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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   35181 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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Killing a bunch of random people is not really a good way to achieve any goal, unless your goal is just that: to hurt and kill others. The reason to want to do that is typically anger and resentment.

The reason for the anger and resentment of the Magdeburg attacker is fairly clear. He was in contact with numerous people from his region of origin and felt that they were, in some specific cases, not treated fairly by German society. In the case of Alexander S., I'm not sure what to think. He appears to have simply been a loser.

As far as the nature of the attacks, there is clearly a copycat element. As I said, this is not really purposeful, goal-directed behavior. It's likely the perpetrators simply copy whatever they see on the news. Using a car is also, to some extent, a rational method in a society where firearms are harder to obtain.

Apart from that, modern Germany is, like the rest of the West, a fairly atomized and unideological society. In the past, people who simply wanted to hurt and kill others could join a group like the Revolutionäre Zellen. Nowadays, that seems to be harder. There's little real appetite for groups like that, so resentful and mentally ill people act out on their own instead.

The reason for the anger and resentment of the Magdeburg attacker is fairly clear. He was in contact with numerous people from his region of origin and felt that they were, in some specific cases, not treated fairly by German society. In the case of Alexander S., I'm not sure what to think. He appears to have simply been a loser.

What does that mean he was simply a loser? That seems enormously disrespectful to the victims - imagine how much of a worthless failure you would have to be to be killed by a guy whose only notable feature is his inability to do anything right? And is 'fucks up a terrorist attack' on the list of typical loser behaviours? 1. Bad at sports 2. No friends 3. Never kissed a girl 4. Can't even slaughter a crowd effectively?

If you don't know his motive, just say that. Or at least go with mental illness, that doesn't throw the victims under the bus.

I think a loser who manages to kill a few people just graduates to extra pathetic loser through his murders. I have sympathy for losers, but not for killer losers. Humans are squishy and easily killed if you don't care about social consequences. Real life is not some MMORPG where A killing B proves anything relevant about the relative merits of A and B: the guys who shot celebrities such as Dutschke, MLK, Lennon might have had an impact on world history, but that does not mean that they the respectability of their victims should somehow be transferred to them. World history should not care for these murderers more than it should care to name the lightning strikes which kill a person.

If I am ever killed by some fuckwit, please don't elevate him to some level of respectability out of respect for me. I am totally with Brecht when he asks us to destroy any respect for killers and their acts of killing. Don't mention my killer by name, instead invent some demeaning nickname for him. Killing people (absent a very good reason) should get more ridicule than most other ridiculous behaviors. By all means, let late night TV speculate about the killer's penis size instead of turning my murder into a grimdark real crime drama with gloomy music.

I believe his motive was anger and resentment, because, as I said, there is really no other reason to carry out a random killing of this sort. And the most common reason for anger and resentment is simply being a loser; i.e., not having achieved the status you want or feel entitled to within your particular social circle. You could call that "mental illness" if you like. Of course, maybe he had some other reason. The news articles I read didn't give much useful information.

To the rest of your comment, I find it bizarre to suggest that being killed randomly by a mentally ill loser makes you a "worthless failure". Sometimes good people die for stupid reasons. Here is a story about someone who was killed by a bed falling on her. Does that make her a "worthless failure"? Obviously not. Things like this happen every day.

You can be randomly crushed by a bed, a murder is targeted. Maybe not directly targeted, but targeted nonetheless. And what kind of person gets targeted by a loser and loses the altercation? A bigger loser by definition.

Beyond that I object because by painting the second guy as a simple loser you seem to be implying the other guy was either justified or not a loser.

And the most common reason for anger and resentment is simply being a loser; i.e., not having achieved the status you want or feel entitled to within your particular social circle. You could call that "mental illness" if you like. Of course, maybe he had some other reason. The news articles I read didn't give much useful information.

No what I call mental illness is whatever compelled him to kill random people. Losers, as I have known them, are generally far too passive and cowardly to kill anyone. If simply being a loser was enough to cause people to go on murder sprees they'd happen constantly.

And what kind of person gets targeted by a loser and loses the altercation? A bigger loser by definition.

If that's how you define losers then I'd expect your loser hierarchy to get circular quick (and paint most people as losers) since most people would lose if targeted in a situation where mortal danger is not expected and there is little time to react, such as getting rammed with a car at a fair or getting shot in the back in school. Made of Iron Georg, who got knocked out, then stabbed by a katana and still managed to shoot down a few of his Zizian assailants upon waking up (and then lived), is an outlier.

Out of curiosity, why do you refer to him that way? His name was Curtis Lind.

Killing a bunch of random people is not really a good way to achieve any goal, unless your goal is just that: to hurt and kill others. The reason to want to do that is typically anger and resentment.

While it is the case that terrorism is ineffective, the modal European government response of utilizing the threat of terrorism to create the appearance of acquiescing to political positions they wanted to take anyway on e.g. Blasphemy can easily create the wrong impression. Their terrorism is effective because they're on the right side, not because it's terrorism.

The reason for the anger and resentment of the Magdeburg attacker is fairly clear. He was in contact with numerous people from his region of origin and felt that they were, in some specific cases, not treated fairly by German society.

I will never understand this thought process - he wanted the German state to expedite refugee claims for secular Saudi Arabians and to take a more anti-Saudi stance geopolitically, which would never happen due to the balance of power in the Middle East and energy/economic interests - so his solution is to select a Christmas market and kill random people shopping there? Why not stab someone walking out the Saudi embassy, attack a Wahhabist, Saudi-funded mosque or, heck, even travel to Saudi Arabia and attempt to do maximum damage there since it's the supposed main focus of his ire? Even attacking organs of the German state makes marginally more sense. Instead, he selected for a group of people that probably largely agreed with him and his cause.

It all seems somewhat convenient that after doing the deed, he allowed himself to be arrested without a struggle (maybe I'm wrong but I can't find a german-language article saying the opposite), will now face a fair trial in which he can argue for insanity and will most certainly be able to finish whatever sentence he gets before he dies of old age - and without fear of being targeted by muslims within the prison system, as might have been the case had he chosen Islam as his target. Maybe murdering Europeans has just become the most low-risk of political extremism with the least relative consequences?

Why do people get angry at some people and at not at others? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist. Anger is a natural and universal human emotion. I believe it has some adaptive purpose, like all other emotions. The logic is presumably that the threat of anger induces others to treat you better. Accordingly, it makes little sense to get angry at others when you cannot possibly influence their behavior. I think this fits the pattern of how people actually behave. Few people get angry at wild animals or natural disasters.

Obviously, that doesn't mean that his anger was, in this case, actually useful or sensible. He was simply executing an adaption.

I don't think there has to be a reasonable and coherent thought process. It's tempting to think something like "Islam bad and crazy, so anti-Islam ought to be good and sane", but the reality seems to be that being a sufficiently dedicated dissident against a well-entrenched ethno-religious memeplex is rather positively correlated with psychological issues. The n=3 most actively anti-CCP overseas Chinese I knew were so obviously schizophrenic that in one case even the generic soy-enjoying progressive mutual friend warned me about this before introducing them, and in the ideologically more integrated 1970s West one of the main streams of dissidents were people who took the Illuminatus! trilogy seriously.

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