It never ends:
The man being held in connection with the death of MP Jo Cox has been named as Thomas Mair, who was described as a “loner” with a history of mental health problems who had previously subscribed to a far-right magazine.
Mair, 52, who was arrested by armed officers shortly after the attack, had spoken about receiving “psychotherapy and medication”, and was described by his younger brother as having “a history of mental illness”.
Despite being born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, a decade-old website posting identified Mair as a subscriber to S. A. Patriot, a South African magazine that was published by the pro-apartheid group, the White Rhino Club.
Police on the sceneThe club describes the magazine’s editorial stance as being against “multi-cultural societies” and “expansionist Islam”. A blog post attributed to the group, dated January 2006, described Mair as “one of the earliest subscribers and supporters of S. A. Patriot.”
I suppose we are just lucky this was in the UK, and not the US, or the guy would probably have been armed with a helluva lot more firepower.
Trentrunner
Cox’s children are 3 and 5 years old.
Kropadope
Expansionist Islam? Isn’t they the ones being expanded into?
chopper
it’s really not at all different than what happened to gabby giffords. although I’m sure the UK will actually give a shit, whereas here we shrug our shoulders and go to the gun store.
chopper
@chopper:
except that giffords lived. it was really close tho.
different-church-lady
So, totally a Muslim then. Just like that Unibomber guy.
redshirt
This was actually discussed in a previous thread, so yes, I stop you.
amk
How come so many whites are ‘mentally unbalanced’? Must be the choler.
hovercraft
@amk:
Whites are unbalanced, blahs are thugs and criminals with no respect for life.
Ella in New Mexico
I’ve decided that after the book that described Donald as having sexually assaulting his wife because his hair transplants hurt, and the statement he made a couple of days ago that the Republican leadership needs to just “Shut up. Don’t talk. Just be quiet”, that Donald is a sexual predator. He raped his wife, he talks in terms that sound like a rapist.
Therefore, given his love to make up cutesy names for his opponents like “Little Marco” and “Crooked Hilary”, his new moniker needs to be:
RAPEY DONALD.
r€nato
@Ella in New Mexico: you know what has been sorely missing from this orgy of Trumpenfreude?
Getting him to share his thoughts about rape.
Matt McIrvin
@chopper: Giffords’ attacker killed six other people, though, and injured more–he had a Glock with a large magazine, which this guy didn’t.
? Martin
Look, there’s a common thread through ALL of these things. It doesn’t much matter what the underlying driver of the anger is – mental illness or otherwise – these individuals will find some organization who can act as a validator for that anger. It was ISIS for the Orlando shooter, the KKK for Roof, Britain First for Mair, and so on. That’s what the SPLC focuses on – if you can defuse these hate groups, you remove some of the rationalization to act that these individuals are looking for. If you remove the guns (particularly those designed to kill people – their very existence in the consumer space suggestive that consumers should kill people) you remove some of the opportunity.
You have to assume that there will always be a sizable number of individuals capable of this stuff. But there’s two additional catalysts which can be controlled – hate groups, and access to things that are specifically designed to hurt people. Other countries do a better job of controlling both of those than the US does. It broke down this time in the UK – but it breaks down every day in the US.
Matt McIrvin
@r€nato: Aside from insisting that it mostly comes from Mexicans and Clintons?
redshirt
Bashing trump should be good for T-shirt business.
Corner Stone
Stop me if you’re watching Game 6 of the NBA Championship Finals.
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: Amazing how with right wing white people, it’s always ‘mental illness’ and not ‘right wing asshole’.
Hoodie
Why does Donald Trump refuse to use the phrase “Saxon extremism”? Either he doesn’t know what he’s doing or he knows exactly what he’s doing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I stop you not.
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin: Well, with Mateen it’s hard to tell what the ideological motivator was, because one moment, it’s Daesh, and the next it’s Hezbollah. Even though they’re at war with each other.
p.a.
@r€nato:
It’s a most important election, and the downticket damage to the Rethugs is important too, so this should be encouraged. But jeez, the whole Western hemisphere will need a shower after this.
Corner Stone
Bang!
LAO
@Villago Delenda Est: I assume there is a connection between mental illness and right wing philosophy.
inventor
@Ella in New Mexico: I was going to go with “Donny RICO” in honor of his impending RICO indictment (fingers crossed). No reason not to have both: “Rapey Donny RICO”. It’s got a certain…..creep to it.
