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MisterSwig

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These recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton appear very similar on the surface level. Both assassins were young, white males acting alone. Each one left political messages on social media. Crusius posted his manifesto to 8chan, and we have since learned about Betts' political posts on Twitter. Neither one had a history of violent crime. In executing their attacks, both killers chose popular shopping malls as a target. Both used assault rifles and protective gear, displaying a level of proficiency and tactics intended to inflict maximum casualties in a short period of time. If not for unusually rapid and brave police responses, these two might have killed hundreds of unarmed civilians all by themselves.

If we simply watched a film of both horrific events, we might think these two assassins belonged to the same rebel terrorist group, especially given how close they were in time. And yet Crusius hates Democrats, and Betts was a Democrat who liked Elizabeth Warren. Politically, they seem to be on opposite sides of the culture war. Except that when you look a layer deeper, the ideological similarity becomes evident.

Both Crusius and Betts are anti-corporation collectivists. Crusius explicitly rails against corporations in his manifesto, and he spoke favorably of universal health care and UBI. Also, he agrees with the Christchurch shooter, who calls himself an ecofascist. Betts, of course, was a self-described socialist on the extreme Left. In addition to tweeting support for Warren, he also spoke out against the industrial revolution. So it seems that, like Crusius, he too was driven by concern for the environment.

Admittedly, the fact that Betts killed his sister and apparently left no explanation for his rampage, that makes his motive less straightforward. Also, since he's dead, we might never figure it out exactly. But the actions speak for themselves, and the Twitter posts give us a sense of his beliefs beforehand.

Based on these two extreme examples, it looks like the militant nationalists and militant socialists are meeting somewhere in the neighborhood of militant environmentalism.

Edited by MisterSwig
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I don't think you are identifying the similarity.

The Dayton guy, from what I know, seems actually have untreated mental illness. Broadly speaking, mental illness does not increase the risk of violence from that person, but untreated psychotic illness can. So whatever he grabbed onto, he probably was bound to turn violent anyway without treatment. Not that ideology is irrelevant, but it doesn't seem possible to find a underlying philosophy for him. Anything else is pointless speculation. You need something more definite to make judgments.

The El Paso guy was much more ideologically motivated, it isn't hard to trace his environmental beliefs to roots to Nazi-ism ( ), and extreme concern for the collective.

Maybe the only similarity is that they are collectivists, and from that we probably could say it doesn't actually offer any support for people who feel that life around them is falling apart and being destroyed, and that the future is completely bleak. On some level direct activism with violent resistance is justified sometimes. But if the reason is about hopelessness and futility for being alive at all, it doesn't go anywhere good.

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A major difference is that Crusius was taken alive.  Ordinarily policemen would without hesitation shoot a man – repeatedly – welding a gun who had just killed someone or was about to.  Yet when a man who had just mowed down 20 some odd people held up his AK-47 and said he wasn’t going to use it anymore or was out of bullets (I gather something like that happened) the police believed him and held their fire.

The hand – and arm – is quicker than the eye.  Police know that a man can deploy and shoot his gun faster than they can react.  

Another thing, and it is bizarre.  One shopper says she saw several men dressed all in black enter Walmart right after Crusius.  All had guns and began firing after he did, and continued firing.  Her testimony is heartfelt and sincere:

Adriana

And another shopper saw a masked six foot tall shooter dressed all in black, which couldn't have been Crusius.

They could well expect to get away with it.  Most shoppers would be running for their lives and they could expect to kill any witnesses.  That two survived is their bad luck.  Investigative reporters should follow this up.

46 people were killed or injured.  I understand that an AK-47 magazine holds only 30 rounds.  And not every shot would hit someone, with an amateur gunman a large percentage would not.  How many magazines did Crusius have?

Another point.  Crusius’s manifesto is “too good to be true.”  He sounds intelligent enough to know that his act would play into the hands of those he claims are his enemies, politicians and pundits who want open borders.  Yaron Brook, for example, is now saying in so many words that people who oppose open borders create an atmosphere fostering mass murderers like Crusius.  (On the other hand mass murderers aren’t known for their ability to see ahead.)

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5 hours ago, Dupin said:

I made three points involving the behavior of the police, the testimony of two witnesses, and the manifesto.

This thread isn't about the police or spreading ridiculous conspiracy theories. Just on those grounds, I ask the moderators to please delete his posts from this topic.

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16 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Not that ideology is irrelevant, but it doesn't seem possible to find a underlying philosophy for him.

Did you read the article? It's obvious that he considered himself a "leftist" and a "Satanist." And mere days before the attack he agreed with an anti-Industrial Revolution tweet. Pretty strong stuff.

bernie.jpg.cf368bc566596bb2a22737fb7349b710.jpg

It appears this guy was more reactive than proactive. He retweeted a lot. Satanism is a direct reaction against Christianity. And I wouldn't be surprised if his attack was a reaction to something that happened in the bar, or possibly a reaction to El Paso. The El Paso shooter, while responding to a perceived "invasion," primarily saw himself as the vanguard of a militant movement. He was collected enough to explain his actions properly. The Dayton shooter, however, gives the impression of a hotheaded follower. I don't see evidence for psychosis, but he was definitely disturbed.

