Well, that explains a lot about that shooter


Meet the Club Q murderer’s father. You’ll immediately regret it.

He goes on to say, “I praised him for violent behavior really early. I told him it works… You’ll get immediate results.” He’s definitely among the Republican base, emphasis on “base.”

Here are the immediate results his son got.

Comments

  1. lakitha tolbert says

    Not trying to lookshame but I’m genuinely puzzled. I simply do not understand why the “neckbeard” aesthetic is always the look!

  2. raven says

    I can barely understand a word he says. That’s probably a good thing

    There is an Illiterate Fundie Xian to English Translator on Google.
    There is also the similar MAGA to English Translator.

    It is probably a good thing if you don’t access them.
    The semantic content is usually pretty low.

  3. brettvk says

    I’ve seen online speculation that the father is exhibiting possible brain damage, might be chemical or physical.

  4. raven says

    He goes on to say, “I praised him for violent behavior really early. I told him it works… You’ll get immediate results.”

    Spoken like a true terrorist.

    He is even proud to call himself a right wingnut hater terrorist.

    BTW, dear dad, you are going to be visiting your son prison for the next few decades.
    As you say, it is an immediate result that lasts for many years.

  5. microraptor says

    brettvk @5: The news this morning reported that the father is a former adult film star and current MMA fighter. So drug abuse and/or concussive brain injuries are definitely plausible.

  6. Tethys says

    His conservative Mormon ‘parent’ is as astute as the average box of rocks, and is quite representative of the average GOP base member. Poor, white, hateful bigots, and proudly ignorant, bless Jesus!!

    I very much resent feeling empathy for the murderous dude who has multiple high-heel shoe prints on his face.

  7. raven says

    They are Mormons.
    How low can they go?

    Mormonism has historically been a violent religion.
    Even today it is still a violent religion.

    Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is a nonfiction book by author Jon Krakauer, first published in July 2003.

    He investigated and juxtaposed two histories: the origin and evolution of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and a modern double murder committed in the name of God by brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who subscribed to a fundamentalist version of Mormonism.

    There are always a few violent murders in the Morridor.

    The latest was

    In April 2021, Vallow Daybell was charged with the murder of the two children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old JJ Vallow, whose remains were found in 2020, buried in shallow graves on the Idaho property of Vallow Daybell’s husband, Chad Daybell, Rexburg, Idaho police confirmed in a press release.Sep 14, 2022

    A lot of people around the Vallow/Daybells ended up dead. The police are still sorting out who died and who was helped along by being murdered.

  8. raven says

    Colorado Springs is a fundie xian refuge.
    It also has a history of xian terrorism

    Robert Dear Indicted by Federal Grand Jury for 2015 Planned …https://www.justice.gov › Office of Public Affairs › News

    Dec 9, 2019 — 27, 2015, shooting at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where three people died, including a police officer.

    Robert Dear killed 3 during an attack on a family planning clinic in Colorado Springs.

  9. StevoR says

    PBS Newshour on TV the other day (or two or three ago?) noted that there have been over 600 mass shootings in the USA in 2022 so far.

    They cited the Gun Violence Archive which is here :

    https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

    American White Christianist Human Sacrifice to the God of Gun Fetishism & the NRA.

    As for this mass murderer’ proud homophic father. Vile and disgusting beyond words. I can’t even.. Expletives. Just sosick and warped by hatred and bigotry. Only hope he’s an extreme outlier and not typical.

  10. StevoR says

    From the other thread’s :

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2022/11/23/keep-talking-herschel-walker/#comment-2158774

    Akira MacKenzie – 23 November 2022 at 10:04 am : “It seems the shooter’s attorney is now claiming he’s “nonbinary.”

    In a weird kinda conflictred way I rather hope that’s true just to be karma for the father here although in other ways I really don’t given how it wll be used and plays into the repressed queer stereotype.

    That that would cause that deplorable putrid excuse for afatehr her emore pain than his son’s killing innocent people is telling and nauseating.

  11. says

    raven @12

    Colorado Springs is a fundie xian refuge.
    It also has a history of xian terrorism.

