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Say My Name

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This was pretty good. I’m seeing a lot of comments like Shapiro’s from other right wingers. Of course, they’d be shouting to the hilltops if the next mass killer has a foreign-sounding name, or is brown.

That said, I generally agree that sharing the killer’s name isn’t important, nor are the ideological parts of their manifesto (it’s all the same hate), but I sure think the autobiographical parts are important. How are these killers made, and how do we stop them before they kill? This should be the topic of serious research that is shared periodically with the community as a whole.

I also have some concern about making the manifesto “forbidden fruit”. Part of indoctrination into any cult is taking a poorly socialized outsider and making them think they’re on the inside of a big secret. I don’t know how I feel about the videos, since they’re damaging to the victims’ families. Certainly having them go viral as the shooting is still happening is wrong, but maybe if they’re behind a bunch of warnings and victims identities are blurred, they might be OK to share, especially if there’s a denialist movement around the shooting (which is probably inevitable).

Reader Interactions

68Comments

  1. 1.

    Betty Cracker

    Re-posting my comment from the morning thread since it fits better here…

    ************

    When we have a real president again rather than a semi-sentient comments section from a crackpot YouTube channel, I hope he or she will allocate significant resources to rolling back white supremacist terrorist groups. IIRC, the US government sent a drone after US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki (and killed his US citizen teenage son too) for radicalizing terrorists online.

    There seems to be a lot of online radicalization of white supremacists too, and they telegraph and now live-stream their terrorist attacks. The New Zealand terrorist is just the latest. The white supremacist who carried out the Pittsburgh synagogue terrorist attack was also active online. So was the deranged Coast Guard officer who was apprehended before he could carry out his massacre. So was Dylann Roof, etc.

    It’s a real problem. But right now, the POTUS has a pinned tweet of his interview with Breitbart News, a racist hate site that has “black crime” tags. So obviously we’ll have to wait until that mofo is gone before tackling this serious problem.

    **************

    Interestingly, shortly after I posted that, Trump or a minion pulled the Breitbart-branded tweet from Trump’s timeline. I speculated that maybe the admin got a heads-up that the NZ terrorist was a Breitbart commenter — a lot of Islamophobic white supremacists are.

    But maybe it’s just because Trump’s fascistic comments in the interview about the military, police and Bikers for Trump brownshirts being eager to commit violence on his behalf sound even more jarring after a white supremacist terrorist attack. Hard to imagine there’s anyone in the admin, let alone Trump himself, capable of that level of shame and/or self-awareness, though.

  2. 2.

    RandomMonster

    The evil manifesto should be noted, since it cites Trump by name as the head of a rascist movement.

  3. 3.

    SFAW

    @Betty Cracker:

    Hard to imagine there’s anyone in the admin, let alone Trump himself, capable of that level of shame and/or self-awareness, though.

    Shame? They fucking revel in their hatred and their ability to be the “worst person in the room.” “Shame” is for suckers.

    And most or all of the Rethug Partei is like that.

  4. 4.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    Shapiro is clearly a False Flag operation by libs to make the Patriotic Right™ look moronic, amirite?

    The efficiency is amazing

  5. 5.

    Lapassionara

    @Betty Cracker: We desperately need a real president again, and soon.

    Twitter is telling me not to watch the video. Evidently seeing people getting slaughtered is disturbing. Who knew?

  6. 6.

    Baud

    Hillary Clinton

    @HillaryClinton

    ·

    1h

    My heart breaks for New Zealand & the global Muslim community. We must continue to fight the perpetuation and normalization of Islamophobia and racism in all its forms. White supremacist terrorists must be condemned by leaders everywhere. Their murderous hatred must be stopped.

  7. 7.

    Belafon

    I think the manifesto should be made available so that it can be parsed and the people who influenced him can be pointed out.

  8. 8.

    SFAW

    @Snarki, child of Loki:

    Shapiro is clearly a False Flag operation by libs to make the Patriotic Right™ look moronic, amirite?

    That would only be true if the RWMFs were not evil to the core. Or, as someone once said: Feature, not bug.

