The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Repost: WORTH A REMINDER: ALMOST ALL VIOLENT EXTREMISTS SHARE ONE THING: THEIR GENDER

    By artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 4:31am |

    By artappraiser on Mon, 11/05/2018 - 2:56pm 

    Article @ The Guardian from April of by Michael Kimmel  who is the author of Guyland and Angry White Men. He directs the center for the study of men and masculinities at New York's Stony Brook University:

    Almost all violent extremists share one thing: their gender

    Most people who commit acts of terrorist violence are young men. We overlook their gender to our peril

    ‘Young men often come into extremist movements because they experience downsizing in specifically gendered ways.’ 

    According to an ever-growing number of young men in Europe, the United States and across the Muslim world, we are at the beginning of a war. And no one knows how it will end.

    To me, what is interesting in the paragraph you just read is not the indeterminacy of the outcome. All crises are like that. No, it is the fact that “ever-growing number of young men” probably does not seem notable to most readers.

    The fact is that virtually all of those mobilizing on all sides of this growing clash are young men – whether right-wing extremists, anti-immigrant zealots, anti-Muslim skinheads and neo-Nazis or young Muslims readying for jihad.

    It’s so obvious, it barely needs noting.

    And so it isn’t noted.

    If we imagine for a moment that all those amassing on all the different sides of this looming cataclysm, all those drifting to the edges of the political spectrum and toward violent extremism, were female, would there be any other story? Wouldn’t magazines be filled with individual profiles, TV news shows highlighting the relationship between femininity and violence, bookshelves sagging from the weight of the “gender” analysis?

    Yet the fact that virtually every single violent extremist is male creates hardly a ripple.

    It can be easy to think: “But wait, what about those female suicide bombers? What about those skinhead girls? Those women of the Klan?”

    This proves my point [....]

    original link with comments HERE. 

    Comments

    One simple thing we can all do is lavish attention and praise on those who have figured out how to be a prince among young men:


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 4:39am

    We's innocent - we wuz framed. Da bitchez done set us up.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 4:44am

    A$AP Rocky, is that you?


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 5:41am

    Shit, blew my cover.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 7:22am

    This one just popped into my head, another shopping mall, but here you have the young attackers terrorizing against classic western capitalist family values:

    Westgate Mall Attack:Terror in Nairobi: the full story behind al-Shabaab's mall attack

    @ TheGuardian.com, Oct. 4, 2013

    At midday on 21 September, al-Shabaab militants stormed Nairobi's premiere shopping centre, throwing grenades and firing indiscriminately at shoppers. The subsequent siege lasted 80 hours and resulted in at least 67 deaths. 

    Two weeks on, a detailed investigation based on interviews with survivors, their relatives, security forces and officers involved in the operation reveals how infighting, incompetence and a fatal friendly fire incident undermined the response and left the attackers free to prolong their slaughter 


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 4:57am

    from: Santino William Legan: Gilroy shooter from boxing-loving family @ USA Today, July 29, 2019

    [....] But there clearly was another side to Santino William Legan, one that motivated him to dress in fatigues, cut his way through a fence and, police say, to kill three people, including a 13-year-old girl and 6-year-old boy, and wound at least a dozen others at the Gilroy Garlic Festival.

    It was that side that appears to mirror the since-deleted Instagram account in Legan's name. The postings, which included a photo of the festival, urged people to read a book that argues power alone can establish moral right. The book, "Might Is Right," was published in the late 1800s.

    And, in a posting just before the attack, the Legan account said: “Ayyy garlic festival time” and “come get wasted on overpriced (stuff).” [....]

    from  FBI: Media 'wrong' on Garlic Festival shooter's white supremacy ideology, despite social media post @ USA Today,  Aug. 1, 2019

    [....] Speaking to reporters Wednesday outside the festival grounds – where three were killed and 12 injured Sunday – John Bennett, FBI special agent in charge, said investigators still do not know what the ideology was of the 19-year-old shooter, Santino William Legan.

