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Domestic terrorism incubates within the body politic. Credit: Getty
There is much that remains murky about Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who rammed his truck into New Year’s Eve revellers in New Orleans, murdering 15 of them. But we do know this much: He was Texan-born and -raised, an Army veteran who spoke with an East Texas drawl, forced to shack up at a trailer park after his career and love life went sideways. In short, he was as American as gas-station apple pie, loaded with carcinogens and carbohydrates, wrapped in a plastic sleeve that will be floating shortly in a waterway near you.
America put Jabbar together, America took him apart.
Domestic terrorism is frightening precisely because it incubates within the body politic. If a terrorist is a foreigner, it can be said that he failed to appreciate the resplendent magnitude of America’s promise. He had never donned a beer helmet. He didn’t understand the glories of Must-See TV. Or else he understood it all too well, swelling with murderous resentment. But the domestic terrorist is an autoimmune disease, assailing the very system that nurtures him. Jabbar hardly spent the last several months training at some terror camp in the Hindu Kush; until recently, he had worked at consulting firms such as Deloitte, where, according to The Wall Street Journal, “he was paid the equivalent of nearly $125,000 a year.” This guy’s network was LinkedIn, not Al Qaeda.
After each mass shooting or terror attack, we begin the collective actuarial task of apportioning cultural and political blame. After the 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon, Salon published an article under the remarkable headline: “Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American.” The author, David Sirota, is no fool: He was trying to make a point about how Muslims are unfairly blamed en masse after paroxysms of Islamic fundamentalism. And, yes, his outlet was going for clicks. But he and his editors were also playing the game we always play.
In Jabbar’s case, the blame game is deceptively straightforward. He was a convert to Islam and adorned his truck with an ISIS flag. To commentators on the political right, this was the “globalized intifada” that the most ardent pro-Palestinian activists have been calling for. It’s notable, though, that he seems to have turned to jihadism only recently, as personal disappointments and financial obligations piled up. Islamism was the last, deadly stop on his journey to all-American loserdom.
It is, of course, of paramount importance to investigate Jabbar’s ties to extremist groups. But those determined to tether him to radical Islam miss the point. Jabbar had far more in common with Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer, than with Osama bin Laden: A quiet rage builds over the years. Marriages fail. Ventures collapse.
Just watch the 2020 video Jabbar recorded to promote his real-estate business. He is crisply dressed and uses all the right corporate lingo. His office is neat, with a poster touting “discipline” behind his right shoulder. But there is no enthusiasm to his voice, no light in his eyes.
There was a time when the military was a route into a decent life, especially if followed by a college degree. Jabbar was a veteran and college graduate, but these institutions didn’t provide him with stability — or a sense of community. And if his social-media feed is anything like yours, or mine, it was full of glamorous people living their best lives, shifting the paradigm, crushing it, leaning in. It isn’t difficult to imagine the widening gulf between the real and the digital becoming intolerable.
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SubscribeI agree with your analysis to a large extent. The post-industrial West has lost its way, in that the jobs that were sent abroad have never been replaced, and nobody has stability in their work. This is factor that needs addressing, but comes hand-in-hand with the destabilisation of our personal lives: we can swap marriage partners, and are expected to recreate ourselves every few years – which is an impossible, cruel demand.
But whatever the complex reasons for this man’s actions, we have to confront the ideology of Islam and deal with its impact on Western society as a whole. To ignore it will mean we cannot get out of this cultural corner. The rape gangs in the UK make this clear! We cannot continue to bury our heads in the liberal notions of “he was hurting” which is where we have been for decades!
AS to work and the stability that comes with it: Trump seems at least to want to bring manufacturing back to the US. I don’t know enough about US society to judge how important the effect of this will be, but I feel strongly that such a movement would help the UK to refinding a sense of direction.
I’d argue that the kids going into daycare is now a necessity for most families unfortunately rather than a choice, largely due to the reasons you mentioned about well paying jobs disappearing abroad and immigration being used to suppress wages.