  9. 9.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    hope he or she will allocate significant resources to rolling back white supremacist terrorist groups. IIRC, the US government sent a drone after US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki (and killed his US citizen teenage son too) for radicalizing terrorists online.

    So, drone strikes against terrorist arms depots/gun shows in the Ungovernable Tribal Regions of Texas?

    Sounds good.

  10. 10.

    SFAW

    @Baud:
    Meanwhile, the Traitor-in-Chief sent “warmest condolences” or some similar idiocy.

    I SO want this to be like Season XX of “Dallas,” where I can wake up and Shitgibbon will never have happened.

  13. 13.

    NYCMT

    The video the mass-murderer posted is isomorphic to the films that the Einsatzgruppen made of their massacres in Byelorussia and Ukraine – and should be treated in the same manner.

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    Commenter sharl made a good point in Adam’s thread last night on the massacre about not taking everything the killer says at face value. Members of the online shitlord subculture the terrorist belonged to are notorious for larding their ravings with inside jokes and verbal stinkbombs to throw enemies off the trail and foment infighting among other people. I haven’t read the killer’s manifesto, but the snippets I’ve seen contain references to video games that supposedly radicalized the terrorist — pseudo-ironic shit like that.

  17. 17.

    germy

    I know there’s a lot of ridicule aimed at the Intercept from places like Centrism Fan Acct, LGM, and even here, but the work Mehdi Hasan does there is valuable. A few days ago I saw his complete interview with Erik Blackwater; the Intercept featured video and Hasan’s accompanying essay.

    There was gloating yesterday about staff reductions at the Intercept. I would hope they might cut the fat by perhaps reducing GG’s absurd salary, rather than eliminating important reporting like Hasan’s.

  18. 18.

    germy

    @Betty Cracker: Yes, even his reference to Candace Owens. Saying that he couldn’t agree with everything she said because she often went “too far.”

  21. 21.

    SFAW

    @Betty Cracker:
    Maybe I’m not looking at it the right way, but that’s some really sick shit. Treating mass murder as a fucking inside joke? There ain’t enough pain that can be inflicted on those motherfuckers.

  22. 22.

    MattF

    OT. Also, le sigh, today’s NYT crossword defines ‘pro-tax’ as ‘Unlike libertarians, say’. Maybe not precisely wrong, but not correct either. Otherwise, a pretty good puzzle today.

  23. 23.

    Betty Cracker

    @germy: Yep. Owens is a horrible grifter and complicit as an advocate of a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue, so zero sympathy for her. But it seems unlikely that the white supremacist terrorist who carried out this attack really had any respect for Owens. Maybe that comment was meant to “purify” the Trump Youth movement by making Owens radioactive. I don’t know.

  24. 24.

    germy

    “Always be closing”

    Racist white liberals are on the hunt trying to lynch another black conservative tonight!
    Sorry racists!— you will never deplatform me and you can’t stop #BLEXIT but you CAN watch me and @PARISDENNARD discuss how many black conservatives you’ve tried to lynch— this Sunday! https://t.co/lUESWZ39zS
    — Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 15, 2019

  25. 25.

    rikyrah

    In case you didn’t know….

    the Republicans on the Intelligence Committee, are now just releasing – ON THEIR OWN- entire transcripts – IGNORING the wishes of the Justice Department to release redacted ones.

    Found this out last night on Maddow.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    @SFAW: The giggling comments as the terrorist’s online fellow travelers watched the massacre in real time are truly sick and evil. It is all a joke to them. I don’t know what we do about people like that. They’ve always been around, but now it’s so easy for them to connect and egg each other on.

  30. 30.

    The Pale Scot

    I got the shooter’s video of BT. The first 3/4 were of him driving while playing really bad E.European oompha music. It wasn’t polka, some kind of bad simplistic village music performed with out of tune squeezeboxes.

    My old friend/former landlord, Ivan the nazi fighting polka junkie, would have sneered at it and probably lit up the neo-nazi that was playing it.