    Don’t forget it’s home to the official federal government instititution for the promotion of xian terrorism, otherwise known as the Air Force Academy.

    There are lots of reasons the Air Force should not be a separate branch of the military – the best acknowledged being that having a separate air force promotes the idea that air power isn’t a support power so you can win military engagements without using a navy or army – but an overlooked one is that shutting down the Air Force Academy is a national security priority.

  12. Silentbob says

    @ 9 John Morales

    Please don’t “what about the cishets” this. The killer was a hard right LDS member making a targeted attack on LGBT people. Stop trying to paper over that with your, ‘shit happens,’ diversionary bullshit.

  13. John Morales says

    Silentbob:

    Please don’t “what about the cishets” this.

    What?

    Look, PZ posted about Club Q murders, and then I noted a Reuters report about yet another mass shooting. A newer one. You know, the regular news about mass shootings there. Quite expected.

    (Nothing to do with cishets)

    The killer was a hard right LDS member making a targeted attack on LGBT people.

    I’m not referring to the killer’s motivations, only to the fact that the killing happened. Again.

    (And, no doubt, will happen yet again. It is the USA, after all)

    Stop trying to paper over that with your, ‘shit happens,’ diversionary bullshit.

    Your jaundiced perception is duly noted, but is wrongity-wrong.
    This is about mass shootings in the USA.

    You know, the right to have a gun, and then go somewhere and then point it and then <click><click><click><click><click> etc.

    (Might’ve been Jews. Might’ve been libruls. Might’ve been almost anything.
    But it will be something)

  14. says

    @15 The Air Force Academy isn’t the only one there. There’s alo Peterson AFB, Ft. Carlson, Cheyenne Mountain, two Space Force installations. The amount of Pentagon money flowing through there is insane. Also I found this…
    https://www.militaryfriendly.com/is-city-of-colorado-springs-military-friendly/
    Colorado Springs is home to The United States Air Force Academy, Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever Air Force Base, and Fort Carson Army Base, making it a vibrant community of local military personnel and supporters.
    Seriously creepy shit that.

  15. John Morales says

    Not like the killers are loading muskets, when they do their mass killings.

    But hey, I know.
    2nd Amendment, the amendment of which is (currently) unthinkable,
    and the interpretation of which is… um, interpretative.

  16. moonslicer says

    So often I’ve heard a Trumpeteer blaming us liberals for the rise of the Trumpeteers. It’s our fault because we don’t take account of their concerns, we don’t listen to them.

    To which the reply is that we do listen to them. That’s why we’re horrified.

  17. John Morales says

    I mean, in each case (the two recent mass shootings) it’s the purported fact that they were necessary collateral damage because “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State” is a thing.

    (Muskets are optional, I guess — but what’s used is a bit more modern.
    More deadly, which is just peachy for the, ahem, security of a free State)

  18. tuatara says

    Even The Onion hasn’t bothered with their usual wall-to-wall lament of…
    No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
    They only had the one entry this time. Not enough victims in these latest massacres to be more than grim footnotes, I guess.

    So, a car is designed to transport goods/people from one place to another, yet you need to be educated in the driving process, then acquire a driving license by proving that you can drive the vehicle and be responsible with its use, and the vehicle needs to be registered. I guess this is required throughout the USA too.
    But a gun? What is a gun for? Oh yeah. Killing people (transporting them from life to death I suppose you could say).
    And yet many interested parties in the USA would gladly have the process be….
    “I want a gun”
    “Sure thing kid. You want fries with that?”

    I am so bored with the USA

  19. says

    I’ve read as well that the suspect came out as non-binary through their lawyer. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were driven by their horrible excuse for a father to destroy what they couldn’t be. Self hatred projected on others.

    Which of course doesn’t absolve them from their horrible actions.

  20. says

    He was scared because he thought his son was gay, then showed relief when he found his son only went to that gay bar to kill people.

    So yeah, Republican hatred of LGBT+ people DIRECTLY contributed to this attack. As in, a major proximate cause.

  21. says

    SQB: A friend of the shooter said he’d heard no hint that he was non-binary. Not that anyone that jackass would call a friend can be considered credible, but so far, that claim comes only from the shooter’s lawyer and is not undisputed.