Whilst the extra money from the second parent working can be paltry, for many families it’s probably what puts food on the table, with the first salary covering the rest of the bills. I was on decent money as a tradesman but my wage wouldn’t have covered the mortgage, food, car, petrol, electric, gas, internet, council tax/rates and all the other bits and pieces that crop up throughout the year. Whilst if you subtracted the daycare costs my missus was basically working for half the legal minimum wage there was simply no other way around it. We were fortunate that she only had to work 3-4 days a week but if I’d earned the median salary even that would have been beyond us
Communism and consumerism have united to control the common man. Communism denies patriotism and consumerism reduces the individual to a consumer. Both can measure quantity but not quality, such as the quality of life.
Quite an interesting construction to distract attention from the Middle Eastern origin of the criminal. In some ways it reminds me of the story of the recent murder of three little girls in England. There we were also happily assured that the killer had nothing to do with Islam.
This is starting to get tiresome
He was born in Texas and judging from all the photos published, he was African American. I’m guessing the Arabic name was taken on his conversion to Islam as family members’ names given in the press are not Arabic.
That was my guess as well, yet I have not seen this mentioned in any mainstream reporting.
If his actual ancestry has been mentioned, I too have missed it. Along with a lot of other facts that should have already been ascertained, if the media were even halfway competent.
African American. Apparently his father converted to Islam and Jabbar was raised as a Muslim, abandoned Islam for a time and then returned to it. The only family names I have seen are those of his father and brother. Both appear to have Arabic names in the reports I have read.
He was not of Middle Eastern origin. He was came from an African-American Texas family that attended a baptist church before some members converted to Islam.
According to the NYT, Jabbar was an African-American (black) born in Texas. His parents were also native born Americans. The father’s last name was Young prior to converting to Islam before Shamshud was born. I believe prior to converting, the father was some form of Protestant. Some, but not all of Shamshud’s siblings, were given Arabic or Muslim names. Shamshud grew up in Islam in the Beaumont or Houston area. He was not of “Middle Eastern origin” as El Uro implies.
The actual explanation for why Jabbar committed this heinous act will be the particulars of the psychological illness that led him to it. You could stop there. But if you choose to grandly speculate on “societal ills” as a cause of mass murder, you can’t escape the fact that “He was a convert to Islam and adorned his truck with an ISIS flag.” That is a “societal ill” with a more robust correlation to mass murder than some vague rhetorical notion of the “autoimmune disease” of “American pathologies.”
No doubt he had much in common with most Americans. But that tells us little. Mass killings are exceptional events, and need exceptional explanations. Clearly he was not just your average Joe.
True. Making Jabbar into someone typical of Americans losers is pretty silly. These ‘hot takes’ tend to get cranked out with a lot of heat, little substance.
I know you Brits don’t often do gushing praise but here goes: If you had a Substack, I’d give it a read. They should let a few subscribers write one of their shorter, Newsroom articles each month. I’d probably nominate you, Lancashire Lad, Steve Jolly, T Bone, Rasmus Fogh, Martin M, or Steve Murray (if he’d reappear).
Again sorry to gush. I was feeling a little sick of being in opposition all the time.
I’m not at all surprised by this latest attack. Surely it’s a rational reaction to modern America?
So far as I can tell, America is close to being nothing more than a giant business park. The only people who have a legitimate claim (according to modern neoliberal ideology) to a right to reside in America are the economically productive. The fact you were born in America into an American family who’ve been here for two hundred years is irrelevant.
Do you contribute economically? More specifically, do you provide the economy with the skills that are currently (and transiently) in demand, such as in the high tech field of computer programming?
If the answers to those questions is no (yes, I’m looking at you laid-off Detroit car workers), then, according to current economic orthodoxy, what right do you have to residence (let alone citizenship) in America? Why should you be entitled to life-long American residency just because you were born here?
Increasingly, I encounter people with improbable, confected names: Mary-Jane Al-Bourani, Seamus Patrick Schmittelhorn. These are people without roots, without a sense of self, except for an abstract notion of Americanism equated to material success. Sadly, the material success, the act of being a “winner” in America, is increasingly out of the reach of most Americans.
So what is left? The answer is nothing. America is increasingly a people without roots, without common beliefs, without the trappings of material success, without even the right to privileges based on their citizenship.