    “We’re looking at multiple threads of conversations that he’s had,” Bennett told reporters, according to footage from KTVU. “However, we’re still not comfortable in saying it’s an ideology, one way or another.”

    The FBI agent added officials are awaiting the arrival of the bureau's Behavioral Analysis Unit to come out and better profile and help look at potential mindset and ideology [...]

    [...] In the seizure at the shooter's Nevada home, the San Francisco Chronicle reported officials found reading materials on white supremacy and radical Islam, per an anonymous federal law enforcement source. The reading materials were apparently not included in the items found in the search warrant released Tuesday, according to The Chronicle.

    Bennett said those findings of literature are “erroneous and incorrect information,” though he said there were many materials found and they need to be sorted.

    “To call it ideology in one way or the other is conflicting readings,” he told reporters. “Just because someone has a book in their house doesn't mean they are leaning one way or another.”

    He added officials are not “overly concerned” of items found in the apartment [....]

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 5:39am

    Still the deadliest domestic terrorist act in American history.

    "Humiliation" of a 20-something male is what it's all about in the end:

    McVeigh claimed to have been a target of bullying at school, and he took refuge in a fantasy world where he imagined retaliating against the bullies.[10] At the end of his life, he stated his belief that the United States government is the ultimate bully.[11]

    Kinda the last straw when it's by a woman yet.

    Used a bomb but guns make the man:

    McVeigh was introduced to firearms by his grandfather. He told people he wanted to be a gun shop owner and sometimes took firearms to school to impress his classmates. McVeigh became intensely interested in gun rights, as well as the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, after he graduated from high school, and read magazines such as Soldier of Fortune. He briefly attended Bryant & Stratton College before dropping out.[14][15] After dropping out of college, McVeigh worked as armored car guard and was noted by co-workers to be obsessed with guns. One co-worker recalled an instance where McVeigh came to work "looking like Pancho Villa" wearing bandoliers.[1]


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 4:30pm

    The Pancho Villa quote provides a comparison that is ironic and fruitful on so many levels.

    First: a Mexican! What else do I need to say?

    Perhaps: we don't need no stinkin' badges?

    I clicked on the wikipedia cross-link. Saw this tidbit that that reveals that Pancho, he was waaay ahead of his time, he could see where the future was going:

    In life, Villa helped fashion his own image as an internationally known revolutionary hero, starring as himself in Hollywood films and giving interviews to foreign journalists, most notably John Reed.[4] After his death, he was excluded from the pantheon of revolutionary heroes until the Sonoran generals Obregón and Calles, whom he battled during the Revolution, were gone from the political stage. Villa's exclusion from the official narrative of the Revolution might have contributed to his continued posthumous popular acclaim. He was celebrated during the Revolution and long afterward by corridos, films about his life, and novels by prominent writers. In 1976, his remains were reburied in the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City in a huge public ceremony not attended by his widow Luz Corral.[5][6]

    A belief in the power of inspiring individualist archetype supporting a "people's revolution" = even more irony. Don't need no stinkin badges encapsulates this all, the libertarian creed.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 4:55pm

    Even if the vast majority of mass shooters were bullied in school it wouldn't tell us much. Lots of people were bullied in school. I was bullied in school. Pretty brutally and consistently. The question then becomes how many people who were bullied in school don't go on to be mass shooters. I'd guess most of them.

    It's similar to the point that most pedophiles were victims of pedophilia. But the vast majority of victims of pedophilia don't go on to molest children when they grow up. So I'm unsure what it tells us when most people deal with bullying and molestation without becoming mass shooters and pedophiles.


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 5:34pm

    Well one needs to go back to Kimmel's main point: if you are going to try to figure out the profile and the causes, quit ignoring the elephant in the room of females (and older males as well) being an extreme rarity within the group. There's got to be a reason for that which will take you further down the road of figuring out "why?"


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 6:02pm

    Also, I see a similarity between your argument and those who say the majority of automatic weapons owners don't execute mass shootings, so we shouldn't restrict their usage. It's nihilist, i.e., it happens and nothing can be done about it. Just sayin'

    Edit to add: yeah, stereotyping is mis-used by idiots. What else is new?