Villago Delenda Est
@LAO: Well, that’s not much of a stretch, really. But the emphasis is ALWAYS on the mental illness and not the ideology that the perp embraces. Because we can’t go there.
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: I’m probably going to turn it off soon.
Omnes Omnibus
@LAO: Works for me.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
I suspect right-wing ideology is very attractive to people with Paranoid Personality Disorder and similar issues.
Mark
This was clearly Obama’s fault.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mark: Channeling Walnuts is bad. May cause Drain Bamage.
r€nato
@Matt McIrvin: oh I think he needs to go into much greater detail.
Especially about the prevalence of false rape accusations, something I am sure Cheeto Jesus would love to go on at length about.
Jack the Second
@Matt McIrvin: Including a nine year old girl.
Corner Stone
WOW!
Schlemazel Khan
@Matt McIrvin:
one of the many simple fixes to our gun problems would be to outlaw large capacity magazines and removable magazines on long guns. There would still be ammosexuals killing people but there would be fewer events because the big numbers wouldn’t be there & the events that did happen would have many fewer victims. It ain’t much but it should hear less push back as it is not taking guns away from anyone. Though I would not have an issue with outlawing semi-auto weapons of all kinds I think that would be a harder sell.
benw
@Corner Stone: Cavs playing sick ball right now.
rikyrah
Mentally ill. …ummmm…sure.
Whatever.
Eric U.
@Mark: Obama is directly responsible. Obviously.
Remember when everything could be blamed on the Clenis? Good times
LAO
@inventor:
Sadly, very unlikely. Trump U ended operations in 2010, so there’s a statute of limitations problem.
Calouste
@Villago Delenda Est: “Right-wing asshole” will be in DSM-VI, hopefully along with “gun-owner”.
LAO
@Villago Delenda Est: I hear you.
Helen
Ya know – except for the wife in CA these crimes are always committed by men. Perhaps we should bar all the men.
Pulling a Raven and not caring about the thread topic. My apt is for sale. Posted pics on Facebook and shared them with my friends. No one can see it. So I tagged two friends. They can’t see it. I just complained to FB. Odds on whether they respond? And more importantly how can I get Facebook to post the post?
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemazel Khan:
My dad has a semi-auto .22 that he inherited form his dad. Its internal mag holds six rounds. The really horrific killing machines are the semi-autos that have removable magazines.
Mnemosyne
Kind of on topic, but when I was looking for the Moana trailer for another thread, I stumbled across an upcoming British film called Denial, about the libel trial of Deborah Lipstadt after Holocaust denier David Irving sued her.
maya
I mentioned in a thread below that South Africa is still the apartheid state it has always been and probably gotten worse. This, according to a friend who just got back from a trip there with his wife. He had been there in the late ’90s when Mandela was president. Not surprising that white supremacist garbage is coming out of there. The White Rhino Club for Growth?
opiejeanne
Who was the woman who was on the plane to Orlando with Obama today?
Omnes Omnibus
@maya: Because of history, British racists are likely to turn to S.A. for their inspiration.
maya
@p.a.:
An El Doño?
benw
Warriors won’t go away…
Amaranthine RBG
@Schlemazel Khan:
That makes sense but I fear that such reasonable proposals will be resisted because many gun owners believe that any such compromise is just a step on the way to more prohibitive bans.
Anti-choice advocates have been chipping away at reproductive rights for years by imposing ostensibly “health based” restrictions that are really just intended to deter access.
Some gun control extremists – here and elsewhere – freely admit that their goal is to completely eliminate all firearms from private hands and, to do that, they are happy to glom onto any restrictions even if they cannot articulate a coherent reason for the restriction. For example, California requires a 10 day waiting period on purchases even if the purchaser already owns numerous firearms. That’s just silly.
