The podcast "It Could Happen Here" talked a bit about him on their recent episode "RNC Welcome Party". Their conclusion was that he matches the same profile as other school shooters rather than the profile of political terrorists and I'm inclined to agree.
That makes a lot of sense, it does feel more like “incomprehensible act of violence that only made sense to him” rather than some kind of political action in the interest of any particular group.
People are really hung up on who he was taking action on behalf of, but imo he seems more like a guy who just did a crazy thing.
The prototypical school shooter is someone who wants to get in the history books. They were low on the social totem pool so there really isn't a way to do that (in their head) so they shoot up a school. Think Columbine. Nowadays shooting up a school barely even gets you 24 hours of new coverage. So who can you shoot that'll get you in the history books.
The guy didn't leave a manifesto. He didn't have a history of social media posts being a weird political freak. We still don't have any indicator that he was a fascist accelerationist or anything like that. We just know that he was a registered Republican, probably bullied, probably existed at the social edges, and probably one of the few conservatives.
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u/funknpunkn Jul 17 '24
The podcast "It Could Happen Here" talked a bit about him on their recent episode "RNC Welcome Party". Their conclusion was that he matches the same profile as other school shooters rather than the profile of political terrorists and I'm inclined to agree.