Violent Far-Right Extremism Is Fueling Mass Shootings in America

[babylonsister]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/buffalo-mass-shooting-extremism-guns-replacement-theory-racism/

17 hours ago
Violent Far-Right Extremism Is Fueling Mass Shootings in America
The repugnant massacre in Buffalo also highlights the urgent need for greater attention on shooter warning signs.
Mark Follman
National Affairs EditorBio | Follow

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Gendron had a history of disturbing behavior, according to law enforcement authorities, including a threat he made in June 2021 to commit a suicidal school shooting. Under New York law, he was taken into custody by state police and given a psychiatric evaluation. The results are not publicly known, but Gendron was released within two days, officials said. After he graduated high school, according to the account that authorities say he posted, he spent months becoming radicalized online and preparing for his attack. He acquired weapons and tactical gear and surveilled his target, a common warning behavior among mass shooters.

As I’ve reported in previous investigations, violent far-right extremism surged in the United States during Donald Trump’s presidency and has grown deadlier since converging with the mass shootings epidemic. The violence has included lethal rampages targeting Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and Jews at synagogues in San Diego and Pittsburgh. Political polarization that continued to deepen after the January 6 insurrection, combined with record gun sales during the pandemic, raised further concerns among experts.

Political extremism fueling grievances and despair in troubled people has become a more urgent focus in recent years for leaders in the emerging field of behavioral threat assessment, the subject of my new book, Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America. The ways in which Trump and his political allies demonized “enemies” were nothing new, but their brazen tactics catalyzed a resurgence of ideological hate and a rise in the threat from domestic terrorism. This stark shift in mainstream American politics has profound consequences, experts in the field told me:

Threat assessment leaders typically are stoic in the face of tumultuous current affairs, but after an intense 2020 election year battered by a politicized pandemic, several top experts I spoke with described feeling deeply unsettled by the way dehumanization and themes of existential social war had become normalized in American politics. As one of them put it, “History shows how bad it can get when you really start convincing people that differences of opinion or political affiliation are coming from ‘enemies’ to be feared and despised because they’re threatening to destroy your way of life.”

Political demonization and unhinged conspiracy theories [have been] percolating in fringe subcultures, with social media forming an ever more interconnected pathway to radicalization, according to forensic psychiatrist Philip Saragoza, a threat assessment practitioner with expertise on incels and other extremist groups. “One thing we emphasize in trainings is how cross-linked these categories have all become,” he told me, describing the growing pattern. “You have these disaffected young males who live online, and they’ll wade into a community on 4Chan or 8Chan, and in one thread they’ll find all kinds of misogynistic content from manosphere groups that’s also wrapped up with MAGA movement politics, QAnon, or ‘great replacement’ and other racist conspiracy theories. It’s a real hive of choices, almost like à la carte extremism.”

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/buffalo-mass-shooting-extremism-guns-replacement-theory-racism/

[Lovie777]

1. Yep . ....

POC (this includes Middle Easterners and their religion) and the people of the Jewish religion, or any other religion that is not approved by the RWers, Liberals and Progressives or any other party affiliation that is not approved by the RWers.

Are now the target of violence. The pure hatred coming from RWers, Qanon, Nazis, White Nationalist, etc.

And these utterly disturbing groups are fueled by some of the rich coupled with media, social media, hate radio.

[empedocles]

3. Dark moneys

[anarch]

2. in my opinion this is partly due to our society tolerating white supremacist extremism

indeed even having an openly white supremacist president, but also I feel like the sense of helplessness in the face of the looming climate crisis and societal collapse contributes to people's likelihood of snapping and lashing out at the world.

Of course in this case you have a bunch of indoctrination as well, and the fact that white peoples' status as a majority of the population in the U.S. is certainly doomed, not due to any conspiracy or whatever, but just due to inevitable demographic changes.

[uponit7771]

4. K&R, these shooters need to be put on terrorist list quick fast and make it EXTREMELY public