  22. Silentbob says

    @ 24 Raging Bee

    Ya reckon? Thanks, it’s shocking to see so many people in denial of this (on an ‘SJW’ blog). Hate crimes against LGBTQ people have dramatically increased in the last half decade, there are more anti-LGBT bills being proposed in the US than ever in history, there’s an unprecedented media attack on LGBT people, and still we have some idiots who are like, “gee what could have possibly been the motive? I heard of some Walmart employees being gunned down so I guess it’s just the same?”.

    If you’ve ever asked yourself, “what would I have done had I been around in Nazi Germany in the 30s?”, you can be fairly confident the answer is what am I doing about the deeply concerning ramping up of anti-LGBT rhetoric? Changing the subject? Pretending it’s just random. Saying, “hey, I heard of some Aryans being beaten up in a fight the other day so I guess that’s just the same”? Changing the subject to random fucking violence in fucking Walmart??

    Don’t be that guy.

    We are living on the brink on the worst persecution of LGBT people in history – stand up and oppose it now; you will be judged forever by your response.

  23. says

    @26, SilentBob needs to be a bit more silent until he has something to say.
    there’s an unprecedented media attack on LGBT people
    BULL FUCKING SHIT this is “unprecedented”. You must be pretty young to not know how old this struggle is. I’m old enough that Matthew Shepard and I could have gone to highschool together. And if you don’t know who that is, EDUCATE YOURSELF. They hung him up on a barb wire fence and let him bleed out.

    I’m sorry Millennial Bob, but some of us have been fighting this long before you were born. This is not “UNPRECEDENTED” This is a long hard fight and that is nothing new. Welcome to the fight, but do not pretend to know more than the rest of us who have been fighting this fight for years.

  24. leerudolph says

    Thank you, Ray. (Though I don’t think SB’s future words/actions will be changed, or not for the better.)

  25. brightmoon says

    I had a gay male friend in high school almost die because some asshole beat him so badly . He was never able to return to school because of the brain damage. I graduated in 1972 ! Some us cishets have been allies for a long time Silentbob!

    That father of the murderer is disgusting even if I’m being charitable and putting down some of the ugly crassness to shock

  26. says

    Unfortunately I commented on one of the news sites about how good guys without a gun took him down. The response from the gun-fondling bigots was that the shooter was gay so it was an own goal as if it mattered to his victims.

  27. jo1storm says

    The scariest part for me personally is that I know guys just like him. You only need to put a couple of pints of beer into them to reveal what they really think. Unfortunately, I can’t describe their way of thinking to give it justice.

    The rules that I found are as follows:

    1) Violence is always one of the options. Always. It is not always the preferred option but it is always on the table.

    2) There is some weird concept of respect and its connection to fear. There is no correct translation in English for all the connotations of the word strahopoštovanje, but awe and veneration are one of the translations. Respect born from fear. Somebody can be a mob boss who killed people, if you see him on social occasion, in the street or in the tavern, you will show him proper respect. It is expected that you will feel that respect as well, in your heart of hearts. Respect the power. Respect the authority. Be subservient to authority.

    3) Connected with that, if you feel that someone is disrespecting you, you are completely in the right (even obliged if no alternative presents itself) to use the violence to establish your authority and force the person to show you respect. The stupidest possible example: Somebody cuts you off in traffic, be prepared to get out of the car and beat the crap out of them. If they don’t immediately apologize, if they disrespect you and keep disrespecting you, a fist to the head should be an option on the table. If somebody says your mother is a whore, them is fightin’ words. And so on.

    4) Politeness is more important than justice or human rights. Somebody politely and quietly walking down the street and advocating for fascism, religious intolerance, genocide, complete erasure of LGBT+ people, for whatever horrible cause is more in the right than somebody blowing whistles and making noise, wearing offensive clothes, banging pots and pans, closing streets… advocating for human rights. This goes for everything. LGBT+ rights, worker rights, teacher’s strikes… Everything. Do whatever you want, just be polite about it and don’t mess with my day. Do not inconvenience me in any way.