And so, unsurprisingly, the confused, adrift, isolated souls start acting out–much to the faux surprise of the media.
It’s a fact if life that animals need to be productive.
You should watch the nature channel a bit more.
Exactly. Animals, including the human animal, need to be productive. And yet modern Western society exports the means of production, and where its native population seek to be productive, society’s leaders thwart that desire by aggressively importing (legally or illegally) workers to undercut them.
Human animals have additional requirements (however inconvenient they may be). Humans crave purpose. But modern, Western society actively atomizes itself. It undermines its own history and achievement. It teaches us to reject our own society. So where’s the purpose? What are we working toward? Certainly not the perpetuation of our own society.
Wow, you’ve explained it then—in the most profoundly cynical way.
So far as I can tell, America is close to being nothing more than a giant business park. Don’t lose sight of the qualifier: “as far as you can tell”—or care to look. America is a land of 330 million souls who’ve always been no more than tenuously united. It’s not one sole or exceptional thing, good or bad. Right?!
As far as you can tell, at what recent or less recent time was American so wonderful—or awful? Please be specific.
No one is surprised anymore, though they may perform shock. When it happens within a couple miles of your house, the retrospective shock is real. if still cheap. But we can still be honestly caught off guard by how routine this has all become.
Since you diagnose sickness with such sureness, can you prescribe any figurative medicine?
You’re behind the curve, AJ.
The masters of rebutting any argument with a demand for “proof” are the Democrats.
“Yeah, we’ve opened the borders to illegal immigrants, millions of them, but you think it’s a problem? Really? Show us your proof! Show us how those folks undermine wages and stretch our social services. Show us the studies and the details. No, that’s not enough! Give us a Grand Unified Theory of social decay, complete with an equation like Einstein’s. And no, before you ask, we won’t accept the account of ordinary folks unsupported by expert opinion.”
I encourage Unherd readers to read my comment and ask whether it’s consistent with their own experience, or whether I’m unduly cynical.
So your cynicism is not only warranted, but represents some version of forward thinking? You’re gonna blame people for their own given names and assert they are therefore rootless, or without a core self?
I encourage you to put some heart back in competition with your overtrusted brain. It’s not about one side of some stupid, convenient divide. It’s about decency in the face of widespread emptiness and willful cynicism that cuts across any cheap divide.
I don’t deserve to be addressed as if I represent some Left stereotype. I confronted you, but according to what you actually said and profess to believe, wondering if in all your sneering and disgust you have a semblance of an answer or appeal to something that is good. You used to be less tunnel visioned, J Bryant. Perhaps your should examine your own roots a bit more deeply.
How dare you use the collective We as if you can or should speak for everyone here!
*I think we share a certain amount of frustration and disgust, even across an ocean. Your detached and dismissive tone rankled me, and I’ve responded in irritation, making it too personal. To me, sentiments like cynicism and despair are understandable, and I’m not above them. But I wouldn’t say they’re called for in any useful way, at least not for long. That’s all from me then.
I think what missing from American life, and I speak as an American who departed the States to live in a nation without more guns than people, is faith in someone greater than the bottom line, the seemingly almighty dollar, or being famous on social media. There was a time, for example, when publicly traded corporations existed to do more than increase dividends to their shareholders. There was a time when more people could recognize that being able to do something did not necessarily make that choice the best one. There was a scene early in the film Risky Business when four friends are talking about their goals in life. Three of the said to make piles of money, one said to help his fellow man. The other three relentlessly mocked the fourth until he finally admitted that no, he was only kidding, he wanted to make piles of money too.
The U.S. is supposedly incredibly religious and Church going, but with very little faith. Look at the choices people make with their treasures, their time and talents, and not just their money. Does anyone really believe there is greater value putting a child in an anonymous daycare facility so both parents can earn income than living on less income and one can remain with the child to provide personal, loving, care and attention? That amount from the extra income is paltry , dare I say niggardly, beside the value of that personal love and care in those first four years of life.
But that decision requires faith, faith to see a value greater than money, faith to keep the family going when income is less.
