Thread by @Noahpinion

1/Between this wave of mail bombings and the 2017 Congressional baseball shooting, I'm starting to worry that the U.S. is entering a new era of politically motivated assassinations.

nytimes.com/2018/10/24/nyr…

2/The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy in the 60s undoubtedly destabilized American politics and society.

3/In the 1920s and 1930s, a wave of assassinations of major political figures destabilized Japan and eventually led to the military taking over the country.
ndl.go.jp/modern/e/cha3/…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osachi_Ha…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governmen…

4/Fringe groups like the Proud Boys are openly paying homage to Japanese assassins, showing that I'm not the only one who sees a parallel: bedfordandbowery.com/2018/10/inside…

5/Assassinations, of course, are in addition to politically flavored mass shooting incidents. Since 2015 we've had:
Dylann Roof: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlesto…
Omar Mateen: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_n…
Micah Johnson: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shoo…
Farook and Malik: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_San_…

6/The Portland Train Attack of 2017: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Port…

7/Lane Maurice Davis: thedailybeast.com/youtube-trumpk…

8/William Atchison: santafenewmexican.com/news/local_new…

9/This guy: washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…

10/Of course, it's hard to tell how many of these incidents are actually politically motivated, and how many are just nutjobs who use politics as an excuse to kill people. If you're going to shoot up a nightclub and kill yourself, why not say it's for ISIS? Etc.

11/But on the other hand, there's the possibility that nationwide political hysteria and unrest actually stirs up the passions of nutjobs, making them more likely to kill.

Mass shooting deaths are up!
fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-ma…

12/Does a national mood of stress and fear and bad feelings and apocalyptic rhetoric contribute to stuff like the Las Vegas shooting that injured nearly a thousand people?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_…

13/I feel like this is how Cold Civil Wars are fought.

Extremists rile everyone up, hoping that a lone nutjob will take the hint and go wreak some havoc.

Lone wolf proxy wars.

14/Each act of political or possibly-political violence stirs the other side to greater hysteria. That hysteria percolates into the minds of unstable individuals watching through their computer screens. Eventually enough hysteria prompts them to grab a gun or bomb and attack.

15/Thus, the cycle of assassination/terrorism and hysteria continues until...what?

How do Cold Civil Wars end?

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