Another day; another mass shooting in the United States.
Another day; another mass shooting in the United States by a white man.
Another day; another mass shooting in the United States by a Right-wing white man who was weaponized by the Right-wing Fox News echo chamber hate media.
We have talked about this phenomenon many times here at ChaunceyDeVega.com.
I have discussed this unending reality several times on the RT Network and Free Speech TV.
[It is eerie that I spoke with Farron Cousins on Right of Fire TV last evening about how the Right-wing media is weaponizing its followers.]
We know the script and the white terrorist bingo card game. John Russell Houser, the Lafayette mass shooter, will be humanized, guns will no be central to the "national conversation", Right-wing ideology will be left not critically scrutinized, and toxic white masculinity will go unmentioned by the mainstream corporate media.
The mainstream corporate media is unwilling to state in a plain and direct way that white men are disproportionately represented relative to their percentage of the United States population among those people who commit mass shootings.
CNN has just posted a short piece entitled "Who Commits Mass Shootings" that continues this evasion. Do read the story and see if you catch the written/rhetorical sleight of hand that Dana Ford uses in the essay to avoid stating an uncomfortable truth about white men and mass gun violence.
What are your thoughts on the Lafayette mass shooting? What white privilege gamesmanship have you noticed in how the mainstream news media is discussing John Russell Houser's murderous deeds?
20 comments:
There is always someone who hears the messages and acts. Plausible deniability.
You people have the power to end all mass shootings.
Excellent point!
Here is a good video about how right-wingers run away from their talking points when so-called crazies act on their hate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y6_zkOXZyk
"Plausible deniability", otherwise known as stochastic terrorism.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/01/11/934890/-Stochastic-Terrorism-160-Triggering-the-shooters
Thank you so much for the article. These facts need to be repeated, and these monsters need to be called out.
That CNN article is devious because it acts as though it vets the white racial angle, but through an objective analysis arrives at other determining factors that exclude Whiteness.
Based upon the movie he chose - "Trainwreck" a rom-com staring Amy Schumer - and that so far all the victims seem to be female, I'd say it's probable he went in there to shoot women.
Thom Hartman also did a short segment on the concept on his "Big Picture" show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUZZ4yQ7hTs
The Washington Post has an article that focuses on the shooters "mental health issues." Of course, they can't resist saying that he was "highly intelligent." They always are.
Still think the Black Lives Matters protesters were playing checkers, Chauncey?
"Following Sanders’ tense confrontation with #BlackLivesMatters activists at the progressive Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix on Saturday, the independent Vermont senator added a passage to his stump speech in Houston on Sunday referencing Bland’s death, a reference the Texas Tribune said drew the longest and loudest applause from the crowd."
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bernie-sanders-becomes-first-candidate-speak-out-sandra-bland-we-need-real-police
I wouldn't say that the media "humanizes" white shooters as much as It stigmatizes them as "mentally ill," thereby further dehumanizing the already dehumanized group of people with mental health diagnoses. So-called "mentally ill" people commit less crimes and are much more likely to be the victims of crimes. A mental health diagnosis is not a predictor of violence, and going to this explanation is a way to disavow the white violence. Scapegoating, it's important to include this in your analysis.
The White-centric influences which set the agenda for "national conversations" must find a sacrificial group to pathologize for these White mass shootings. They can't avoid pathologizing altogether, because that's what they've conditioned the public to do, from individuals to news organizations. But what they can do is avoid blaming Whiteness the way the would other cultures by finding a scapegoat to shift focus to. Assigning the blame to mental illness provides a mitigating circumstance that allows them to avoid a number of subjects, from race to gun control to political influences.
AND it legitimizes further attacks on people with mental health diagnoses, such as the (white) national Initiative to outpatient Forced psychiatry, where as a condition of being released from inpatient treatment, people get coerced into having to take drugs that they may not want.
The operative statement is that 64% of mass murderers are angry white males.
The CNN article obfuscates this fact saying "its complicated" and proceeds to speciously claim that Blacks and Asians are just as proportionately representative of mass shooters as Whites.
The Fox hate machine's role in egging on the shooters is the conspicuously ignored Tyrannosaurus Rex in the room.
The power elite's frequent reliance on domestic terror for social control is indicative of its desperation in the face of looming crises which jeopardize humanity's future.
I hope I am wrong. Very much so. Let's see what happens closer to election time.
The Right-wing media makes human bombs and then runs away when they blow up.
Scapegoating is an essential element of classical Nazism. wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany
The two websites that aspire to make the world a better place came together today and I have to say it's about time:
https://www.popularresistance.org/newsletter-prejudice-racism-privilege-in-the-us/
Spot on as always Chauncey. I listened to some of my favorite Right wing talking heads friday. The silence was deafening. Not a word about this latest shooting. I was stunned.
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