Another Day In The USA

[Half-Life]

There has always been some leftist violence, but a more honest and germane report would point out that a mass shooting committed by a leftist (or by any political identity) is not a leftist (or other politics) shooting unless the act was related to those politics in a causal way. There has been no indication that is the case with the Dayton shooter, in contrast to the El Paso shooter who clearly targeted his victims to carry out his racist, anti-immigrant political goals.

So you're saying the shooting doesn't matter if it's just a nutbag with no motive?

 

[blastula]

...

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

...

 

[Worldtraveller]

Or police officers shot by the #BlackLivesMatter guy in Dallas a few years ago. Etc.

If I remember right, that guy wasn't BLM. He thought the BLM wasn't radical enough.

Also, FTP.

 

[southernhybrid]

There are other sources that suggest that the Dayton shooter was a supporter of some far left ideology, but that doesn't seem to be what motivated his crime. His high school friends say that he's been obsessed with violence for years. One of his tweets said that millennials want the Joe Biden generation to die quickly. If he hated conservatives and old people, why didn't he target a place where old people or conservatives were. Instead he killed a variety of mostly younger people, including his own sister. So, regardless of his political leanings, his crime didn't seem to be motivated by politics. More likely, this particular shooter was obsessed with violence and simply wanted to kill a lot of people. It may have been a copy cat crime.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/05/us/connor-betts-dayton-shooting-profile/index.html

Unlike the El Paso shooting, which the alleged gunman appears to have described as part of an anti-immigrant crusade, authorities still do not know what motivated Connor Betts to open fire early Sunday morning in a popular nightlife district in Dayton.
But comments from authorities, memories from former classmates and posts on his apparent Twitter account show that the gunman took a deep interest in violence -- and, as in many American shootings, had easy access to powerful firearms.

Former high school classmates said that he had a "hit list" of people he wanted to kill or rape. He was in a "pornogrind" band with extremely graphic, violent lyrics. And authorities searching his family home found writings that expressed an interest in killing people, two law enforcement sources told CNN.
But the writings did not indicate any racial or political motive, sources said.
In addition, a Twitter account that appears to belong to Betts retweeted extreme left-wing and anti-police posts, as well as tweets supporting Antifa, or anti-fascist, protesters.
The Dayton gunman killed 9 people by firing 41 shots in 30 seconds
The Dayton gunman killed 9 people by firing 41 shots in 30 seconds
The most recent tweet on the @iamthespookster account was on August 3, the day of the shooting, when he retweeted a post saying, "Millenials have a message for the Joe Biden generation: hurry up and die."

Another former high school classmate, who asked not to be identified out of concerns for his privacy, also recalled being summoned to a school administrator's office and being told he was "number one" on the list of students Betts wanted to kill.
He said the list was separated into two columns: a "kill list" for boys and a "rape list" for girls.

This one sounds more like an incel, who was always obsessed with violence and guns. At least one former girlfriend thought he was scary, so she broke up with him. He shot his own sister and more than half of his victims were women. He also killed more minorities that white people. That sure doesn't sound like his motivation was related to far left ideology.

After reading a lot about him, I doubt that his political beliefs were what motivated his crime. Nobody is saying that people on the far left have never been violent, but more mass shooters in recent times have been motivated by the far right, and by racism. Some of them are probably mentally ill, but most of them were probably motivated by hateful social media groups.

And then there is this:

In the hours before the Dayton shooting, the Twitter account "liked" several tweets about a shooting in El Paso that left 22 dead, including one supporting gun control and others that called the El Paso shooting suspect a "terrorist," and a "white supremacist."

Sounds like he just wanted to kill and he didn't care who he killed. He was just a very fucked up young man who had easy access to guns that were capable of killing a lot of innocent victims very quickly.

 

[PyramidHead]

The Dayton shooter did not kill his sister; he killed his trans brother.

He was not motivated by any flavor of leftist ideology.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Whether someone committing mass murder was violently motivated by ideology hardly concerns me. I just didn't want that person to have an assault weapon in the first place.

 

[PyramidHead]

Whether someone committing mass murder was violently motivated by ideology hardly concerns me. I just didn't want that person to have an assault weapon in the first place.

He could have still killed people with a handgun, or run them over with a truck. I'm sorry, but the ideology has to be central to any appraisal of what happened in the last week and the last year, because it doesn't stop at gunmen with manifestos anymore.

FBI RANKS 'BLACK IDENTITY EXTREMISTS' BIGGER THREAT THAN AL QAEDA, WHITE SUPREMACISTS: LEAKED DOCUMENTS

An internal FBI report from August 2017 was widely criticized for using the BIE label, which many called racist. But the Consolidated Strategy Guide documents leaked this week show the FBI kept the term and made BIEs one of its top counterterrorism priorities.

