive doesn't really matter, because it never legitimately justifies the act. From MSNBC.com:
From MSNBC.com:
Mass murderers often not mentally ill, but seeking revenge, experts say
Those who commit mass murders are often angry and isolated, but usually aren't mentally ill, violence experts said Friday after a shooting during the midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. James Holmes was arrested as a suspect in the shooting that killed 12 people and wounded 59 others.
“It takes a certain degree of clear-headedness to plan and execute a crime like this,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston, who has written several books on mass murder and school violence.
“It takes a certain degree of clear-headedness to plan and execute a crime like this,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston, who has written several books on mass murder and school violence.
Mass murderers “often times feel that they are right and everybody else is wrong,” Fox said in a telephone interview. “They really tend to externalize blame, to see other people as responsible for their problems."
They are often socially isolated. “They tend to be a failure at life,” Fox added.
12 dead, 59 injured in Colorado movie theater shooting
Such well-planned attacks are rare and not meant to make a statement, Fox said. “They basically want revenge,” he said. “Contrary to the common misperception that these guys suddenly snap and go berserk, these are well-planned executions.”
read more here
I appreciate reading your thoughts as well as the external commentary you provided. I did not have the heart to blog about one more American gun tragedy.
ReplyDeleteThe NRA has a death-grip on every member of Congress and, as a result, we can expect this news story to reoccur in regular cycles.