Something seems to be going on with young men and social media, radicalized into violence with incoherent beliefs, deeply immersed into meme culture. The same day as Charlie Kirk's death, the Evergreen shooting was done by a radicalized boy immersed and radicalized online (apparently by a neonazi group).
There are whole online communities like 764 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/764_(organization) and O9A that target young loner males and try to radicalize them into violence. They're international groups operated by crime rings and antisocial psychopaths. And their attitudes are this exact type of brain poisoned "irony" rotten youth that we keep seeing pop up recently. There is no message, there is no idea, there is no politics. There is chaos, accelerationism, edge.
Perhaps the answer is as Joey Mannarino put it
Maybe we've tolerated too much from young men, maybe they need to be detained
I don't think that would be good, but it seems like there's increasing calls to detain all members of a group that a violent person might belong to. Hopefully we don't start locking up all young men for the actions of a few, but it looks like we might be heading that way with this logic.
Where's the prayer for the high school students shot by a neonazi a few days ago? How about the officer who got killed by the antivaxxer CDC shooter? Are officers protecting our country dishonorable and undeserving?
Refer back to the point about implications being made regarding other victims of other tragedies if you elevate someone over them in a place like Congress.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
School shootings seem to be strongly social-contagion affected. Raising awareness likely causes them to happen more often.
That might be true, but I'm not sure people don't hear about them for this reason as opposed to just shrugging it off as too typical now. "Responsible media" will always fall to a strong financial incentive, if they're not reporting on it as much anymore then there's not much shock value left to draw in readers and viewers.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
How many examples do I need to post to establish that this happens, and is not treated as an aberration worthy of protest? Which part of "not for everybody" did you not get?
So are service members deserving of honor or not?
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
Whatever the reasons that the Republicans of Congress have for not praying after other deaths, shouting people down while they are trying to pray seems awfully uncouth, at the very least?
Refer back to the point about implications being made regarding other victims of other tragedies if you elevate someone over them in a place like Congress.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
It's completely normal for legislative institutions around the entire world to occasionally honor somebody with a moment of silence or other ritual.
If it's completely normal as you say, then why is it not done for service members or school shootings? We're still left with the same issue, are they not deserving of honor?
Obviously this isn't done for everybody,
Even you acknowledge it's not just done all the time then.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
You mean the same Dems who tried to shout down an attempt for prayer for Kirk in Congress?
Let's approach this in good faith, is it possible they shot it down because attempts for prayers don't happen with other victims of gun violence? There's an argument to be made about the implications there, that his life is more important than the life of a kid who doesn't get it when they die.
And hey, that's exactly the point they said
House Administration Committee ranking member Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) told Axios that saying a prayer on the House floor in response to a tragedy is something "we don't even do for fallen members."
"What about the kids in Colorado?" one Democrat was heard shouting, referencing the Colorado high school shooting that transpired in Boebert's state on the same day and left three people in critical condition.
Maybe you disagree there's an implication like that made with such an exception, or heck maybe you believe that children who get shot or military who die aren't deserving of prayer in the same way, but I hope you can understand the point at least.
Did you know there was a school shooting in Colorado yesterday? Did you hear about the Florida State University shooting back in April? The one in Tennessee in January? If you're like many Americans, you've maybe heard about one of them but it's not like school shootings are a major national conversation most of the time anymore. We just don't really pay much attention anymore and even the rare times we do even somewhat like at the Catholic school, it's still mostly ignored by the general populace and pundits and politicians.
Despite the fact that as many libertarian and gun advocacy groups point out, school shootings are actually really rare. So rare that there's been a growing pushback against the insane idea of shooter drills. And it's not just school shootings either, right as Charlie Kirk died yesterday, he was even making the point that mass shootings are not common, especially when excluding gang violence.
And yet despite them being really rare, we're all tuned out and no one even knows when a new one happens. It doesn't really take much for people to shrug and go "well, that's just another Tuesday isn't it?"
So you can tell something in the reaction to Charlie Kirk's death, people aren't treating it as just another Tuesday. Politicians, pundits, all sorts of internet forums were talking about it even internationally. It's a big shock. I think that says something about just how rare political violence must be, that even compared to the very rare school shootings people aren't just shrugging it off.