    Sidebar; Last I heard from Ivan, I asked him where he was (in S.Carolina), he yelled at Doris(his wife) where are we? “In Mississippi” she said. As long as you know who you friends are man. He was 16 yrs old at the Battle of the Bulge, he showed me a picture of his senior class in an Ohio farming community. Almost all of them theater badges, 26 out of 30, and those were the guys who made it back

  35. 35.

    Betty Cracker

    @The Pale Scot: According to Bellingcat, the music is from a “propaganda music video made by Serb Army soldiers as a tribute to war criminal Radovan Karadžić.” Sounds about right. BTW, interesting take at that link on the meaning of the “manifesto” and role of “shitposting” and giggly incel fascist-wannabes in the chan internet subculture.

  37. 37.

    kindness

    Who is going to deny that Trump (& Rupert Murdoch) is doing everything they can to ramp up lone wolf attacks? Well, besides the right wing nuts that continually call for ramping up lone wolf attacks.

  38. 38.

    artem1s

    @Belafon:

    I think the manifesto should be made available so that it can be parsed and the people who influenced him can be pointed out.

    I think it does make a difference to family and friends who are dealing with deplorables. The language shared in the hate community is constantly being pushed out to the MSM and social media. It gets normalized so quickly. I can’t believe the number of people I have heard say something along the lines of “I get where they are coming from” or ” they do have a point”. Fuck no they don’t. This is how radicalized crazy people talk. Learn to recognize it. Learn to tell the difference between hate speech and calling out Israel for apartheid policies. And alert your friends and family when you see it. It wouldn’t be ignored by law enforcement or the MSM if the speaker was brown.

    Hell yes, release the manifesto. Show the video side by side with those little brats from Kentucky bullying an old man – with videos of Timothy McVeigh talking about toddlers being collateral damage – with the assholes who put a target on Dr. Tiller’s back.

  39. 39.

    rk

    Funny how this Australian born white nationalist talked about being “overrun” by immigrants. Australia only exists because the British sent their undesirables to a remote land in Asia, stole the land and massacred the black skinned aborigines. The gall of these people! The whole world apparently belongs to the white race.

  40. 40.

    The Pale Scot

    @Betty Cracker: Yea, that sounds right. With a cell phone you could record what you thought was a tight play in a foxhole one night. These gits think it’s epic tune.

  46. 46.

    germy

    This is a time where a white man can describe people in a Muslim majority country “semiliterate primitive monkeys” and have a primetime show on a major news network.— Talal Ansari (@TalalNAnsari) March 15, 2019

  49. 49.

    Barbara

    @MattF: I read “One of Us” by the same author and I recommend it to anyone. It provides insight into the Brevik, of course, but probably gives psychological insight into many young men who are motivated to commit acts of mass violence and terror. Also, the thing that really makes this book unforgettable is that the author provides almost as much detail about several of the victims as she does about their murderer. The juxtaposition between the constructive potential of these young people and the destructive narcissism of Brevik is almost too much to bear at times.

    At any rate, this is an incredibly sad day. Anyone who tries to argue that Islamophobia is not as real as anti-Semitism (even if it has never come close to achieving the same destructive fury as the latter) needs to rethink their position. Yeah, Liz Cheney, I’m looking at you.

  54. 54.

    Edsel

    Covering a story like this must present a real challenge for conservative media.

    On the one hand, they’ll want to flog the story really hard so they can shout about how this proves that mass shootings are TOTALLY NOT AN AMERICAN PROBLEM. Also, how GUN LAWS CAUSE MASSACRES because if the victims had only been packing heat American-style, the shooter would have been taken out with with the kind of precision, Call of Duty kill shot that conservatives love to fantasize THEY would pull off if they were ever in an active shooter situation.

    On the other hand, the shooter was a right-wing white supremacist, a fact they can’t mention without alienating their target demographic.

    What to do? I suspect they go with the shooter being a mentally ill “lone wolf” so they can get to all the shouting about how gun laws get people killed and THIS IS WHAT THE LOONY LEFT WANTS FOR AMERICA. That’s just way too good for them to resist.

