We’re making progress, of sorts. Not everyone jumped in with Brian Ross and ABC News in trying to link Colorado shooter James Holmes to the Tea Party.
One left-wing blogger quickly wrote that he did not suspect a Tea Party connection because, in his view, a real wingnut would have targeted a more artsy film or one related to gays or Muslims. Another left-wing blogger, the father of right-wing eliminationist theory, also left open the possibility that this could be the exception to the usual rule of right-wing nativist psychopathy.
Like I said, progress “of sorts.”
I know I shouldn’t take the bait, like I did before. But anyway, here goes on the “real wingnut” theory:
I wouldn’t be surprised if this gun fan [“Jim Holmes”] is the Aurora tea party guy, but I bet it’s not our shooter. The age is just wrong.This won’t turn out to be motivated by right-wing politics. A wingnut shooter would shoot up an indie film or a Sean Penn film or a film with Susan Sarandon or Rosie O’Donnell in it. Or something gay-themed or maybe sympathetic to Muslims.This is going to turn out to be just plain old American apolitical weapon-loving craziness. That’s my guess.
The eliminationist theorist-in-chief, who keeps looking for “the Next Timothy McVeigh” at right-wing rallies, did not dismiss the possibility of a Tea Party / right-wing connection. No, he kept an open mind in the absence of proof since so many violent psychopaths are, at heart, nativist Tea Partiers:
But that does not mean that there is never an ideological component when a psychopath perpetrates some horrendous tragedy, either. Indeed, certain right-wing movements are highly prone to attracting psychopaths and mentally ill, unstable personalities, because their rhetoric and appeals so closely replicate the discontents of these people’s interior lives….The rhetoric of the Minutemen and their related nativist organizations – including, nowadays, the Tea Party – appealed to psychopaths ….We’ll have to wait and see what motivated James Holmes to open fire on a theater full of innocent moviegoers. But if he turns out to be a psychopath with an unholy attachment to some right-wing ideology, it will not really be surprising. Indeed, it will be all too familiar, all too predictable.
All too predictable? Indeed.
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