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 6:30pm

    I don't see the similarity in this case with thinking about causes and thinking about solutions. While bullying is a factor it doesn't seem to me that it can be a major factor given my reasoning above. There is no doubt that most gun control legislation will lessen the rights of innocent people who have never and will never commit a crime using a gun. The question then becomes, to what degree should we lessen the rights of innocent people to slow the number of gun deaths in this country?

     


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 6:51pm

    In parallel to your doubt about changing how people react to certain crappy things, it is odd how proposing various boundary conditions don't include access to extremely effective weapons.
    The proposal to socially engineer the population to avoid limiting rights to own devices certainly puts a pretzel twist in the whole Libertarian idea.


    by moat on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 8:33pm

    just plopping here something somewhat related, an article & thread that interests me on the Turner Diaries/race war type fantasizers:

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 8:34pm

    These succession plans are just fantasies. I just read an article about the plan to break Illinois from Chicago. But the civil war fantasy is just a right wing fringe fantasy. First the idea that only republicans have guns is nonsense. I'm a far left liberal who hunts and I have guns. I have many friends, all democrats, that have guns. We could and would easily fight back. But even that doesn't matter. How many republicans are really interested in a civil war and willing to get involved? It's only a small portion of the fringe far right that would even consider fighting. Civil wars aren't fought by mobs in the streets.  The government would get involved and choose a side. Even if we consider the cops racist they will choose the side of stability. The government has by far the largest number of combatants with the police, national guard, and if that wasn't enough the military. They would shut down these right wing morons as easily and quickly as swatting a fly.

    There's not going to be a civil war but if the right wing kooks tried to start one it would be a good thing. They'd be out in the open and easily identified. Then the cops would wipe them out.


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 08/05/2019 - 12:34am

    "Lone-wolf losers" with the chosen ideology just an affectation:

    ....FBI classifies it as domestic terrorism, but "white terrorism" is more precise. Many of the killers are lone-wolf losers indoctrinated to hate through the internet, just like Islamic terrorists.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 4:43pm

    here we go, all the discussion about a white nationalist threat literally shot to death by the Ohio shooter, a self described leftist and socialist with announced preference for Liz Warren, tweeted "hateful" stuff like "fuck John McCain" upon his death, suggested opponents of socialism were idiots and told his followers in Nov. to "vote blue for God's sake"...


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/04/2019 - 9:44pm

    Why are most shooters male? (CA Gov.) Newsom says gender must be part of national gun control discussion

    By Angela Hart @ Politico.com, 08/05/2019 09:50 PM EDT

    SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that gender must be part of the debate over how to address gun violence in America.

    "These shootings overwhelmingly — almost exclusively — are males, boys, men. I do think that is missing in the national conversation," Newsom said in an emergency meeting with top school, health and public safety officials in Sacramento to discuss California's response following a spate of deadly mass shootings.

    "If there was anything more obvious, I don't know what is," Newsom said. "I think that goes deep to the issue of how we raise our boys to be men, goes deeply to values that we tend to hold dear — power, dominance, aggression, over empathy, care and collaboration."

    Newsom, a proponent of tightening state and federal gun control laws, said he is considering several proposals to strengthen California restrictions on ammunition and gun purchases after shootings in Gilroy, Calif., El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in the past two weeks left more than 30 people dead.

    California already has some of the strongest gun laws in the nation, but Newsom said Monday he is considering ways to strengthen the state's gun violence restraining order that can prevent people from obtaining a firearm if they pose a danger to themselves or others. He also said he'd consider a proposal by Democratic Assemblyman Marc Levine of San Rafael to impose a $25 tax on the sale of handguns and semi-automatic rifles beginning in January. He also said the state would reconstitute a task force to study factors that can lead to gun violence and how to prevent it in the future.

    Levine reintroduced his proposal, CA AB18 (19R), Monday, citing "gun terror" that has spread across the U.S. "We are not helpless or hopeless when it comes to ending gun terror in the United States," Levine said in a statement [....]