Under the Trump administration, they're considered a bigger threat than terror groups such as Al Qaeda.

"Animal rights/environmental extremists" and "anti-authority extremists" were also deemed top existential threats.

The documents show the FBI wrongly projected there would be "attrition" and declining membership within white supremacist and nationalist extremist movements over the past few years.

And in reference to white supremacy, the documents read, "Some RMVEs [Racially Motivated Violent Extremists] are driven by a belief in the superiority of the white race and a perception that the U.S. government is conspiring with Jews and minority populations to bring about the race's demise," the 2020 threat guidance documents state. (The FBI has also begun using "Racially Motivated Extremism" as a watered-down label for white nationalists groups.)

If we don't confront the fact that the El Paso shooter's ideology is basically identical to the one currently guiding the administrative and political fate of American government, we will have doubly failed, with this second failure even worse than if we don't ban assault weapons (which I agree we should).

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

We could put all of the white supremacists in the USA in one football stadium with room to spare.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

We could put all of the white supremacists in the USA in one football stadium with room to spare.

And you could likely put all the Islamic Jihadists in the USA into a bathroom with room to spare. Doesn't stop you from spending countless billions to monitor and police them.

There are enough white supremacists slaughtering enough of your citizens in multiple acts of terrorism to make them a major concern which shouldn't be trivialized.

 

[PyramidHead]

We could put all of the white supremacists in the USA in one football stadium with room to spare.

Says you and David Duke.

 

[blastula]

We could put all of the white supremacists in the USA in one football stadium with room to spare.

Thank you, Tucker Carlson. Hope you're enjoying your vacation.

 

[Playball40]

We could put all of the white supremacists in the USA in one football stadium with room to spare.

You mean ADMITTED white nationalists, right?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

We could put all of the white supremacists in the USA in one football stadium with room to spare.

And you could likely put all the Islamic Jihadists in the USA into a bathroom with room to spare. Doesn't stop you from spending countless billions to monitor and police them.

Me? It's nice to know that everyone who disagrees with you on any topic is exactly the same person as anyone else who disagrees with you on any topic. So which poster other than me do you think I am right now?

The more conservative members of this board think I'm crazy for wanting to dismantle the security state, especially since they know that unlike a liberal or progressive I actually mean it.

We could put all of the white supremacists in the USA in one football stadium with room to spare.

Says you and David Duke.

Actually, says the SCLP. That's right, the SCLP. They list the population of white supremacists, neo-nazis, and klansmen at under 10,000 each. And there's probably some overlap between those groups.

 

[PyramidHead]

Me? It's nice to know that everyone who disagrees with you on any topic is exactly the same person as anyone else who disagrees with you on any topic. So which poster other than me do you think I am right now?

The more conservative members of this board think I'm crazy for wanting to dismantle the security state, especially since they know that unlike a liberal or progressive I actually mean it.

We could put all of the white supremacists in the USA in one football stadium with room to spare.

Says you and David Duke.

Actually, says the SCLP. That's right, the SCLP. They list the population of white supremacists, neo-nazis, and klansmen at under 10,000 each. And there's probably some overlap between those groups.

It's "SPLC", Jason. The SPLC lists about 1,000 hate groups in the United States as of 2019. They are categorized by type:

Ku Klux Klan (51), neo-Nazi (112), white nationalist (148), racist skinhead (63), Christian Identity (17), neo-Confederate (36), black nationalist (264), anti-immigrant (17), anti-LGBT (49), anti-Muslim (100), and "other hate" (163, consisting of 15 hate music groups, 8 Holocaust denial groups, 2 male supremacy groups, 30 neo-Völkisch groups, 11 radical traditional Catholic groups, and 97 other groups).

Your reading of their data suggests that each of these groups has, on average, between one and two dozen members, depending on overlap. It also says that the only white supremacists we should count are those that belong to official groups recognized by the SPLC, which for analysis reasons makes divisions among groups that ordinary people don't. It also fails to provide citations. It also doesn't account for the fact that small numbers of people can have extreme negative effects on society, especially when they have lots of power and money. It checks all the boxes.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Me? It's nice to know that everyone who disagrees with you on any topic is exactly the same person as anyone else who disagrees with you on any topic. So which poster other than me do you think I am right now?

The more conservative members of this board think I'm crazy for wanting to dismantle the security state, especially since they know that unlike a liberal or progressive I actually mean it.



Actually, says the SCLP. That's right, the SCLP. They list the population of white supremacists, neo-nazis, and klansmen at under 10,000 each. And there's probably some overlap between those groups.