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Not sure what Satanism has to do with it. The tweet where he mentioned Satanism, he calls himself God. I kind of doubt that he meant it metaphorically. It was probably literal (and if so, one additional reason to think he had a psychotic illness that was untreated).

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I meant to add earlier:

Any possible suspicious testimony, or contradictory testimony, is why verbal testimony is unreliable. It's not that they are lying, or that everyone else is lying besides the one with the different story. It's quite normal that two people will remember very different things about the same event and mix things up. People might say they remember one person, when they saw several at the time; someone remembers multiple people committing a crime but actually they saw multiple suspicious people that were remembered as committing the crime. You need multiple witnesses to determine the full story, to corroborate witnesses, and any other epistemological due diligence.

 

 

 

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Eiuol,

Indeed eye witness testimony is unreliable, that is, sometimes the witness, however honest, is mistaken.  This is true in general but of course it doesn’t mean that eyewitness testimony is always false.  In fact eye witness testimony carries considerable weight in a courtroom.

In the case here we have two independent eye witnesses who say they saw men who, besides carrying a rifle, were (1) dressed all in black, (2) wearing a black mask.  Yes, both witnesses might be mistaken and in the same way, but a real investigation into the incident would include them and their testimony.

Unlike the Daytona Antifa massacre the FBI took charge of the El Paso massacre from the beginning.  Since the FBI has a long history of corruption we should be very skeptical about what they do and say.

About the alleged manifesto.  For what it’s worth – I know anybody can post anything on Twitter – here are some Tweets revolving around someone calling himself “Taylor made a 3,” account @CabooseL17.  That account was opened in 2012 and has over 500 tweets.  If you look at several at random his political position is anti-Trump.

The first tweet has since been deleted.  The rest were there at least on August 7.  I have expanded the abbreviation “Idk” ==> “I don’t know” in a couple of tweets, corrected “weitibg” ==> “writing” in one tweet, and corrected some minor typos and spelling mistakes, besides adding a period when the tweet ended without one.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 4
“Patrick has autism and was in special ed classes. I’ve read his writing. He couldn’t have written that document. I don’t know how this happened. He had to have been influenced by someone. He had to have had help. I grew up next to him.”

Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 4  Replying to @LMKnightArt
I know Patrick Crusius. He didn’t write that manifesto.

Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 5  Replying to @semperKAG @BabeReflex_8  and 43 others
Like none of this makes sense. He didn’t speak to anyone outside the family till he was like 4. He was sweet and his family was weird but not crazy. I glued a penny to the street in front of my house and watched him and his siblings try to pull it up for hours.

Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 5 Replying to @semperKAG
I just don’t want to be a part of an 8chan conspiracy chain. All I know is that I deeply believe that he wasn’t capable of doing what he did by himself. We’re in shock.  No one knows how this happened.

Jubal E. Harshaw @alimhaider·
Aug 5
So the El Paso shooter was in special ed.
[image quote]
Rutkoske, who suffers from dyslexia and ADHD[,] said he wa friends with Crusius for more than 10 years and was in the same special ed classes with the 21-year old from elementary school to high school.
“He was soulless, he lacked emotion, you couldn’t se any feeling in his eyes, he was an empty vessel.”

B @beowulllf
Aug 5
Well, that makes two sources. I wonder why the news hasn’t caught onto this?

Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 5  
I don’t know.  I’ve called. ... Like I know he did this but there is just no way he didn’t have some kind of help.  He had to have been radicalized and I know he didn’t write that manifesto.  He didn’t have the capacity.

B @beowulllf
Aug 5  Replying to @CabooseL17 @alimhaider
It’s amazing that this info isn’t getting more attention.

Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 5  Replying to  @shaunking @realDonaldTrump
I was his neighbor.  I really don’t think it is.  He wasn’t capable of writing that by himself.  There has to be a second party involved.

Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 6  Replying to  @jelavelechat @LMKnightArt
I grew up next to Patrick and his family. They lived down the street from me on the corner.

Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 6  Replying to @McGriddles243 @beowulllf @alimhaider
Ok to be clear. Patrick is 100% guilty and the shooter. I just don’t think he wrote that document. And if he did, he had help.

Maria Sederholm @Wordofbeak
Aug 6
Do you know for a fact that he had autism? I mean, do you know if he was diagnosed by a doctor, or is it something you've heard by others or assumed was the case considering his behavior and him being in special education classes?

Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 6  Replying to @Wordofbeak @LMKnightArt
Assumed through interaction and accounts of others.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edited by Dupin
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12 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Not sure what Satanism has to do with it.

You said it didn't seem possible to find his philosophy. I'm showing that he indicated several philosophical views, including being a "leftist," "socialist," and "Satanist." We have a general understanding of his views. The problem is linking them to his actions, because he apparently didn't leave any final testament.

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