Of politicians and pundits killed in the last few years, it's just two. Melissa Hortman the Dem speaker of the Minnesota house, and Charlie Kirk yesterday. There's been a few attacks without killings but even those are of course still rare. And even of those, most attempts aren't even for political reasons! Many of them are personal grievances, someone trying to make a name for themselves, weird conspiracies, antisemitism, etc. This is true even historically in the US, many famous attacks on politicians are like Ronald Reagan (crazy fanatic who thought it would impress an actress) or James Garfield (delusional guy who thought he helped win the election and deserved a job). We don't know the Charlie Kirk motive yet, the tiny bit of evidence (the claims of engravings) that did exist has been retracted and likely isn't real so maybe this was an explicitly political targeting but even so, that's still quite rare.
There's a bunch of edgy internet comments and rhetoric like always, but real action basically never happens. Just like most internet Edgelord behavior, it's chest thumping by people who are too scared to even make a phone call. And even those are so rare that the "Charlie's Murderers" site that is being passed around has to a cast a web so wide for a decently sized list that it includes people saying things like I hope there isn't more violence in response, dark humor jokes, and comments literally saying it was awful he got shot. That's how far the digging has to go, it includes people who literally say it was bad the shooting happened but that they don't personally like Kirk.
The plain and simple reality is that the US just doesn't have much political violence, and the negativity algorithms and Chinese/Pakistani/Iranian/Russian/etc bots and trolls trying to convince you there's some sort of civil war going on are lying. They want to convince the people of a deeper chaos and to hate and fear our fellow citizens. They hate the US and want to see us fail.
It's not just another day, it's rare. We are a great country with peaceful citizens and letting the few crazies and nutjobs and accelerationists wash over that is exactly what those enemy governments want. The claims of civil war (apparently one of the most peaceful war in the history of earth with only two deaths in multiple years) are by people who want you angry, many are literally paid money either literally by foreign governments or by algorithms that incentive emotional distress.
I don't think there was any indication the attacker was a conservative who hated them for being liberal. As I recall, it was more like some sort of dispute between friends or possibly lovers.
Maybe, that's the case with a lot of attacks really they tend to be more personal or for weird reasons
You mean the one that was entirely fabricated by FBI informants?
That wasn't anymore fabricated than a typical sting operation. Maybe you're against police stings in general, but it's common. Happen with drugs, prostitution, money laundering, child pornography honeypots, fake assassination hiring sites etc.
Guy in Kansas once tried to bomb an army base only to realize the bomb was fake.for example https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/kansas-man-sentenced-30-years-plot-explode-car-bomb-fort-riley
In his guilty plea, Booker admitted he intended to kill American soldiers and to assist ISIS’s (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) fight against the U.S. His plan called for constructing a bomb containing 1,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate. Booker intended to trigger the bomb himself and die in the process, and filmed a video he intended Americans to see after his death.
“You sit in your homes and think this war is just over in Iraq,” Booker said in the video. “Today we will bring the Islamic State straight to your doorstep.”
Unbeknownst to Booker, the bomb that he constructed was made with inert materials, and the two men working with him were undercover informants for the FBI.
Thank god too, that bomb could have killed so many people if he got legitimate material!
And Luigi Mangione is the only one that deserves an asterisk?
Well yeah, it's not a politician or political pundit who was attacked. It was just a random insurance CEO.
I think this might qualify as the most explicitly political violence yet to happen in this era of political division. Depending on who they turn up as the shooter, presuming that they do eventually.
Disagree, look at the 60s and 70s. In a short period of time you had JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Evers all killed. And those are just the bigger names.
Attacks on Nixon, George Wallace, Vernon Dahmer. KKK bombings and murders, firebombed buses, Bloody Sunday, Weather Underground, Kent State and that's just a small portion of it.
And the start of serial killing sprees like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and many others (around 300 known active serial killers in the 70s!), and the beginning of violent cults like the Manson family.