It's "SPLC", Jason. The SPLC lists about 1,000 hate groups in the United States as of 2019. They are categorized by type:

Ku Klux Klan (51), neo-Nazi (112), white nationalist (148), racist skinhead (63), Christian Identity (17), neo-Confederate (36), black nationalist (264), anti-immigrant (17), anti-LGBT (49), anti-Muslim (100), and "other hate" (163, consisting of 15 hate music groups, 8 Holocaust denial groups, 2 male supremacy groups, 30 neo-Völkisch groups, 11 radical traditional Catholic groups, and 97 other groups).

Your reading of their data suggests that each of these groups has, on average, between one and two dozen members, depending on overlap. It also says that the only white supremacists we should count are those that belong to official groups recognized by the SPLC, which for analysis reasons makes divisions among groups that ordinary people don't. It also fails to provide citations. It also doesn't account for the fact that small numbers of people can have extreme negative effects on society, especially when they have lots of power and money. It checks all the boxes.

What you established is that they count a lot of groups out there. They also count people which is what I'm using.

The three categories of people lead to less than 10,000 people each in groups of various sizes. Since there are likely people in two or three categories at once, and maybe even in more than one group at a time, we are looking at less than 10,000 people on whole. At worst it could be, if the "less than 10,000" was closer to 9,000 instead of 4,000, and if there is absolutely no double counting then close to 30,000 people total.

And remember, as a money-making venture masquerading as a non-profit, the SPLC has a vested interest in making the numbers appear as large as possible. If they can't find 10,000 white supremacists, even with loose standards and double counting, then it is very unlikely there are more than 10,000.

 

[laughing dog]

It's "SPLC", Jason. The SPLC lists about 1,000 hate groups in the United States as of 2019. They are categorized by type:



Your reading of their data suggests that each of these groups has, on average, between one and two dozen members, depending on overlap. It also says that the only white supremacists we should count are those that belong to official groups recognized by the SPLC, which for analysis reasons makes divisions among groups that ordinary people don't. It also fails to provide citations. It also doesn't account for the fact that small numbers of people can have extreme negative effects on society, especially when they have lots of power and money. It checks all the boxes.

What you established is that they count a lot of groups out there. They also count people which is what I'm using.

The three categories of people lead to less than 10,000 people each in groups of various sizes. Since there are likely people in two or three categories at once, and maybe even in more than one group at a time, we are looking at less than 10,000 people on whole. At worst it could be, if the "less than 10,000" was closer to 9,000 instead of 4,000, and if there is absolutely no double counting then close to 30,000 people total.

And remember, as a money-making venture masquerading as a non-profit, the SPLC has a vested interest in making the numbers appear as large as possible. If they can't find 10,000 white supremacists, even with loose standards and double counting, then it is very unlikely there are more than 10,000.

I can believe that there are around 10,000 white supremacists active in those organizations. And I can believe that for every active white supremacist there are dozens more who are simply inactive.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I can believe that there are around 10,000 white supremacists active in those organizations. And I can believe that for every active white supremacist there are dozens more who are simply inactive.

I'm sure there are many things you can believe.

 

[Jarhyn]

It's "SPLC", Jason. The SPLC lists about 1,000 hate groups in the United States as of 2019. They are categorized by type:



Your reading of their data suggests that each of these groups has, on average, between one and two dozen members, depending on overlap. It also says that the only white supremacists we should count are those that belong to official groups recognized by the SPLC, which for analysis reasons makes divisions among groups that ordinary people don't. It also fails to provide citations. It also doesn't account for the fact that small numbers of people can have extreme negative effects on society, especially when they have lots of power and money. It checks all the boxes.

What you established is that they count a lot of groups out there. They also count people which is what I'm using.

The three categories of people lead to less than 10,000 people each in groups of various sizes. Since there are likely people in two or three categories at once, and maybe even in more than one group at a time, we are looking at less than 10,000 people on whole. At worst it could be, if the "less than 10,000" was closer to 9,000 instead of 4,000, and if there is absolutely no double counting then close to 30,000 people total.

And remember, as a money-making venture masquerading as a non-profit, the SPLC has a vested interest in making the numbers appear as large as possible. If they can't find 10,000 white supremacists, even with loose standards and double counting, then it is very unlikely there are more than 10,000.

I can believe that there are around 10,000 white supremacists active in those organizations. And I can believe that for every active white supremacist there are dozens more who are simply inactive.

I recall growing up in rural Wisconsin and encountering enough casual racism there to make me balk even when I was evangelical and conservative. N----r-rigging, "Jewing" someone over, that whole thing where people would make "engine noises" composed entirely of racial slurs, etc...

You don't need to be in an explicit racist organization to be a white supremecist. I would estimate maybe 10% of all of rural America, at least, and at least when I was growing up, was equally so.

I think your numbers are off by a few orders of magnitude.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

So the SPLC, which has a financial incentive to over-count, under-counted?