More “stranger danger”
After terrorist and mass-casualty attacks like the El Paso Walmart mass shooting (target: Latino immigrants), the Tree of Life shootings in Pittsburgh (target: Jews), the Charleston and Buffalo shootings (target: Blacks), and others, police investigate how the killers got radicalized. What made them snap? Except lately authorities simply document common features instead.
ABC News from January:
A toxic brew of ideological extremism, blended with rage, anger and violent tendencies is making it increasingly difficult for authorities to identify motivations behind mass casualty attacks in America, according to a new assessment by the Department of Homeland Security.
The confidential analysis, distributed to law enforcement on Jan. 10 and obtained by ABC News, describes the growing challenge posed by perpetrators who “espoused and engaged with an array of narratives,” often online, “likely fueling their mobilization to violence.”
Those attackers’ range of beliefs made it easier to escape the longstanding templates law enforcement uses to catch would-be threats – and made it harder for police to intervene or secure potential targets, the analysis found.
“Since 2018, we have observed mass casualty attacks in which the perpetrators held multiple grievances, challenging our ability to identify a primary motive,” the bulletin said.
Is it really that hard?
After the Jan. 6 insurrection, multiple convicts testified they carried out the assault at Donald Trump’s direction. This is from ABC News from May 2020, prior to the Jan. 6 attack:
President Donald Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from acts of violence in communities across America, dismissing critics who point to his rhetoric as a potential source of inspiration or comfort for anyone acting on even long-held beliefs of bigotry and hate.
“I think my rhetoric brings people together,” he said last year, four days after a 21-year-old allegedly posted an anti-immigrant screed online and then allegedly opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 and injuring dozens of others.
But a nationwide review conducted by ABC News has identified at least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.
If your memory of Jan. 6 needs refreshing:
These clips are from Trump’s appearances Tuesday night in Michigan.
From New York Times coverage:
Donald J. Trump defended his use of the word “animal” to refer to some immigrants. He called the man charged with killing Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student, an “illegal alien animal,” and then said, “Democrats said, ‘please don’t call them animals.’ I said ‘no, they’re not humans, they’re animals.’” He also said that he once told Nancy Pelosi that “I’ll use the word animal because that’s what they are.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of fascism and authoritarianism, (“Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present“) responds, “Remember: Trump is trying to keep people in a state of existential dread so they can be emotionally manipulated and do whatever he asks, à la Jan 6. Right out of the autocratic playbook.”
“Who are the uniformed men standing behind an accused criminal as he says the EXACT SAME WORDS he said when he last launched an illegal attack on democracy?” tweeted Marcy Wheeler.
Another user replied: Berrien County Sheriff Charles Heit, Allegan County Sheriff Frank Baker and Van Buren County Sheriff Daniel Abbott. A local news report backed that up.
Later that evening before a smallish crowd:
So, how do these people get radicalized?
Remember this the next time pundits and police after a mass-violence tragedy reach for a motive and declare “nobody could have seen this coming.”
Update:
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