Going off random internet comments I see, apparently the exact moment for political violence is precisely when you personally feel that you are being attacked by "the other side" and thus your belief justifies any and all response back. There is no need to question "Ok, maybe most of The Enemy isn't actually evil monsters?" or "Maybe my perception could be flawed" because our perception is never flawed and The Enemy is 100% evil monsters, and even when they say they aren't it's all pretend.
If so, then one is justified in extraordinary and violent action. The left seems to believe the situation is sufficiently dire as to justify violence. Is there sufficient cause for resisting them on their own terms?
Is that true? Basically every single left wing politician and pundit has spoken out against the attack, and we don't even know the motive! I think Hanania put it best
Beyond that, I don’t think individual political assassinations have anything to tell us about our politics. These are stochastic events. This is a country of 350 million people, and widely available firearms. Some of our fellow citizens are insane, like in any country, and if you’re a public figure, one of the risks you face is that an unstable individual might come after you.
But that’s not how right-wing Twitter is reacting. Charlie Kirk was apparently not killed by an individual gunman, but something called “the left.”
Of course it was only a few months ago that a Democratic Minnesota State Representative, along with her husband, was killed, and a Democratic State Senator was shot and survived. This was obviously not the responsibility of “the right,” but one deranged individual. It is overwhelmingly likely that when the facts come out about the Kirk assassination, it will also turn out that there was no wider conspiracy behind what happened.
I suppose an argument of revenge needs to ask itself if the Charlie Kirk killing is a fair response of the Minnesota Dem killing.
The anti political violence crowd, like me, has an easy answer to both, of course not. The "yes in case of revenge" crowd is gonna be struggling to explain why that is an exception. Or how far back do we go to find the start and who is originally responsible. Five years? Ten years? What's the limit and how was it chosen?
I'm not sure about the answers to any of these questions, but as I see parts of the Internet seething and roiling, and as I see other parts of the Internet gloating, and as I see it all spill over to real life --- the DNA lounge in San Francisco has a "neck shot" special tonight --- I have to wonder whether we're at one of those points in history at which it is less moral to follow man's law than to uphold God's law.
It's crude, but this dark humor is not particularly abnormal. People were making jokes about Paul Pelosi's beating being a gay lovers quarrel, and that one trans person a few months back who killed themselves jumping off a bridge had tons of memes made from 4chan and X. Just look at those replies, prominent names like Stonetoss even joined in. 9k likes for "Not a cell of value was lost. Rest in piss"
9/11 has been made of for years bipartisanly at this point by youth, I've seen plenty of memes and jokes about dead Gazans now, likewise dead Israelis are mocked too.
We had a sitting senator just joke about shooting journalists for "fake news" a few months back.
It's sad, but it's not justified to respond to dark humor and gross jokes with violence.
And in general the same way you don't jail or kill a murderer's kids and neighbors, it's also generally not justified to use political violence "back" against people who haven't done any. Individual actions, individual responsibilities.
The main explicitly political violence events in the last few years I remember are
This event now with Charlie Kirk (although undetermined if it's politically motivated yet, it seems likely)
At least one of the attempts on Trump.
The shooting of Minnesota Dems a few months ago.
New Mexico twice, a firebombing of the Republican state headquarters and a Republican mayoral candidate who tried to kill the Dem winner.
That Dem office in Arizona that got shot up.
Pelosi's husband being attacked.
The kidnapping plot against Whitmer.
The antivaxxer shooting at the CDC.
That cop who died during Jan 6th.
That Texas mall shooting
The Jewish museum shooting
That Israeli Molotov attack.
Maybe Luigi Mangione but that was more about hating healthcare companies than politicians/pundits but I guess it's politics adjacent.
There might be others but those are what stand out in my memory.
There doesn't seem to be a throughline here of violence actually begetting more violence, at least not directly of those we know . The only ones I know of explicitly stating any sort of tit for tat violence is the two anti-semitic ones. Even then they tend to be really strange individuals as one would expect tbqh, most people don't do political violence so those who do are strange to begin with. A lot of them seeming to be crazies just looking for fame, conspiracy theorists, informal militias, etc.
