Why Can’t We Talk About Ideology’s Role When Killers Aren’t White?
Jonathan S. Tobin, New York Post, April 5, 2021
When mental illness leads unstable individuals to commit crimes, it’s best to avoid drawing quick political conclusions about their motives. Yet that didn’t stop the media from speculating feverishly about “white supremacy” when a man went on a shooting rampage in Atlanta last month that left eight people dead, including six Asian women.
{snip}
In fact, mental illness is often key to understanding mass shootings, but far too often the discussion veers off into attempts to blame them exclusively on ideology, especially far-right ideology. The result is an impoverished national conversation — and an inability to understand how extremist ideology can catastrophically unhinge men and women who are already half-unhinged.
{snip} Twenty-five-year-old Noah Green drove his car into two officers of the Capitol Police, killing one and injuring another, before getting out and brandishing a knife; cops then fatally shot him.
{snip}
But it’s also impossible to ignore the fact that in recent years, Green had fallen under the spell of Louis Farrakhan. Indeed, just hours before he drove his car into those Capitol cops, he was posting links to the Nation of Islam leader’s maniacal speeches and writings (“The US government is the No. 1 enemy of black people!”).
{snip}
A lack of corroborating evidence didn’t stop the elite blue-check class from attributing the Atlanta killings to white supremacy. Yet those same talking heads appear to be completely uninterested in whether Farrakhan’s bigotry may have been a factor in Green’s motivations.
{snip}
The New York Times, for example, almost instantly cast doubt on any links between Farrakhan’s hate and violence. The paper quoted an “expert” who dismissed the connection, noting that the Nation of Islam has a lower “body count” than white racists.
{snip} Our mainstream media and pop culture continue to give a pass to Farrakhan, a man with a following of hundreds of thousands. With statistics showing that most hate crimes against Jews and Asians are committed by African Americans, it’s time to start treating his widespread influence as a serious problem.
{snip}