    5) Everything what they don’t consider normal is impolite by default. Everything that messes with their day, with their perception, that is impolite. You can be gay or lesbian or trans, but as long as they don’t perceive you as such, you are okay. If they perceive you as such, then you are forcing your identity onto them(!) and that’s testing their tolerance, because you are inconvenient and impolite.

    6) What is tolerance for them? “We are tolerating your existence but, since we are the majority, it can and will only go so far. Rock the boat too much and we are prepared to show you how far we are ready to go! And how violent we are ready to be.”

    7) If you are not respecting somebody, it is alright to be impolite to him. What that means in practice? They consider existence of sexual minorities to be not normal, therefore it is impolite. Therefore, anybody advocating for someone not normal is “rocking the boat” and it is not impolite to, for example in a talk show, somebody advocating status quo shouts over them. The person shouting is not really intolerant or impolite, they are just showing where the boundaries are and what the hierarchy is.

    8) Human rights? Do not matter. Philosophy? Doesn’t matter. What is on you, under you, above you, in you, that is what matters. What you wear, what you drive and who you sleep with, what house do you have and who is your superior, what you eat and drink, how much money you have… Those are important things. Human rights, air you breathe, corruption on high places… Irrelevant.

  28. Akira MacKenzie says

    He’s a Mormon? Yeah that figures. His mugshot just screams “white and delightsome.”

  29. raven says

    I’ve read as well that the suspect came out as non-binary through their lawyer.

    How believable is that?

    The guy just killed 5 people and wounded 19 others.
    He and his lawyer at this point don’t have any defense and can and will say anything.

    How relevant is that claim?
    None that I can see.
    Tens of millions are LGBTQI+.
    Hundreds of millions are cishet straights.
    We/they don’t randomly shoot to kill in a gay nightclub.

  30. klatu says

    In a subsequent interview, Brink said he did not know that Aldrich was non-binary. “What does that mean? I got to know because I was horrified he was gay. I was like, ‘Oh my God. He’s at a gay bar. He’s gay.’ I’m not homophobic or anything – but to find something out like that – I just didn’t know”.

    Brink, 48, went on to explain that he had not raised his son: “As a child, he was taken away – not by me,” he said, adding: “My ex-wife didn’t want my son around me. I was an adult film star.”

    After seeing the violence Aldrich allegedly unleashed inside Q Nightclub four days ago, Brink said he wished he had been more involved with his child, whose grandparents petitioned a Texas court to change his name to erase “any connections” to his birth father.

    “I failed him. I’m sorry, Nicholas or Anderson,” Brink later said. “I wish that he, you know – if I gotta go fight somebody, I’m going in there with my fists. Fight like a man, then shake hands afterward, and then you’re done. That’s it. You don’t go out there. You don’t kill people.”

    [source]

    This man is shit. He’s just shit.

    But whatever up-fucked his child enough for him (them?) to try to murder the pain away, it was (probably) not something this asshole of a sperm donor had the opportunity to actively foster.

    Also, the “allegedly” up there really, really annoys me. There’s so much speculative passive-voice in every one of these articles whenever something like this… happens. See? These things just happen, the same way the weather happens. Another shooting took place. Another naturally occurring hail of bullets took place, and some bystanders were unlucky enough to be caught in the trajectory. Experts say the wounds that were sustained may have been a result of molecules colliding at high velocities.

    One might even venture to say that a murderer murdered people by shooting them dead with a gun, and that he could not have done so without the gun. But that would be sloppy journalism.

  31. chigau (違う) says

    Stewart Graham #35
    If this was The Before Times, that kind of shit would get you banned.

  32. says

    @37, before what? It should still get him banned. Rape jokes are NEVER FUNNY. Now seeing that asshole get beat to shit by a group of trans women and drag queens, THAT IS funny. If I was there I’d be right with them kicking him with my steel toed goth boots until he was nothing more than a pink smear.

    Reality is, prison is the safest place in the world for him. It’s the place he WON’T get assaulted/murdered. If he turned up in my hood we’d hold him down and carve “MURDERER” into his forehead. He wanted to play at street justice, he’ll get street justice. I’d make sure to smear some fresh shit into his open wound to guarantee an infection. Slow painful death by having his face rot off is still to good for him.