Americans increasingly no longer have and the pathologies will only continue to grow until we get it back.
On the whole I agree with your generalizations about 330 million people of great variety—our tendencies toward groupthink and zombie consumerism notwithstanding. Where did you flee to?
Look at families which have enjoyed wealth for more than three generations. Unless the grand children or great granchildren find some purpose they invariable become spoilt. If the somes are sent into the military, especially the Commandos/Parachute Regiment they have to rely on themselves. Money cannot help them marching up hills carrying heavy loads in driving sleet. Being cold, wet and exhausted is a good test of character. Or they could become top doctors, classical musicians, scientists and engineers.
Those where the money is based upon land, the children have been brought up in the country they tend to be more grounded than those where wealth comes from investments and they live in affluent suburbs. People whose only occupation is spending money tend to become rather nasty when they do not obtain what they want.
They invariable become full of self hatred and spite towards those who have been tempered by adversity and passed the test. The devil provides mischief for idle hands. Two women, both wealthy . One spends her life in idleness the other becomes a doctor; joins the armed forces, becoms very fit, is awarded a medal for bravery for actions in combat and knows that she can control her fear in life or death situations and works in A and E when back in her home country.
Good times, produce weak people who produce bad times.
Perhaps we should revevaluate what our ancestors considered about chivalry, nobility, virtue and a life worth living.
How very ‘Roman’.
I wonder what happened to Rome ?
This is more cynical than even the stuff I regularly post on here and that’s saying something. It veers even more cynical than I would, but I rather thank that’s what our author was going for. The article could stand as a monument to melodrama and sophistry. It practically begs for exactly the cynical response J Bryant has given here. Though I’m among the more cynical people you’ll meet, I’m also one of the more contrarian, and I don’t fall easily into emotional traps.
I would agree with J about our common villain here, and i’ll even give it a name, materialism. It comes in two flavors. Both are acceptable in moderation and both are toxic in their extremes. First, there is the consumerism that drives modern economies, and secondly, there is the materialistic philosophies that animate most of our intellectuals and leaders and inform the decisions of our politics. Again, in moderation, these things are fine, even good, but when they come to define every aspect of life, every measure of humanity, every political question, it has gone too far and become as toxic as racism or any of the other isms we associate with our so-called barbaric past.
I do not believe the answers can be found in national governments and national cultures. They are quite simply too big for ordinary human social functions. The answer, if there is one, needs to be an emphasis on the local, the small, where decent communities and cultures can still be found. What answers there are will likely be found not in the social justice lectures of the professors who seek to replace organic, traditional, spiritual cultures with manufactured, corporate approved, bland, normative substitutes. This is not something any government is capable of doing, and it’s foolish to look for solutions there. If there is any governmental way to improve, it might be to divide the great empires of the world into hundreds if not thousands of independent nations. This would arguably set humanity back centuries in terms of material wealth and progress, and thus the elites, who have the most to lose, will never consider it.
I further dispute the notion that this attack is outside the historical paramaters of what the US is and in fact, always was. The US was born in rebellion and grew in a wilderness without constraints. Those who hated their societies, the inequalities, the oppression, could leave and brave the American frontier, where life was harsh but also, there was nobody to answer to, no aristocrats, no elites, and very little government. There was nobody to answer to, nobody to wag a finger, nobody to lecture about racism. That appealed to many, many people, and they concentrated right here in the USA. Now the frontier is gone, and attacks like this are the consequence. Attacks like this are quite simply the cost of doing business in modern America. Don’t expect them to stop while the conditions of modern society hold. The best we can do is punish the guilty, tighten our belts, and move on.
There really is no way to recreate the frontier, to provide some outlet for the disillusioned, disenchanted, and disaffected to flee from established society. Where exactly can anyone go to escape their debts? Where is anyone free of the reach of the soulless corporate machines, the banks, etc.? There is one escape, however, that no elites, no aristocrats, no governments, and no power can touch. If your mind is at a breaking point and your life is in shambles, there’s always madness. What better way to describe a man putting the flag of a country that doesn’t even exist, profess to a foreign ideology, and then drive his truck over dozens of pedestrians? What besides madness can this be called? When one loathes the world as it is and all material paths of escape are shut, it is only natural that more people will find their way to the one door that’s always left open. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my explanation of this phenomenon of domestic terrorism and mass shootings.