I am holding out hope that there will be some sort of grand compromise on this issue and I think that will require that it be spearheaded by an individual or group that has credibility with gun owners and, perhaps, there could be some agreement for no further restrictions for X number of years. Probably easier said than done.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amaranthine RBG:
Then they are asking for eventual bans.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: It was neither. Mateen’s the equivalent of the guy that would claim to be a made man or a wise guy when he got angry. The more that come out the less and less this is going to look like terrorism inspired by ISIS or AQ or the Peoples Front for the Liberation of Judea. He threatened to shoot up his school when he was five. Anger issues, problems coming to term with his sexuality, inability to control his temper. If someone ever gets the psych eval he took at the police academy released I’m sure he’ll have blown the top off the MMPI.
Amaranthine RBG
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re probably correct and I’ve made variations of that argument before to friends of mine who own guns and oppose any restrictions at all.
piratedan
@Jack the Second: and a federal judge…. and while those people were “collateral damage”, Giffords was indeed the target of Jared Loughner. Giffords was indeed touch and go for her life and in Arizona, the shooting resulted in the state lege passing a bill indicating what the state handgun should be.
fuckers
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: Exactly, and I should have made that clearer. Not that anyone in the “Muslims are the enemy” camp would notice, but Mateen’s alledged “ideological motivation” doesn’t pass the smell test because he indicated that he was a follower of two groups that are at war with each other.
Anger issues, sexuality issues, daddy issues….don’t need any Islamic issues to explain this, although the narrative is always inclined to go with that.
dww44
@Adam L Silverman: I agree and wonder when Trump and others will back off the “radical Islamic terrorism” motivator for Mateen. I think maybe pretty soon, don’t you?
eclare
@Omnes Omnibus: Good to know. Saw the Youtube clip of the guy exchanging out AR15 magazines in about two seconds. Probably not the right terminology, but you get the point. No one has a chance with that firepower.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s going to be the real issue here, the impossibility to walk this one back because of the politics, especially of the election. Also, the expert analysts on the cable news channels can’t dial it back because it would impact their bottom line. Fox had one on tonight that I had a run in with about six months ago. When I got tired of the passive part of his passive-aggressive email response, actually he got sniveling and whiney, I went with: allow me to properly introduce myself. I’m Dr. Adam Silverman, my bio is below and my full, updated CV is attached. I never got a response… He had blind emailed me to try to sell me on coming to his expensive counter-terrorism seminar/program as a student and when I asked where he got my personal email from it started going downhill quickly. But if he doesn’t ramp up, or at least maintain the hyperbole, he can’t make any money.
When they finish going through this guy’s life with a fine tooth come, I don’t think that this one is even going to be somewhat ambiguous like the Unabomber or MAJ Hassan. The former was really a serial killer who’s behavior was driven by untreated mental illness, but he did have a list of political demands. I’m on the serial killer side of that one. MAJ Hassan was pretty clearly a psychotic break as he faced his impending deployment, but at the same time he was clearly accessing Islamic extremist material and interacting on line. So an argument can be made both ways with those two. I don’t think that will ultimately be the case with Mateen.
Adam L Silverman
@dww44: Trump wont. I doubt anyone of the right, even those closer to center will. The narrative is set for them and they’re going to milk it for everything its worth. I think the Democrats will eventually. The news media is mixed. Fox obviously won’t, nor will right wing internet, radio, paper, or magazine. CNN and MSNBC are going to bounce back and forth going “does not compute, does not compute”.
EBT
@inventor: Deadbeat Donnie, the RICO rapist.
Felixmoronia
I think the country needs to follow Mr. Rock’s lead and make ammunition expensive as hell. If a single round costs $1000 these kinds of massacres would be greatly reduced. There can always be exceptions: if you are an elk hunter(big here in western CO) and have valid elk tag you can buy 5-7 rounds of your favorite calibre ammo. If you need more to kill an elk you shouldn’t be hunting.
? Martin
@Villago Delenda Est:
There is no ideological motivator. He just wanted to kill people. He chose Hezbollah or ISIS or whoever as a rationalization for that desire to kill people. He knew it wasn’t right, but needed some external agent to articulate that ‘no, it’s actually okay, because reasons’ and he chose whoever was able to provide enough of a rationalization to follow through. It’s not really that different from how any religious group uses the Bible (or the founding fathers) to rationalize whatever bullshit hate they wish to get off on. Its just selective reading to justify an already held viewpoint.
Martha from Augusta
We would have also accepted “The National Front Disco” as a post title.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ella in New Mexico: Getting close. How about “Don Raper”, the quintessential Mad Man?