    Dude’s getting off easy. He gets to spent the rest of his pathetic life in a nice safe prison cell. The rest of us have to worry about being murdered on the street by people like him.

  33. tuatara says

    I can understand how for some of you in the USA this particular mass shooting will be quite rightly stoking the fire of blame toward anti-LBGTQI rhetoric. But for many of us outside the USA, it is just another case of the inevitable result of the nonsensical idea that arming oneself with the means by which murder can be most efficiently achieved is a fundamental right of everyone. I know that not all USAians agree with the 2nd amendment as interpreted by the gun lobbyists and gun-fondling nut jobs, and I sympathise with you all wholeheartedly.
    But I don’t see how this mass-shooting event differs in any particular way to all the others that occur there with sickening regularity. Be they attacks on people with dark skin, circumcised penii, yellow skin, almond-shaped eyes, children in school, concert goers, or our LGBTQI brothers and sisters. It really makes little fucking difference to me. All are tragic, but most are avoidable because the one obvious strand that ties all these events together is the ready availability of military-style weapons and ammunition.
    In this specific shooting, blood is not only on the hands of those who make the hateful rhetoric and those who take the hateful rhetoric to heart and act on it.
     
    Here in Australia we have similar hateful rhetoric being spewed by members of our community who should be held to account for it (Jordan fucking Peterson just spoke with right-wing xian members of the Australian government on the quiet – IN PARLIAMENT HOUSE!) But we don’t suffer the trauma of frequent mass murders in our schools, theatres, shopping malls, carparks, streets and clubs because it is very difficult to obtain the weapons. The control of guns here in Australia is the only thing I respect little Johnny Howard for.
     
    I haven’t looked myself, but it would be interesting to know how many of these shooters identify as liberals. Not many would be my guess. Or atheists?

  34. Silentbob says

    @ 30 tuatara

    I don’t see how this mass-shooting event differs in any particular way to all the others that occur there with sickening regularity.

    It really makes little fucking difference to me.

    FFS!!! Can you really not understand how “All lives matter” is not an appropriate response to “Black lives matter”?!

    It’s not that it’s untrue. It’s that it’s changing the subject. This blog has a rock solid history of denouncing gun violence wherever is occurs. But that’s not the topic. Yes gun violence is bad – but we’re talking about an orchestrated campaign of violence against a specific minority which includes gun violence.

    Stop trying to change the subject to gun violence in general – we all agree it’s bad – but whether they’re using knives, or molotov cocktails, or fucking pea-shooters, the point is this is an attack against LGBTQ people specifically. Can you please for fuck’s sake stop trying to change the subject to something you’re more comfortable with Mx Clueless CisHet Person?!

  35. tuatara says

    Silent Bob.
    You go ahead and make this just about anti-LGBTQI if you want.
    But please don’t pretend to assume you know anything about me or my family or my friends.
    I never said that all lives matter. I just said that all these fucked up mass shooting events are enabled by the same thing that you seem to be happy to ignore in this instance.

  36. jo1storm says

    [blockquote]I never said that all lives matter. I just said that all these fucked up mass shooting events are enabled by the same thing that you seem to be happy to ignore in this instance.[/blockquote]

    Except that is what you are doing. All mass shootings are equal to all other mass shootings for you. Which is “all lives matter” just rephrased. What you are wrong about is that they are not ignoring it. People here are all well aware about how easier in USA is to commit mass shooting than in the rest of the world.

    The argument is not a) “all must shootings should be prevented and it should be done by better gun control laws” because that is 1) bloody obvious and 2) said many times both before and today.

    The argument is b) “this specific mass shooting would have been prevented if some a-holes didn’t spread anti-lgbt+ rhetoric and by better gun control laws”. So stop trying to make it argument about a) when we are talking about b). Ok?

  37. John Morales says

    jo1storm, indignance is fine, but accuracy is better:

    The argument is b) “this specific mass shooting would have been prevented if some a-holes didn’t spread anti-lgbt+ rhetoric and by better gun control laws”.

    What? No.