I’ve already used more than my unofficial word limit here, largely in pointless exchanges, but:
I observe that your post contains more than mere cynicism. That too characteristically American alienation and rebellious wildness can’t be eliminated, true. But much like your emphasis on the degree of materialism making all the difference, it doesn’t have to be this bad. It could also get worse—but I don’t accept that as an inevitability. We need to take some collective responsibility for where we find ourselves, on the starved-for-purpose-and-meaning front. And maybe violent separatists, death cult joiners, and firestarters could be taught to believe in an actual Hell. Then, perhaps a few more would have the decency to just kill themselves when the emptiness within becomes too much to bear.
It’s not as if mass murder can be stopped altogether. But harm reduction in terms of scale and frequency is both possible and urgently needed. Teach your children well, my fellow Americans.
Well said. I meant more to suggest there were no collective, government implemented solutions, no laws that can be passed. How does one go about improving a culture or correcting our overemphasis on the material? As you say, it’s easiest to teach them as kids, but beyond that, I have no idea. It’s simply beyond my ken. I shall have to admit my limitations and leave that task in more capable hands.
I appreciate your humility. It’s not like my quoting a Crosby, Stills, and Nash song offers some novel solution. This novel I’m reading called Overstory mentions a Chinese saying that seems relevant: “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now”.
Not to dismiss your self-assessment, but I don’t perceive you as cynical overall. More of a hard-nosed realist, with strains of pessimism, but a genuine desire to know about the world, from an original vantage point. Not impervious to outside input and forgiving of many human failings. From what I can detect, the world could use a few more like you. You also raise the net level of discourse here.
I’m capable of cynicism and despair but I also have a kind of stubborn hope that has proven resilient over the years. And I can be quite gullible, alongside a deep need to sound correct; the lower side of my lifelong, sincere desire to learn and understand. Unfortunately that’s not aided by much discipline or patience, so unless life is 200-plus years long, with all my faculties intact, I’ll never quite get there. Sometimes I wish I had more humility and gratitude too—then I remember to grateful for the amounts I already have. Thank goodness for those reprieves! Tryin’ to get better in ‘25, starting tomorrow I’m afraid.
Of course you didn’t ask for all this, but I felt like confiding in someone who might understand my little confession—or at least take a charitable view of it—after most readers are gone. See you next time.
*One last thing: I did take note of other things you’ve mentioned lately, like your rural perspective and bone-deep dislike for bullies. Decided to take the info in without responding directly, at least for now.
Most interesting article and comments, especially the exchange between yourself & AJ Mac. I’d not agree though that government has no role in fostering “decent communities and cultures” at the small & local level. Granted, the overall trend for the 20th & current century has been for increased centralisation of power, sometimes deliberately at the expense of the local. (As Jeff Polet recently said “One of the central insights of political thinking in the 19th and 20th centuries is that only by dissolving the natural connections that exist between human beings can central governments expand their power.” But there’s always a double movement with these things. Especially Schumacher’s 1973 book *Small is Beautiful*, it’s been increasingly recognised that government has a role in enabling & protecting local community. In the UK, we had the localism act in 2011. In the US, there’s been countless initiatives, albeit more at State level and below. I’d guess in some ways the US had less need to encourage localism than we do, per you being founded on the allied principle of Federalism. Anyway, without said initiatives, it’s possible there’d be less decent local community and culture for you to appreciate.
I’m no Trump fan, but at the start of his first term, he promised to boost the local (“People talk about how we’re living in a globalized world, but the relationships people value most are local—family, city, state and country. Local, folks, local.”) and to some extent he delivered. Maybe the second term will be even better, though moves like setting Musk to gut the Federal budget probably won’t help unless there’s more positive policy to enable the local. Without that, the gap is likely to be filled by mega Foundations who like the worse government bureaucrats see societies as “machines for living in” that they can optimise with their soulless rationalism. As a last point, the malaise that’s producing so many Jabbar’s likely has a spiritual dimension; that’s something I’d agree no government can help with, but each of us maybe can individually, by how we pray and try to live our lives in accordance with God.
