ApocalypticaNow: He's white and rightwing so here come the sympathetic stories about him being bullied in school

He's white and rightwing so here come the sympathetic stories about him being bullied in school

The gunman who allegedly tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump was bullied in high school and didn’t fit in with other students, former classmates told CNN. Here's what we know so far.

What we know about the Trump rally gunman so far | CNNwww.cnn.com The gunman who allegedly tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump was bullied in high school and didn’t fit in with other students, former classmates told CNN on Sunday.

I was bullied in school too but I don't think that would be the first thing news reports about me would highlight if I did something similar

Same

Same here.

No, they would report on your leftist politics. Corporate media is forbidden to report that the shooter was indoctrinated in far right ideology and hate.

Here for it in the context of shooting Trump, though. Perhaps some people will start to see the ludicrousness of this practice.

I was literally bullied by the entire school in high school. Grades 5-12 were pure hell for me. Shockingly, I've never killed anyone. Huh? Funny that.

High school yearbook photo for white shooters and jet skiing with the kids photo for white guys who murder their wife and kids. Those are the rules

I’ve often wondered if there is a correlation between middle aged blokes who jet ski and middle aged blokes who murder their families. Jet-skiing can’t be that popular, so maybe we should just preemptively imprison any male over 35 who does this? I’m surprised the FBI haven’t investigated this.

I think it's a class thing, like I would jet ski if I could afford it, and rich people are more conservative

Rich white men kill their families more than other white men? Jesus FBI, this should be obvious.

eh, jet skis are a menace to aquatic animals. be glad you can’t afford to be a menace.

Fair

jet skiing is universally popular among people who can afford it and dont already have more expensive hobbies. it’s literally just a people thing

Every time

"ANTIFA TERRORIST! ANTIFA TERRORIST!" *note slides across desk* "LONE WOLF WITH MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES!"

This is also setting up all the "lone wolf, not a symptom of a larger right-wing trend of violence" that always follows white/right-wing violence.

It's not like they have been pushing things in this direction for years, and certainly not like their efforts are now causing them problems.

They tried saying the Columbine scumbags were bullied too. They were actually bullies

And Nazis! With access to an arsenal!

Who had been in serious trouble with the cops before and gotten the “boys will be boys” treatment.

Most of the school shooters have been the bullies. Claiming that they killed people because they were once bullied amounts to the lowest form of victim blaming. Hell, I kinda doubt these first anecdotes about this kid. People know what to say to get on the news.

I think at best people are conflating "bullying" with "nobody wanted to hang out with him because he was a total weirdo who *wore camo to school*."

I mean they were begging a guy who went to school with him to say the killer was bullied but he basically said that the dude was every guy in high school who wasn’t the quarterback

Don’t forget the common ‘and was a raging racist/misogynist’.

In this case, though, it was racist/misogynist-on-racist/misogynist violence. There’s an argument to be made for letting them settle this among themselves. And it’s interesting that nobody has pointed out the key problem: if Trump had been carrying a gun this never would have happened

Enough bystanders suffered!

Oh, yeah. Specifics of that haven't come out yet AFAIK, but I'd bet cash.

Plus sometimes it’s “nobody wanted to hang out with him and his group of friends.” Like, there goes the loner narrative

Ding Ding Ding winner!

I note you said "kid" there, and it might be that. Focus on his childhood, get people to think of him as even younger than he was, so young that he couldn't really have been responsible, just a kid acting out, quite random, tra la.

None of this excuses what he did. How do you miss from that distance?

I'm not excusing him, and I'm trying to work out how you got that. I think the press are doing this, in the way that it's common to play down terrorism when committed by white people. I don't think you're making those excuses! But I noticed that you were calling him "kid", and I think I have too.

I was being sarcastic. Hence the comment about his poor marksmanship. I agree with you about how the press handles these stories so badly

Remember, “repeatedly being reminded of the rules, disregarding threats of consequences, then having those consequences arise” is the same as “being bullied.”

I wonder if any orgs will recognize that this guy is the American Man that the far right has created over several decades

Carlson and other freaks are constantly going on about “what it means to be a man” and this killer is a product of that environment.

Reminder that “they were victims of bullies” was also a Columbine call, and it turned out that no, not only weren’t they victims, Harris was a significant bully himself and Klebold went along with it.

Most bullies are also bullied. It's just not a good excuse for murdering people

That’s not true. There was one, low quality study in 2018 that seemed to suggest it, and of course the media ran with it, but 40 years of research says they’re over-confident, arrogant, and lack respect for others, and the low quality study has never been repeated.

The study I saw once found that school bullies tended to have healthy self-esteem, high confidence and strong social skills. This was generally a major factor in what made them effective bullies in the first place.

Yes, and that’s been found multiple times, in many studies.

And really it should be pretty fucking obvious that someone is going to have a hard time being an successful bully otherwise.

I was the least popular kid in my bully-infested school, and I definitely didn't go around shooting people.

Yes, diagnoses along the lines of “a fundamentally good person who made a mistake”

Who among us

I could swear there's a common pattern where these people are presented this way, and it later turns out they were actually very off-putting or otherwise awful, which elicited the response that news reported as "bullying"

How many lone wolves equals wolves who aren’t alone?

That would require a level of investigative reporting no media outlet is capable of these days. Fox News makes sure of that.

with white people, it is mental illness. With everyone else, it’s evil.

If only more women would sleep with right-wing incels, we wouldn’t have this political violence. This is all (somehow) the fault of progressive women.

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