NewsVine_Mariyam
Platinum Member
This doesn't sound very scientific to me, but is that really the point of the article?
Two angry men submerged themselves in the far-right internet. One committed murder. The other walked away. Why?
Joseph Bernstein
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on November 24, 2018, at 11:32 a.m. ET
We call them warning signs, but we only seem to see them too late.
Before he murdered 10 people in Toronto with his car, Alek Minassian warned on Facebook of an “incel rebellion.” Before he shot to death 11 Jews in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Robert Bowers announced his actions on the social network Gab: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Before he killed two women in a Florida yoga studio, Scott Beierle ranted about women and minorities in a series of YouTube videos.
In the weeks following the Tree of Life slayings, and after years of disinterest from law enforcement and the media, the dangers posed by far-right extremists have finally come to the fore of national attention. Much of the discussion has centered on chaotic digital spaces like Gab, where Bowers left a history of anti-Semitic posts. These are disturbing communities, where the culture war’s right-wing vanguard gather, and, we are told, hateful people radicalize into dangerous ones. The question here, one of the signal questions of the Trump age, is: Does hateful rhetoric lead to violence?
Who is the kind of person for whom saturation in far-right words and ideas poses an urgent risk — and who isn’t?
It’s a very good question for cable news, because it can be argued over tendentiously forever and never really answered. It’s also woefully simplistic. Of course hateful rhetoric can lead to violence. Of course hateful rhetoric doesn’t always lead to violence. A monofocus on hateful words and the communities that allow and encourage them ignores the simple fact that the vast majority of people exposed to them will never murder anyone, and conversely, that plenty of potentially violent extremists don’t post publicly on the internet. A better question, from a public safety perspective: Who is the kind of person for whom saturation in far-right words and ideas poses an urgent risk — and who isn’t?
Continued
Two angry men submerged themselves in the far-right internet. One committed murder. The other walked away. Why?
Joseph Bernstein
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on November 24, 2018, at 11:32 a.m. ET
We call them warning signs, but we only seem to see them too late.
Before he murdered 10 people in Toronto with his car, Alek Minassian warned on Facebook of an “incel rebellion.” Before he shot to death 11 Jews in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Robert Bowers announced his actions on the social network Gab: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Before he killed two women in a Florida yoga studio, Scott Beierle ranted about women and minorities in a series of YouTube videos.
In the weeks following the Tree of Life slayings, and after years of disinterest from law enforcement and the media, the dangers posed by far-right extremists have finally come to the fore of national attention. Much of the discussion has centered on chaotic digital spaces like Gab, where Bowers left a history of anti-Semitic posts. These are disturbing communities, where the culture war’s right-wing vanguard gather, and, we are told, hateful people radicalize into dangerous ones. The question here, one of the signal questions of the Trump age, is: Does hateful rhetoric lead to violence?
Who is the kind of person for whom saturation in far-right words and ideas poses an urgent risk — and who isn’t?
It’s a very good question for cable news, because it can be argued over tendentiously forever and never really answered. It’s also woefully simplistic. Of course hateful rhetoric can lead to violence. Of course hateful rhetoric doesn’t always lead to violence. A monofocus on hateful words and the communities that allow and encourage them ignores the simple fact that the vast majority of people exposed to them will never murder anyone, and conversely, that plenty of potentially violent extremists don’t post publicly on the internet. A better question, from a public safety perspective: Who is the kind of person for whom saturation in far-right words and ideas poses an urgent risk — and who isn’t?
Continued