    I quote the OP:
    “Meet the Club Q murderer’s father. You’ll immediately regret it.
    […]
    He [he Club Q murderer’s father] goes on to say, “I praised him for violent behavior really early. I told him it works… You’ll get immediate results.” He’s definitely among the Republican base, emphasis on “base.””

    The OP is about the attitudes of the Republican base as the foundational basis for such behaviour. There is no overt argument presented therein.

    The argument is not a) “all must shootings should be prevented and it should be done by better gun control laws” because that is 1) bloody obvious and 2) said many times both before and today.

    The OP is about the attitudes of the Republican base as the foundational basis for such behaviour.

    All mass shootings are equal to all other mass shootings for you. Which is “all lives matter” just rephrased.

    All mass shootings are mass shootings; stop all mass shootings and thereby stop all mass shootings. That is a tautology, not even slightly rephrased.

    (You know how to stop mass shootings of Teh Gay? Stop mass shootings!)

    In passing: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting

    (November 24, 2022 Texas Houston 1511 Baggett Ln 2 killed 2 injured)

  38. tuatara says

    jo1storm, Silent Bob, and anyone else my comments caused offence or distress.
    I am very sorry.

  39. Silentbob says

    @ tuatara

    Nah, no worries. We all have forms of privilege blindness, like literally everyone. The difference is those who admit it and those who spend the next 10 years going on a bigoted bender. X-D

  40. says

    @45
    Four more shootings in two days. That puts us around 612 mass shootings this year with hundreds dead. These are happening twice a day now. Random mass shootings. That dipshit in Colorado had no idea who he was shooting at. He didn’t care. He just wanted to kill. Decades of glamorizing gun violence and cheap guns led us here. It’s time to reel in the guns. We can’t control the violent impulses of these maniacs (without something crazy like universal mental health), but we can control the guns.

  41. Silentbob says

    @ 48 John Morales

    All mass shootings are mass shootings; stop all mass shootings and thereby stop all mass shootings. That is a tautology, not even slightly rephrased.

    (You know how to stop mass shootings of Teh Gay? Stop mass shootings!)

    “All use of Zyklon B is use of Zyklon B! Stop use of Zyklon B and no holocaust! I’m a very wise person who has fought this through deeply. I’ve no idea why Jews keep telling me to fuck off.”

    (Not for this first, or even the dozenth time, I ask why we have to put up with this obviously reactionary, right-wing idiot?)

  42. John Morales says

    Silentbob:

    … this obviously reactionary, right-wing idiot …

    Might as well claim I am very religious; it would be no less accurate.
    Also, weren’t you on about me making this about being “cishet”, earlier?

    (What is it with you? All these years, you still haven’t gotten that I’m no ideologue of any stripe? That’s just wilful ignorance)

  43. jo1storm says

    That dipshit in Colorado had no idea who he was shooting at. He didn’t care. He just wanted to kill.

    Mass shooters are dipshits, that is known. But their motivations differ. And subsequently so do their choices of targets. There’s a reason school shooters shoot up a school and not an airport and vice versa. There’s a reason that workplace shooters shoot up their workplace and not a random McDonald’s or a bar across the street.

    Colorado assholes’ choice of targets was LGBTQ+ safe space. It wasn’t that he just wanted to kill. He wanted to kill specific type of people. That type of people were people that gather at LGBTQ+ safe space. Mosque shooter’s target were people who gather at mosques. Synagogue shooter’s target were people who gather at synagogues.

    And that’s why your arguments make no sense and grate so much. Be better.

  44. F.O. says

    @jo1storm #31: you are just describing vanilla authoritarianism, maybe with a tinge of fascism.

  45. mamba says

    #5: brettvk: “I’ve seen online speculation that the father is exhibiting possible brain damage, might be chemical or physical.”

    I used only his words to say the exact same thing. He prefers his kid to be a mass murderer than gay. With pride on the shooting! Though you’re probably right as he acts exactly like any meth-headed moron I’ve ever met (sadly more than one).

    If any face deserves a beating along his son, this is the face to hit! His son clearly never stood a chance for a normal brain.

  46. raven says

    Colorado assholes’ choice of targets was LGBTQ+ safe space. It wasn’t that he just wanted to kill. He wanted to kill specific type of people. That type of people were people that gather at LGBTQ+ safe space.