Hopefully it means while we have increased baseline of political violence, we won't be spiraling down more and more. Hopefully...
Caps on high skill immigrant workers might be worth the tradeoffs, but I think we as a society should acknowledge they are serious tradeoffs.
Let's say the US has X amount of specialized talent and thus they can only do Y amount of productivity with in a year. If companies in (or investing in) our country are so productive and there's enough market demand that they want to do creation over Y, then limiting access to talent over X puts a cap on growth.
Now I know, the general response is "because those jobs should go to the locals!" but the thing is, talented local people already have jobs. If they're hard working and capable, then they're mostly already doing their part in achieving Y (or doing something else in another industry) because companies want them.
As any hiring manager knows nowadays, the job pool is mostly incompetents, liars, lazies, addicts, or otherwise unwanted because of a serious flaw. It's the same way that dating apps like Tinder are mostly used by the unpleasant and unwanted, the good ones are already picked through. Of course just like the apps there's often some amount of pickings but they're limited and get scooped up quick of course and we're still overall limited to Y production. Even during periods of layoffs, companies don't tend to fire their best talent, they fire the weaker ones so even picking through those is still trying to find a diamond in the rough.
Now maybe that's what we as a society want, jobs programs for the lazy drug addicted idiots being put in roles above their worth, and we're willing to sacrifice efficiency in key industries for it. And maybe it's worth it if we put hard limits on economic growth and only allow Y production no matter how much market demand exists. Maybe it's worth it in the same way that some leftists felt promoting some minorities above their skill level was worth it.
But that's a discussion with some hard tradeoffs is it not?
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
Good. That's how it should be.
Why? Let's say the US has X amount of specialized talent and thus they can only do Y amount of productivity with in a year. If companies in (or investing in) our country are so productive and there's enough market demand that they want to do >Y creation, then why is it good to cap them artificially?
Now I know, the general response is "because those jobs should go to the locals!" but the thing is, talented local people already have jobs. If they're hard working and capable, then they're mostly already doing their part in achieving Y (or doing something else in another industry) because companies want them.
As any hiring manager knows nowadays, the job pool is mostly incompetents, liars, lazies, addicts, or otherwise unwanted because of a serious flaw. It's the same way that dating apps like Tinder are mostly used by the unpleasant and unwanted, the good ones are already picked through. Of course just like the apps there's often some amount of pickings but they're limited and get scooped up quick of course and we're still overall limited to Y production.
Now maybe that's what we as a society want, jobs programs for the lazy drug addicted idiots being put in roles above their worth, and we're willing to sacrifice efficiency in key industries for it. And maybe it's worth it if we put hard limits on economic growth and only allow Y production no matter how much market demand exists.
But that's a discussion with some hard tradeoffs is it not?
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
Yeah I'm not sure why the takeaway should be "don't report on our military fuckups" instead of "don't do military fuckups". Even if it got leaked on purpose now, so what? The press's job is to inform the public. It never would have been possible to leak to begin with if they didn't fail so badly in a mission that clearly wasn't very critical.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
I would expect Imgur is used something like 95% (if not more) as a regular image hosting site and 5% as an actual social media site and thus expect nothing meaningful to happen. How many people even know that it has a social media element to begin with? I doubt there's that many, if they want an image based social media there's already Pinterest and Instagram.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
Your link doesn't work
Weird, worked when I tested it. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53141759
Looks like I put an extra 9 at the end instead of ), it's right above the parenthesis on my phone keyboard.
I like the implication that the belief that everyone has a gender identity wholly distinct from their biological sex and knowable only to themselves isn't pseudo-religious
No such implication was made, but I wouldn't call it psuedo religious beciase there isn't any meaningful religious beliefs to trans idealogy.
O9A is centered around their religious beliefs. They believe in "dark gods" and hold explicit spiritual/cosmological views.
Adherents believe that the current aeonic civilization is that of the Western world, but that the evolution of this society is threatened by the "Magian/Nazarene" influence of the Judeo-Christian religion, which the Order seeks to combat in order to establish a militaristic new social order, which it calls the "Imperium". According to Order teachings, this is necessary in order for a galactic civilization to form, in which "Aryan" society will colonise the Milky Way.
