On the literary transmission of terror: 1: mirroring Twitter-feeds
[ by Charles Cameron — IMO, these paired mass casualty shootings call for mass humility on both sides of the divide — let’s build a corpus callosum for the nation ]
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Let’s just do this with headlines, the El Paso shooter above, the Dayton shooter below:
The moral would appear to be: no matter what “side” you’re on, there may be some folk who take it to an extremist extreme. They may kill for ideas on “your side” — at least in contemporary American politics. I tend to the left, so Crusius is no surprise, but Connor Betts, WTF?
ANd you’ll tell me it’s the opposite way around for some of you — WTF are Crusius and others like him doing?
And BTW, DoubleQuote!
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Okay — Connor Betts:
The Dayton shooting was the 250th mass shooting “event” in the US this year, but its exact motivation is unclear at the time of this writing — the shooter, Connor Betts, who was wearing a bullet-proof vest, killed his sister among others, and had written a “hit list” of girls while at High School at one point — so school issues and family feud are among the possible explanations for his violence, which killed 9 in 26 seconds before he was taken down by police. He was far from a Breivik follower, however. His Twitter page revealed, as reported by Heavy:
Or quoting Heavy again —
[H]e described himself as “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back.” He wrote on Twitter that he would happily vote for Democrat Elizabeth Warren, praised Satan, was upset about the 2016 presidential election results, and added, “I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.”
That’s pretty aggressively [is that the word?] left and male, eh?
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Sources:
Heavy, Patrick Crusius: Suspect’s Twitter Page Shows Trump Support Heavy, Connor Betts: Twitter Posts on Being a Leftist, Guns
Readings:
Politico, What Both Sides Don’t Get About American Gun Culture The Hill, Graham to offer bipartisan ‘red flag’ bill with Trump’s support [added]
August 9th, 2019 at 1:54 pm
According to this CNN interview, courtesy UCLA’s Jean Rosenfeld, the Dayton killer had in High School a hit or chill list for boys and a rape list for girls. — and also had a girlfriend to whom he showed mass casualty videos.
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T.hat’s just toi clarify (a) the lists and (b) that given the GF reference, he presumably wasn’t an incel.
August 12th, 2019 at 4:32 pm
Continuing the cascade of terrorist incidents accompanied by online statements, the Guardian reports in Norway mosque attack suspect ‘inspired by Christchurch and El Paso shootings:
August 14th, 2019 at 3:09 pm
The Russians and Ukrainians Translating the Christchurch Shooter’s Manifesto
There’s lots more..