A typical murderer drawn to the racist forum Stormfront.org is a frustrated, unemployed, white adult male living with his mother or an estranged spouse or girlfriend. She is the sole provider in the household. Forensic psychologists call him a “wound collector.” Instead of building his resume, seeking employment or further education, he projects his grievances on society and searches the Internet for an excuse or an explanation unrelated to his behavior or the choices he has made in life.
His escalation follows a predictable trajectory. From right-wing antigovernment websites and conspiracy hatcheries, he migrates to militant hate sites that blame society’s ills on ethnicity and shifting demographics. He soon learns his race is endangered — a target of “white genocide.” After reading and lurking for a while, he needs to talk to someone about it, signing up as a registered user on a racist forum where he commiserates in an echo chamber of angry fellow failures where Jews, gays, minorities and multiculturalism are blamed for everything.
Assured of the supremacy of his race and frustrated by the inferiority of his achievements, he binges online for hours every day, self-medicating, slowly sipping a cocktail of rage. He gradually gains acceptance in this online birthing den of self-described “lone wolves,” but he gets no relief, no practical remedies, no suggestions to improve his circumstances. He just gets angrier.
And then he gets a gun. ...
Though on any given day, fewer than 1,800 registered members log on to Stormfront, and less than half of the site’s visitors even reside in the United States, a two-year study by the Intelligence Report shows that registered Stormfront users have been disproportionately responsible for some of the most lethal hate crimes and mass killings since the site was put up in 1995. In the past five years alone, Stormfront members have murdered close to 100 people. The Report’s research shows that Stormfront’s bias-related murder rate began to accelerate rapidly in early 2009, after Barack Obama became the nation’s first black president.
The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks hate groups, and there's lots more to this report. Of course, these violent racists are a small minority in America, but bigots aren't, and bigots feed into this kind of thinking.
Right-wing political pundits and media figures foster this kind of thing, too. (Ron Paul, for example?) Sure, for them it's just a way to make money and gain political power. If they're associated with violence, it tends to be counterproductive. But when you push fear and hate, what do you expect will be the result?
It doesn't take any intelligence or expertise to kill people. Any loser can do it. It's easy to get a gun in America, and even a moron can pull a trigger. And these are the kind of people the NRA thinks should have free access to machine guns, assault rifles, and high-capacity magazines!
But only for personal protection, right? Well, you have to prepare for the upcoming race war, huh?
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