Isn't it possible that this profoundly disturbed young man may have been driven over the edge as a consequence of participating in multiple scary online communities in which violence is glamorised and encouraged?
Alternative, most extremely violent people are broken to begin with and often don't need too much to push them over the edge. His messy life, beliefs and actions are incoherent and hard to understand just like most psychotic crazy people are.
Why, exactly, would we expect to see that? I very much doubt that as many as 1% of devout Muslims have been involved in a terrorist attack, yet surely no one disputes that radical Islam is a pressing matter
We expect to see terror attacks from the radicalized Islamists, but not your normal everyday Muslim. Even in Gaza, probably one of the most terrorist aligned nations, most people are not active fighters. Throughout history this same thing can be seen, most citizens in Nazi Germany were not actively involved in the Holocaust and most citizens during the cultural revolution weren't involved in killings.
Likewise wars are almost always fought by a fraction of the population without needing serious drafting in place to force people to fight. Almost 2/3rds of US servicemen in WW2 were drafted for example.
Humans in general are just rather peaceful. Populations might be willing to turn an eye to violence, but they rarely engage in much themselves. Most violent crime is done by a very small portion of repeat offenders.
Ever since Elliot Rodger eleven years ago I've heard a nonstop deluge of handwringing about incel terror attacks, but Wikipedia (who are clearly trying to make the concept sound as scary as possible) can only dredge up 12 incidents over the course of 40 years, one every three years.
Yeah and they're just as dumb.
I've been speaking about this type of issue since I was an older teen seeing Gamergate get called a harassment campaign because a few people sent death threats going "Hey that's not very fair, the large majority of people aren't engaged in threat sending just because a few did! In fact it could even be just one insane people sending several".
I said it about the 2023 pension protests in France "Hey, there's a million people marching you can't expect every single one to be completely moral and good. You shouldn't point to a person being bad and use it to blame the others there"
I said it about Jan 6th "Sure a few people were violent and those ones deserve to be locked up, but your average protestor didn't engage in a crime and it's unfair to say that they're a violent group"
I said it about police during BLM (the large majority of cops do not engage in killing innocents) and about BLM protestors (the large majority of protestors did not engage in looting or arson or other crime).
I've said it about Xianjang and the Uyghurs, I've said it about both the population of Gaza and the population of Israel (most of them are rather peaceful on both sides), I've said it about Russia and pushed back against calling their population orcs despite that I support Ukraine in war and think we should aid them way more!
And I'll keep saying it about other groups, like trans people now. People don't deserve blame for things they don't do, and they don't deserve blame for happening to share group/geographical area/etc with someone who commits violence. Especially because of the Chinese robber fallacy, but even without it.
I don't know for a fact that this specific shooter (or the one in Nashville) was radicalised by exposure to extremist trans rhetoric
We actually know (at least some) of their online accounts, they were on Nazi forums. There was even a place they posted about the shooting three weeks before it happened, an O9A (Nazi Satanist group affiliated forum. They called themselves "chief of executing lolcows".
We know what radicalized them and it wasn't trans related rhetoric, it was online psuedo religious terrorist slop.
I'm not opposed to the idea that trans rhetoric could be leading to mass shootings, but we would expect to see way more if there is, not .0001% (and that's the highest of estimates) of the population doing them, and we would expect to see a clear throughline from trans rhetoric > violence and not these other clear causes like a brainrot satanic Nazi site where they forecasted the shooting.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
It's an interesting example of framing too!
Like we could say that 100% of mass shootings are done by someone holding a gun and it sounds scary and intense. That's also a completely factual point because they couldn't do the mass shooting without a gun.
But like .00001% or whatever it is of people who have held guns are mass shooters. Mass shooters are just extremely uncommon in general. It's scary in part because it's so violent and done by someone else on purpose, but they're just not a thing that meaningfully happens.