Someone once said to me ” The business of America is business”. This can result in the dangerous belief that anything and everything is a business transaction and can be bought. Who in the USA displays a sense of duty to the USA and fellow Americans? Far fewer than in 1960 for a start.
Putting men on the Moon and getting them back alive was an example of the spirit which made America great.
Coming from a chronicler of US decay over the last few decades, this is succinct, I thought:
“ There’s winners and there’s losers
And I am south of the line
Well, I’m tired of gettin’ caught out on the losin’ end
But I talked to a man last night
Gonna do a little favor for him…”
(“Atlantic City”, Bruce Springsteen).
I could’ve easily picked on “ My Hometown”, “Youngstown” or plenty other oh his songs. The military connections in this story are skewered in the better-known “Born in the USA”, easily one of the bitterest songs ever written:
“Went down to see my VA man
He said “Son, don’t you understand?”
It’s a very bitter and disillusioned song, for sure. One side of the story. It think it’s worth noting that Springsteen, by many accounts, is a kindhearted and decent guy —not only the voice of the song nor the man he was 40 or so years ago.
That’s also what I’ve read of him – and in the social media age, I’m pretty sure anything to the contrary would’ve been aired long since. He does have a view of working life and common decency which always had the ring of honesty about it, IMO.
There are criticisms of current American (western) society in this article which I agree with. These criticisms stand on their own.
But there is a certain amount of bandwagon jumping going on here. As with another article on Unherd, a lot of people’s answer to the question why is: because of the things I don’t like. This article did at least show some sympathy for people who are struggling.
He was trying to make a point about how Muslims are unfairly blamed en masse after paroxysms of Islamic fundamentalism.
If this were true, then where in hell are those mainstream Muslims? When a terrorist acts in the name of fundie Christianity, there is a large majority to assert that “this is not us.” Islam will become trusted when, and only when, it develops such a mainstream.
When have there been terrorist acts committed in the name of fundie Christianity?
The mimetic theory of Rene Girard is helpful. We humans are desperate for approval and validation from the world. When every image and every face and voice tells us we are not significant and never will be, and when our family and clan relationships go wrong, a nihilistic despair can turn to murderous rage. There is consolation in destruction when there nothing more to lose. We can expect more of these gestures, I’m afraid. As they say, “the current system is perfectly designed to produce your current results.”
We humans are desperate for approval and validation from the world.
.
Why from the world? Maybe from the wife, from the children, from the friends is enough for the normie?
That is the world, or at least a reasonable approximation thereof, for the normie.
What a bizarre anti-factual indictment of an entire country over the actions of a deliberate terrorist. The facts of this murderer’s actions are not yet collected, much less disclosed. Yet this heartless poser of an author knows all and like a typical moral coward literally blames the victims. GFY
The essay and the many of the comments are a bit too nihilistic for my liking. We must always have hope of a better tomorrow.
Amen, Jim.
UnHerd is doing particularly well today. My first-up was the Star Trek essay, which was excellent. And now this. I’d love to read more from both Nazaryan and Yaroufakis.
“Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American.” The author, David Sirota…
David Sirota the racist who hates white Christians you mean. The David Sirota’s are the face of hate.
Also, as an aside when, when reading articles like this, always ask yourself, what would this author be saying if the terrorist was white man who recently converted to neo-nazism and drove a truck into crowd. If you think this way, it becomes very clear what this piece is really about…
Interesting piece.
Setting aside the always robust discussion of the causes motivating such violent acts, one can only marvel at how rare it is for perpetrators of mass violence to choose targets that embody any connection to the grievance in question. The shooters, bombers, stabbers, and car slammers usually choose random innocents as victims, people who are completely unknown to the murderer and, conceivably, some even sympathetic to or living with similar or worse woes. Luigi Mangione represents an exception in that he at least devoted significant effort in choosing as his victim someone with a conspicuous and proximate association to his (deranged) grievance. Other than to prove oneself a hideous monster, what point or purpose or furthering of cause derives from shooting schoolchildren, ramming an auto into a crowd, or bombing commuters on a subway? Those acts confirm that society was correct about them all along and justifies whatever marginalization it imposed upon them. The evil exhibited in their ultimate deeds verifies their innate monstrosity.
