(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Are Mass Shootings As Much About Ideology as Mental Health? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2023-05-10  

The mass shooter in Allen TX (and how infuriating is it that we live in a country that I have to specify which mass shooter I am referring to?) had an account on a Russian social media site where he posted rants about white supremacy, antisemitism, misogyny and his own mental health issues. A lot of people are sure to latch onto the mental health aspect, but I think the ideology has a lot to do with how the mental health issues played.

The shooter marinated in an environment that told him that there were clear enemies for all the world's ills. Fox News ran segments in which Tucker Carlson proclaimed that drag shows were sexualizing children and implied that people should be ready to kill drag queens:

In response to Rufo’s diatribe, Carlson—who has an average of over three million viewers—explicitly linked drag queens to pedophiles: “Why would any parent allow their child to be sexualized by an adult man with a fetish for kids?” Rufo then suggested that parents should push back and “arm themselves with the literature” supposedly laying out the child sexualization agenda. Carlson replied, “Yeah, people should definitely arm themselves.” How Stochastic Terrorism Uses Disgust to Incite Violence - Scientific American

Fox news has also mainstreamed the racist great replacement theory, telling its viewers that liberals want to "... replace American citizens with illegals who will vote for the Democrats". Republican politicians have referred to gay people as "groomers' -- a term used to describe pedophiles who setup vulnerable children for abuse -- just for being gay or trans.

And the ideology goes even farther. The right wing is obsessed with guns to an unhealthy degree. In Texas, for example, their response to gun violence has been to weaken gun laws, not strengthen them. In fact, you don't even need a permit to carry a handgun in public in Texas. No training on when it is and is not appropriate to use one, not certification that you know how to use one without getting other people shot, nothing. In general, they see themselves as under siege by "others" coming to wrest away their privilege and power. They tell fantasies about the violence of the cities in order to justify their own extremism.

There are many things wrong in this country. It gets harder every day to not fall behind economically. More and more of the country is subject to natural disasters unseen a generation ago brought on by climate change. Our media diet is unrelentingly divisive, focused on spreading hate and misinformation to ensure people stay engaged. Even if he was one of the rare people whose mental illness made him susceptible to committing violence, the right wing gave the shooter enemies for these problems, lied about the moral positions of those enemies, lied about the necessity of violence to confront those enemies, and made it easy for him to obtain weapons of mass murder.

What, precisely, did we expect to happen under those circumstances?

Mental illness is a serious problem in this country, or, rather, the lack of serious treatment for mental illness is a serious problem in this country. But it is not the cause of the epidemic of mass shootings. An ideology of violence coupled with deliberate attempts to make obtaining weapons of mass murder easy is. If you waved a magic wand tomorrow and cured all mental illness, you would not end mass shootings - because you would still have people scaring others into believing that violence was the only way to save themselves and their loved ones.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/10/2168214/-Are-Mass-Shootings-As-Much-About-Ideology-as-Mental-Health

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/