    Then again they might just ignore the story altogether in favor of more spittle-flecked salacious conspiracies about Peter Strzock and Lisa Page. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve acted as if the biggest newsmaker of the day never happened.

  57. 57.

    wjs

    The Sandy Hook families have been on the front lines of this battle since the moment when they were attacked as victims by Alex Jones, his fellow travellers on the alt-right, and the gun lobby. They know what it is to be hounded by the same jackals who are aligned with the white nationalist movement.

    Look at what they’re doing. Behind the scenes, they are creating an opportunity to sue the hell out of the manufacturer of the Bushmaster rifle.

    The logical next step is to go after those who inspire and incite violence.

  58. 58.

    Ruckus

    @Betty Cracker:

    Hard to imagine there’s anyone in the admin, let alone Trump himself, capable of that level of shame and/or self-awareness, though.

    Their level of self awareness is that they are awesome human beings, all evidence being to the contrary. Every one of them bows to the altar of mammon and white power. That’s the reason Trump or his minions choose them. These are of course false gods and the false people who worship them.

  60. 60.

    Ruckus

    @Betty Cracker:
    Well purity is one of their anchor points, so I imagine that they will take help where they can get it but that isn’t the same as respect. I’d bet that Owens gets no respect for her views and rhetoric but the don’t hate her as much because she spreads their same message. I’d say she’s a self inflicting stooge and that is better for them than her not being one. But they have her number and while it wouldn’t be as high on the list, her name is still on that list.

  61. 61.

    Fair Economist

    @rk:

    Funny how this Australian born white nationalist talked about being “overrun” by immigrants. Australia only exists because the British sent their undesirables to a remote land in Asia, stole the land and massacred the black skinned aborigines.

    It’s always projection with conservatives.

  62. 62.

    Ben Cisco

    @Ruckus: A few days away and this is what I come back to… ?
    Owens is yet another fool that does not understand that signing up to huckabuck for these jackasses means signing up to get got later. She is beneath contempt.

  63. 63.

    J R in WV

    @Baud:

    We actually watched Rachel last night, and saw that as live as streaming does live. They fucked up pretty bad, the Rs, releasing the complete transcript. The FBI folks being interrogated came off really well, and, in particular, former prosecutor Gowdy came off like a total ass.

  64. 64.

    Ruckus

    @Ben Cisco:
    Agreed.
    It’s like she’s trying to wipe out centuries of reality with bullshit.
    Of course that’s a reason that bullshit exists in the first place. To cover up a far worse smell.

  65. 65.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    Australia only exists because the British sent their undesirables to a remote land in Asia, stole the land and massacred the black skinned aborigines.

    Or, in the case of NZ, the Maori. Who did manage to fight the English with moderate success

    Unfortunately, the Maori were no angels in this history.

  66. 66.

    Death Panel Truck

    @Belafon: Absolutely. I disagree with concealing the names of terrorists like this guy and censoring his views. We need to know who these people are, what they believe and why, and who influenced them.

    There is an episode of The Waltons in which John-Boy published excerpts of Mein Kampf in his newspaper. The people of Walton’s Mountain shunned him and stopped taking his paper. Several advertisers dropped him as well. The reverend and a couple of other local yokels organized a good ol’ fashioned book burnin’, and almost tossed a German language Bible onto the fire. John-Boy told the gathering that he only published Hitler’s writings because there were things going on in the world that they needed to know about.

    And fuck Ben Shapiro. If a Democrat shot up a church full of evengelicals, he’d have him doxed in less than five minutes.

  67. 67.

    sukabi

    The only reason Shapiro doesn’t want attention brought to the NZ terrorists, is that it would expose the white nationalist / supremacist movement and a few of his friends in high and low places…

    Also might change the focus of terrorism just being perpetrated by people of color. All those hateful white guys shooting up places would rightfully get painted with the terrorist brush. He definitely doesn’t want that.

  68. 68.

    debbie

    @sukabi:

    Agreed. It seems the next step after not saying his name and not sharing his manifesto is not reporting the massacre at all. Very wrong-headed.

    I’m tired of people blaming social media for events like this. Very ass-backwards.

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