There’s certainly nothing un-American about mass-murdering rampages—not in terms of sheer frequency of occurrence.
Imitating the blunt-force tone of this article: We’re out of moral and emotional energy to react in a way that feels right. We’re too numb to muster it, even outside of the many specific places and families impacted. It’s not one religion or single brand of soul-sickness slash spiritual-deadness that’s fueling this. But we bear a collective responsibility to do something, and a general blame for our pathetic response(s) thus far.
*I’d like to add that while Muslims or pseudo-Muslims and various immigrants have performed many of the most deadly mass killings this century, there are plenty of homegrown Americans among their number too, often pale and of a certain age (like me, at a glance).Aren’t the plurality of such offenders white U.S. born males? I’d be happy to see some data one way or another.
Data? Look it up. Here in the UK 90% of terrorist atrocities are commited by followers of you-know-who, but Prevent, our anti terror quango, spend most of their energy condemning the far-right. Of course these days, that means almost anybody with a white skin. I think that is what you are doing.
It’s a much different picture in the U.S., not one that fits your 90-10 blowout. I’m not playing the up-and-down games that are played by the far wings, left and right, and by an increasing number of more moderate people here at UnHerd and elsewhere. I think treating a person like a flip-the-script bigot because they don’t pass a series of ideological litmus test is too defensive, and maybe paranoid. And also a really cheap tactic given what’s happened and what’s happening. That’s what I think you are doing—at least from a position of pushback and attempted balance that is in achingly short supply on many of these comment boards lately.
Many regular UnHerd commenters seem wedded to (or openly announce) some notion of “corrective extremism” in which no excess can be a net negative—or not much of one—as long as it seems to belong to a right-of-center tribal identity. That’s just a mirror image of the foolishness on the far left, and it’s hurting us all, from both directions.
It really doesn’t seem that on this side of the Atlantic people were unwilling to call out the fact that this latest mass murderer was a radicalized Islamist black American. Nor that previous bloody killers have been white, middle-Eastern, Latino, east Asian, etc. It should be allowable to point that out and the rules and atmosphere around doing so are too repressive in the UK, and to a lesser extent in the U.S.
In any case I don’t think it makes sense to scapegoat any whole group en masse, including you-know-who’s, for the hideous actions of a too numerous subset of their given group. Not even of white guys like me.
Down with all political, ideological, and narcissistic lunatic violence; left, right, center, and unhinged. We ought to be able to find more consensus and readiness to act, across sociological differences, on that front.
What is ideological violence? Sounds like something an SJW would say. In the UK we now live in an authoritarian state. Why? To protect the sensibilities and nasty habits of foreigners who have come here. The extent of the murder torture rape gangs of foreigners is so vast it is unconscionable, and the state has colluded in covering it up for decades. Top of the cover-up… The guy that’s running the country.
We’ve have enough of it. I may seem cheap and paranoid to you but you know what, you know nothing about modern Britain or the people that live here Mr Mac.
Ok, Mr. denz, but I know the sound of people talking past one another, and I wouldn’t immediately dismiss your comment on a U.S. focused article. Like this one. About American mass murderers..
*You pretend to not understand the term ‘ideological violence’. It includes both religious extremism like Islamism and quasi-religious or non-religious violence like that of White Power gangs or Black Panthers (during their ascendancy). Boogaloo Bois and Antifa too. Clear? The term isn’t perfect and you don’t have to like it but I don’t think it’s unusual, nor monopolised by one side of any simple divide.
While I don’t pretend to any deep understanding of the details of life and politics in the UK, I know enough to oppose the anti-speech speech rules and draconian penalties there. Still, calling it an authoritarian state is a bit hyperbolic, at least when compared to a place like Russia or Hungary. Also ‘sounds like something’ a woke-blind anti-Trumpist might say about the incoming US administration.