But I would hazard a guess even amongst the group of "people with violent tendencies" most of them probably have not done a mass shooting because they're just that rare and most violent tendencies people are just slamming their car horn at road rage imagining beating the other driver up or whatever.
Of course at the end of the day if a democracy wants to commit suicide they're gonna do it regardless. Even most authoritarian nations are still under some sorts of political pressure, you can't upset the people too much or else they risk higher chance of revolt so even they often are receptive to bad populist policy demands (assuming that the authoritarian leader isn't themselves a believer in bad policy, as they often are like we see with most/all communist states).
But that doesn't mean you should want to do a national suicide! If the argument is "we need to do a little so we can avoid a lot" that's at least understandable, but the goal should still be to reduce the amount of national suicide we do. I'd rather a Deng Xiaopeng over a Mao, and a Xi Jingping over a Kim Jong Ung. But if we can have a Reagan instead, then we should have a Reagan.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
Which traditional conservative ideas would those be? "Ensure the means to produce an absurdly vital strategic resource with a lead-up time measured in decades remains possible in $country" is something even minarchists believe the role of government should cover.
This assumes that everyone agrees government ownership of companies is the correct approach, which they in fact do not and have not historically agreed on.
Maybe we can cut back regulations, support development and building of technology, etc instead of expanding government more in response to expanded government.
A crazy trans person shooting up a Church is not being persecuted.
Even more relevant, this was their former school! It is the default of mass shooters to target their current and former workplaces/schools (often over highly personal grievance) so assuming it was a targeted attack on religion instead of just default mass shooter behavior could use some stronger evidence.
And I wonder how many Christian children killed by trans gunmen will be enough.
How many has there been? We had 3 in covenant and 2 today.
Sure five lives is more than should die, but that's less than a life a year, that's like 1/600th the amount of people who die falling off ladders a year. And basically no one dies falling off a ladder. Apparently there's already been 60 deaths of kids shooting themselves unintentionally with a gun, so that's about 1/120th accidental gun suicides of children, and basically no child dies of accidental gun suicide.
If we include the important detail the two times it has happened, they had shot up their own school (so they could be shooting up their own spaces because that's what shooters do, rather than specific religious targeting), a case for persecution comes off weak.
That both of the recent transgender terrorists targeted their own childhood school could mean something.
I'm not sure there's much meaning to be ascertained, most school shooters target their own current or former school as a default.
There's a focus on his identity among some online discourse but realistically until groups exceed the Chinese robber fallacy by a meaningful degree, it's not a particularly interesting discussion.
Estimates of trans/nonbinary identification differ quite a bit but it seems to be around 2-5% among youth (a few estimates going even higher), many of them being nonbinary identified which in my experience at least tends to mean pretty much nothing, a lot of them are basically indistinguishable from regular men and women except for taking on a special label and maybe doing a gender neutral name change or something.
Determining the identification of mass shooters likewise is hard but a lot of the estimates I find tend to be <1%, even if we assume those estimates are downplaying it by 5x then we're still at proportional amounts as expected of Chinese robbers. Yeah, unless there's evidence produced showing trans shooters are more common than current estimates find, it doesn't seem to be notable.
Also even if it did, we still expect the difference to be meaningful before anything is done. Like if .25% of the general population did mass shootings and .27% of the trans population did, it's hard to see any policy response or social treatment justified towards the trans population that isn't basically just as justified towards the general. If someone was like "wow .2699% was my exact cutoff between no action and full action" it'd be pretty suspicious. Some of the highest claims I'm seeing for total trans mass shooters is like six people, so even if we go the lowest estimate of .5% of the population, that is 6/1,650,000 or .000363636% leaving us with 99.999636364% of trans people having not done a mass shooting. Yeah is 99.999% of people being innocent really something that people would have preregistered as the crackdown threshold?
Again refer back to the point about implications being made regarding other victims of other tragedies if you elevate someone over them in a place like Congress.
Why does an officer who died protecting our society from an antivax shooter not deserving of the same response? Why are members of the military not honorable enough when they die for a public prayer in Congress?
If they want to pick and choose special treatment, we can ask them to explain why they don't pick our brave soldiers and boys in blue.
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