     


    by artappraiser on Tue, 08/06/2019 - 2:20am

    These articles start to get a bit insipid.
    Throughout most of history, including now, it's been mostly men who've been the warriors, soldiers, policemen, not-always-peaceloving explorers, the ones who are counted on doing crazy suicidal impossible shit to keep the species surviving.
    It was with great fanfare that 3 women of 19 made it through Ranger School - given multiple chances to pass. 1.7% of combat infantry is women.
    Plus monkeys show similar difference in interest to gender stereotyped toys as human kids, dolls and trucks, with similar interests in dogs. One would imagine gun fetish is uniquely male there as well, just for the noise factor if not the ability to hurt others.

    Men are responsible for an overwhelming proportion of serious violent crime. They are also overwhelmingly responsible for the dangerous, exhausting, and unpleasant physical work that confers little money and less status.

    [though " Human males engage in much more substantial nurturing behavior toward the young than any of our near relatives."]

    Coal mines, rustling cattle, oil rigs, steel foundry, assembly line, most of the heavier farm labor - largely male-infested occupations except areas where technology decreased strength requirements. Whatever violence burly men carried out in these occupations, it was certainly a tiny percentage of their productive time - but 1 fight in 10 years will carry more reputation value than 10 years of relative peacefulness. (or as the joke goes, "build one bridge, you're no bridgebuilder; climb a mountain and you're not automatically a mountain climber; but you screw *one* goat...")

    At the same time mass shootings weren't as common just 30 years ago, and we can say even today's startling figures are still tiny compared to traffic accidents, rapes, other violent episodes, and it's fairly easy to see mass social media and TV tied with politics as partially inspiring this crazy behavior, as well as much more rhetoric about the 2nd Amendment. Germany likely had much more violence in the 20's than they did in the 90's, but with the rise of nationalist populists, some of the marginalized groups like skinhead neo-Nazis gain more traction these days. But yes, this is still much more bout boys - the girls seem to have other preoccupations, such as keeping up with the Kardashians or enrolling in college at higher levels than males.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 08/06/2019 - 4:00am

    David Hogg (of Parkland activist group) retweeted this half-day old tweet regarding 49 being shot in Chicago this last weekend. I find myself very impressed with the speaker and his "break the outrage cycle" message:

    49 people were shot & 6 killed over the weekend. This city has nothing in place to help those injured heal & work through their pain so they don’t retaliate. This has to end! We need restorative justice & trauma healing now!
    .@Theonly_Tree
    .@KinaCollins_ #GoodKidsMadCity pic.twitter.com/0JnApGVI95

    — GoodKidsMadCity (@GKMC18) August 5, 2019

    Looked up  "Good Kids Mad City" https://voyceproject.org/goodkidsmadcity/ it is groups of kids in Chicago and Baltimore inspired by the Parkland kids  GKMC stands in solidarity with Parkland and wanted to uplift their own struggles. 

    On twitter, interesting that Hoff has stayed totally away from the El Paso white supremacy meme and instead has one retweet on gun violence in general by a specialist scientist, countering Trump's statements, then also did Beto O'Rourke, not on ElPaso, but on the availability of guns to the Ohio shooter despite his problems being public knowledge.

    He's got focus, focus, focus. With eyes on the prize: gun control? Dead is dead whether by latent schizophrenic, bitter incel male, inner city gang member or rabid white supremacist.....etc....

    Yeah, like the Boston Marathon bombers, once can terrorize with other weapons, but still, the daily terror that there could be a gunman around every corner in your shool or every corner on your home turf, that is a different kind of terror...


    by artappraiser on Tue, 08/06/2019 - 2:58am

    Yes, finding out the Dayton killer was "a leftist" changed what, exactly? It's the methods & messaging in terms of intolerance and hatred, not really the specific political leaning. It's just in *general* there's been more survivalist and ex-military cultivation of anger and bitterness and hate towards the rest of society as a victimology to avenge by the barrel of a gun, vs. trust in yelling or the ballot box or other less violent recourse. Haven't seen a lot of US leftists holding gun training out in the wilderness for when society falls apart.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 08/06/2019 - 4:04am

    here ya go: "methods and messaging in terms of intolerance and hatred". The personal death and violence becomes political. It's sicko in itself if you really think about it.

