Thread by @hradzka

likely not what the headline makes you think; per the manifesto, perp gave money to some groups (he didn't say who)

ie, I would expect to hear that this connection is him financially supporting them rather than the other way round

https://twitter.com/reuters/status/1110816956339445760

yup, there we go

Q. why do people distrust the news media
A. scroll through twitter and see how many outlets have chosen to use the scary and uninformative "had financial links" or "financially linked" over the less scary and extremely informative "donated"

There are valid concerns about giving publicity for mass murders: like suicide contagion, it can inspire copycats.

On the other hand, the best argument for the murderer's manifesto being publically available is that at least that way the press can't lie about what's in it.

I haven't had time at a desktop to write about the New Zealand mass murder, actually, so this is a good a time as any for a short thread; mute me if you like

I've mentioned before that it's not my field but it is tangentially related so I have paid pretty keen attention to mass murderers over the years, and there are a few different types in ways that the press doesn't talk about much

The first distinction is that there are body count guys and experience guys, and body count guys are rarer.

Most mass murderers are suicidal people who feel powerless and want to die feeling powerful; if that power fantasy is threatened, they change course or suicide.

Most mass murderers, in my view, are experience guys. It's not necessarily about how many bodies they drop; it's about feeling powerful while they're running around hurting people.

A lot of mass shooters and mad bombers are experience guys.

The other distinction is motivation: Ideological, Emotional, Delusional. Think of it like a Venn diagram. Most mass murderers are emotional and/or delusional; even most ideologues still have some kind of emotional instability or delusional component -- extremists, but also nuts.

Pure ideologues are hella rare.

The NZ perpetrator is a body count guy. In mass murders, the determining factor in fatalities isn't the weapon as much as it is whether the perpetrator continues to harm people who are already down. The NZ perp did that.

The NZ perp is also an ideologue. There is an emotional component to his radicalization experience, but he is not in an emotional spiral and he is not crazy. He is a political extremist.

It is instructive to compare the NZ perpetrator to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, who is a more typical example of what an ideological Hard Righty mass murderer looks like: ideological, but way more emotional, way less prepared, and murdery but way less murdery.

PITTSBURGH PERP, reaching emotional peak. "Screw your optics, I'm going in"
NZ PERP, reaching emotional peak. *makes decision to commit terrorism, plans for two years, prepares manifesto, ensures its wide distribution, commits horrifying massacre which he livestreams*

The Pittsburgh perp is actually pretty typical of how these things go; consider Frazier Glenn Miller, longtime Klansman who decided to try to commit mass murder at a Jewish community center in 2014. He killed three people, none of whom were Jewish.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overland_…

Basically, what you see in a lot of these cases is "garbage person emotional spasm." That's not what the NZ perp did: he's a cold-headed extremist.

I read the NZ perp's manifesto. I have read a lot of manifestos.

Most manifestos are kind of like blog posts. They're lists of personal grievances, they're rambly, they're emotional infodump.

Christopher Dorner's manifesto was like this, for example.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph…

Elliot Rodger is often seen as an ideological killer, but per his manifesto his ideology was extremely fuzzy and ill-defined; more important was that he was a narcissist who was also completely incompetent and unlikable, and his emo manifesto reflects this

IMHO the way to look at a manifesto is to ask, "who is the audience for this, and what is the intended effect?"

For a lot of perps, like Dorner and Rodger, the audience is "anybody" and the intended effect is "to vent" or maybe "to get people to feel sorry for me"

Anders Breivik's intended audience was "everyone," so he produced a goddamn benchthumper of a manifesto with stuff for everyone from normies to people ready to go out and commit terrorism

the first half of his manifesto is just blog posts he hopes will be onramps for normies

what Breivik's manifesto has in common with Dorner's and Rodgers's, as wildly different as those guys and manifestos are: they are targeting a broad audience and hoping to get people to go from zero ("who is this guy") to 60 ("HE IS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING THE WORLD WAS WRONG")

The NZ perp is doing something different.

His manifesto is not for a broad audience but a very narrow one. He is laser-focused on people who are like him -- serious political extremists who have their shit together -- but *who are not down with the idea of murdering people yet.*

One of the best tips on writing -- and on life! -- I've ever seen is that when somebody gives advice, what they're actually doing is talking to a younger version of themselves.

The NZ perp's manifesto is what he told himself. Not how to go from 0 to 60, but to hit the gas at 55.

He poses questions and answers. They're the questions he asked himself. The answers are his rationale. He's not trying to radicalize normies, but further radicalize radicals: "you have accepted this premise, and this premise, and this premise... so *this is where you are.*"

This is pretty scary stuff. But the flip side of this is that, although the perpetrator doesn't believe this, the audience he is targeting with his manifesto is pretty small.

Remember, there aren't a lot of white nationalists to begin with. He wants the subset of white nationalists who have their shit together. Smaller. And the subset of THOSE who want action. And the subset of THOSE...

To me it seems like a pretty small demographic: radical enough to be a hardcore white nationalist, stable enough enough to not be garbage people, dumb enough to believe small-scale terrorism will lead to triumph rather than only being punched harder

for the record that last is something that garbage people are much more likely to believe

My guess is that any copycats the perp inspires are more likely to be garbage people than not, simply because, well, garbage people.

"Watch out for garbage people" is always a phrase to live by.

/fin