    This!!!

    The claim that all mass shootings are the same is just obviously, completely wrong.
    People are seeing the end result and claiming the causes and purposes are the same. Not so.

    .1. The attacks on synagogues, mosques, LGBTQI+ safe spaces, and family planning clinics are terrorism.
    These are ideologically motivated attacks to serve the purposes of political parties and political movements.
    .2. The Colorado Springs shooter wasn’t acting in a vacuum. He had enormous support behind him. Public leaders like elected officials Marjorie Taylor Greene. Laura Boebert, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, and much of the GOP. Public propagandists like Alex Jones, Matt Walsh, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, etc.. A large part of the mass media notably Fox NoNews, OAN, and parts of the internet such as Facebook. Whole branches of xianity, the fundie xians which dominate Colorado Springs and who openly cheered these murders and murderers on.

    Aldrich was and is serving the purposes of a large part of the US population, the right wingnuts.

    .3. We can fight terrorism. Even, in the present case Stochastic Terrorism.
    We do so all the time. That is what the DHS/FBI/NSA etc. is for.
    That is what this blog post is doing.
    We can call out the terrorists and the terrorists supporters for what they advocate and what the results are.

    .4. The other mass shootings, workplace violence, school shootings, gang violence, mall shootings etc. are done for personal reasons by people without any sort of support base.
    Those personal reasons might not make any sense to normal people but they are still personal reasons.

    The terrorist acts have ideological and political goals and vast support systems.
    The random mass shootings are by disturbed individuals acting alone for their own personal reasons.
    That the end result looks the same is a superficial resemblance.

  47. raven says

    To followup on the previous post.

    How many people cheered on Alrich as he attacked the LGBTQI+ safe space?
    How many people said it was a heroic act and the victims deserved to die?

    Quite a few set up the conditions in which the shooter acted and I listed them above.
    TV networks, fundie xian churches, MAGAts, part of the GOP, elected officials, internet websites.

    How many cheered after the 5 people were killed and 18 wounded in Colorado, blamed the victims, and said they deserved to die and are all going to hell anyway.
    Quite a few right wingnuts and fundie xians.
    “4 days ago — … Springs LGBTQ nightclub, Matt Walsh denies the existence of LGBTQ hate.”

    How many people supported and cheered for the Walmart shooter and blamed his victims.
    It is about zero.

    Don’t confuse superficial resemblances with ultimate causes and goals.

  48. raven says

    Aldrich the killer is a hero to a lot of the right wingnuts.
    He would be on Tucker Carlson’s Fox NoNews show right now except for the slight problem of being in jail.

    Wikipedia:

    In their responses to the shooting, several far-right pundits have promoted an LGBT grooming conspiracy theory[58][59][60][61] and perpetuated moral panic.[62][63][64][65] Conservative media personality Tucker Carlson displayed a banner on his show that said “STOP SEXUALIZING KIDS” while later hosting a guest who said that mass shootings would keep happening “until we end this evil agenda that is attacking children”.[66]

    Reactionary influencer Tim Pool[67][68] responded to the shooting by criticizing the venue’s drag show performances, saying, “We shouldn’t tolerate pedophiles grooming kids. Club Q had a grooming event”;[69] while right-wing commentators Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Chaya Raichik from Libs of TikTok, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene all continued to publish content targeting LGBTQ people, some of which was focused on the Colorado area.[66][70][59] Walsh accused “leftists” of weaponizing the shooting to “blackmail [right-wing figures] into accepting the castration and sexualization of children”, adding, “These people are just beyond evil.

    I have never felt more motivated to oppose everything they stand for”, while also saying that LGBTQ people who have criticized him are “Soulless demons”.[71] Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for Donald Trump, was criticized for saying that the five people killed during the shooting were “now reaping the consequences of having eternal damnation” due to there being “no evidence at all” that they were Christians.[72][73]

  49. Silentbob says

    @ 55 raven

    What you say is so obvious it’s infuriating anyone needs to say it but thanks for saying it anyway. Obviously it still needs to be said, over and over. :-(