    Excerpt, pointing out a zero sum game of whatabboutism:

    Trump seems incapable of considering the massacres outside of the context of partisan politics, as a zero-sum game of punditry and cause. Consider the first question he was asked by a reporter who was difficult to hear over the helicopter: What do you say to your critics who say your rhetoric emboldens white nationalists and inspires anger?

    “So my critics are political people. They’re trying to make points,” Trump said. “In many cases they’re running for president, and they’re very low in the polls. A couple of them in particular, very low in the polls.”

    I have a tendency to think we've got to stop doing it. After all, there are Islamic extremists who don't follow the precept that terror attacks against the infidels will get them somewhere?

     Terrorism is the problem, not the ideology sponsoring it? Lots of guns easily available make it easier. A reminder, too, that we actually have freedom of hate speech in this country, and one reason is to blow off steam and not act out from a hidey hole underground. Noooo I am not defending a president that practices hate speech. That is definitely not what the founders intended, checks and balances and all. (And also a pretty amazing understanding of the dangers of populism and demagoguery for the 18th century. Okay well, on second thought, maybe allowing for hate speech against kings and potentates....but the first George W. was widely popular because he was like an anti-extremist in personality...no doubt this was partly due to the individualistic "damn the old country" of the colonists, for many differing reasons.)

    But then I'm one who felt that incidents like the 2002 Washington DC sniper shootings should definitely be labeled terrorist acts, simply because they were clearly meant to terrorize a whole community. The desire to terrorize, it's a power thing, not about the ideology, not unlike rape in many ways.

    I really am starting to think: leave the mass shooter's politics out of it. I see little benefit to stressing it. Just as I didn't see stressing extreme Islam as the reason for 9/11 was going to help anything. It was a ploy to get the west involved in a war of civilizations. There were other ways to free the women of Afghanistan than taking the bait of a war of civilizations that Osama bin Laden wanted.

    Talking about motive, what does that get ya? FBI infiltration of extremist groups and baiting them to act out. 9/11 report and many other stories about say, Gitmo residents, and history like the Black Panthers and MLKing tell me they aren't so hot at that.

    Regulation of tools of war is a better answer. And heavy duty prosecution and severe punishment of acts after the fact.

     


    by artappraiser on Thu, 08/08/2019 - 12:02am

    P.S. I can see Trump light bulb moment going: oh, I see, one background check question can be: have you now or in the past ever belonged to Antifa?


    by artappraiser on Thu, 08/08/2019 - 12:04am

    P.P.S. Easiest way though, I am still a believer: scientists to get on to inventing that calming Soma for young males (and their older compadres who never got better) with rage control issues. But then, that's not even about terrorism. That's about fodder for terrorists and warmongers and haters.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 08/08/2019 - 12:25am

    What was smoking dope all about? Chilling at the crib, listening to Bob Marley, get the munchies, Snoop & Martha chumming it up... but no, gateway drug, 3 strikes, no tolerance, million in jail... obviously part of the narrative is accurate, but stoners beat wives less than drunks, tend not to be running out to buy guns to shoot people - that's meth, as documented so well in Breaking Bad.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 08/08/2019 - 1:21am

    We might want to consider what passing out spare Iraq equipment to police departments (good bucks for contractors) did to escalate the paramilitary focus of policing these days and the public view of assault weapons. Just a data point, but didn't recall cops as so threatened by any pedestrian back in the day.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 08/08/2019 - 1:17am


    by artappraiser on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 4:12pm

    just thought-provoking, not that much on topic:

    pic.twitter.com/CNh7OyhlWE

    — Marie-Caroline (@NoWay7790) August 9, 2019

    by artappraiser on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 12:33am

    Not quite Gloria Steinem's but she approves:

    https://www.thecut.com/2017/10/gloria-steinem-quote-abortion-and-gun-rig...


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 12:52am

    thanks


    by artappraiser on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 12:58am