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Given that it's actually the school that owns the copyright (apparently "sorry our daughter killed your family, here's the copyright to her writings" is a thing now...), my guess is that there's discussions of the school environment in her writings that the school believes would be damaging, even if the ground truth is actually anodyne.
Even very light discussion of "my school didn't affirm my gender identity and led me through Unfixable Trauma, they're horrible homophobes and transphobes" could very easily rile up the rainbow mafia against them. From what we've seen of her writings, and especially considering she hated these people enough to kill them in cold blood, my guess is she wasn't afraid to call them all sorts of evil names and accuse them of all kinds of wickedness. It would be even more damaging if we set aside my assumption of good faith on the part of my ingroup and assume these accusations were of genuinely terrible things that really happened.
I don't think this is an action by the woke mob, I think it's an action in defense against the woke mob. Given that the parents who transferred the rights to the school liked it enough to send their child to there, I expect that their action was in solidarity with them.
Sure, but more importantly, what was in there that made "them" defensive enough to give the copyright to the school in the first place? That's the more relevant question.
I don't think it's anything we'd find surprising.
The narrative around its release would fall on political lines, the right would know she wanted dead kids, the online left would say with varying couching the kids deserved it, the establishment would focus at best on some random point about the essay while they continued the exact rhetoric they put out following the shooting: "Psycho murders multiple children, trans most affected." Especially if there are likely superficially true but substantively false allegations about abuse by the school.
I think if it were some astonishing new low in depravity we'd have read it, so we have read it, in the gestalt. It could be a rare bit of wise realism. Nothing will be gained from litigating her words, let the dead rest.
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Everything we've seen about the shooter screams 'batshit crazy'. There's probably some mix of true and hallucinated misdeeds. Probably the true ones are relatively small potatoes but so easy to confirm that it makes the hallucinated ones look true.
Or at least that would be my assumption.
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It was a good strategic move. If the parents of the killer had tried to keep them out of the press, they would have failed.
Regardless of what's in them, I would imagine the victim families would prefer it not go out and become the subject of more discussion. Regardless of their politics.
Are the ideological motivations of spree killers politically relevant, or are they irrelevant?
If they're irrelevant, then how do we stop Blue Tribe from pretending otherwise when they find it convenient to do so?
If they're relevant, then how do we stop Blue Tribe from pretending otherwise when they find it convenient to do so?
The last several years have seen multiple spree killings and attempted spree killings directly motivated by Blue Tribe ideology. The Dallas police shooting, the congressional baseball shooting, and this case here are three examples. None of them have actually been taken seriously as ideologically-motivated killings by the culture generally; I see no indication that people actually remember that they happened. By contrast, numerous spree killings have been attributed to Red Tribe ideology, even when that attribution was preposterous, as in the case of the Giffords shooting.
It seems to me that this is a serious, chronic problem. I see no indication that anyone has any ideas for how to solve it within our existing system. I see no indication that our current system even sees it as a problem,m as opposed to a positive feature.
This is an example of why I am not in favor of maintaining the present system.
Irrelevant. Certainly irrelevant in the sense that as little attention should be paid to them as possible. We shouldn't know the names or manifestos of people who murder children. It encourages child murder.
I hold that belief personally, but even if I didn't: I'd still defer to the actual parents of the actual Christian school kids murdered and say that if they want to keep the manifesto out of the press to protect their own sanity, then that deference seems fitting and proper. If they said that they wanted it out there, they could post it themselves on a website and there ain't shit the Blue Tribe can do about it. The motivating force behind this isn't some nebulous cabal of NYT editorial staff, it's the actual parents of the actual children.
Either way, I don't really think this is a serious, chronic problem. Paranoid schizo blue tribers tell me that black and trans people are murdered in the streets by racists, paranoid schizo red tribers tell me that white kids are regularly beaten to death in inner city school districts by bloodthirsty gangs of migrants. The issue such as it is seems to be immune to media bias, red tribers are just as likely to imagine political violence as blue tribers. Whose manifesto gets the most airtime seems less related to media bias than to how effectively they broadcast that manifesto prior to the shooting, if the trans whatever had livestreamed the shootings then it would be out there regardless of copyright.
If anything, I more associate talking about motivations with Red Tribe speakers post-shooting, the Blue Tribe mainstream just wants to keep the focus on guns guns guns. Who cares why he did it when it offers me an opportunity to take away someone's constitutional rights?
There is definetly a chronic problem of anti white and really anti all the groups progressive dislike.
Right wingers shining a light on genuine problems suffer from actual censorship. There isn't an equivalence.
Conversely, liberals promoting completely false pictures about black epidemic of being falsely killed by polcie believe in false facts.
Lets just say for any right wing exaggeration believed or suppressed, much more truth is suppressed by censorship, or dishonestly pretending it is BS, or extremism. While conversely, progressive false narratives are dominant.
We would definitely benefit by starting to understand real problems and stop hiding facts. IIRC there were leaks about the trans shooter who did it motivated by the pervasive antiwhite, antichristian, narrative.
The people who censor rightists talking about genuine problems like say black crime, or any other of the taboo topics, are contributing to creating a distorted narrative that leads to a far left extreme result. What we need is to remove from positions of power people who suppress such issue, and promote false narratives, over those who would promote the truth.
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I think the less the general public knows about spree shooter’s manifestos the better. There’s at least some evidence that spree shooting can be contagious much like suicides and so the less sensational the reports on any given shooting, the less likely the shooting is to inspire copycats. I don’t think it changes if the motives are political.
I do think there’s a place for experts to study the motivations of spree shooters. I want cops and schools aware of the commonalities between the events, likely motivations, and best practices for preventing them or mitigating the damage during those kinds of events l.
This seems like a reasonable position as far as it goes. How do we address the problem of people blaming spree killings on their political opponents? Likewise, how do we solve the problem of people actively encouraging spree killings?
Honestly, I would hope and expect that the parties themselves would deal with those who are clearly and obviously calling for violence, and I would expect them to defend their own members from false accusations. I’m not sure, outside of the public refusing to support people and groups calling for violence, there’s much the general public can actually do.
As it stands, the bar for what constitutes “calling for political violence” seems pretty low. If you use a flamethrower on empty bio es labeled with the agenda of the other party, that’s now political violence. Even though no humans are in the images. With such a broad definition, almost any ad that gets attention could be accused of violence in some way. To me, if we’re going to stop “encouraging spree killings”, I think it should be done in cases where the call is real and unambiguous. You can’t curtail free speech by calling every symbolic reference to a gun violence.
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