Latest posts on Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug topichttps://rhizzone.net/forum/topic/16144/2021-10-17T03:52:08+00:00Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by JohnBeige)
2021-10-17T03:52:08+00:00412834spree/mass shootings have very different intent behind them than gun violence as a whole does. i also dont think tears is really talking about gun violence in general. it seems almost commonplace to say that members of the white nation inside the us feel entitled to a certain cut of the profits of the imperial state that, consciously or otherwise, they know is theirs in a fundamental way. when we remember that white men make up about 63% of all mass shooters in the united states, we should investigate. where are they shooting? in declining order of prevalence, workplaces, retail spaces, and schools make up over 2/3 of the venues. who are they (initially) targeting? usually their bosses, a 'loved' one, or women in general. in general id say we (as in members of the forum) arent surprised that white men act this way, since its how the state they built also acts, but i would just like to highlight that mass shootings are a particularly patriarchal and political form of violence.
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<br/>e: also, hello and welcome to the zone. we're not especially friendly but we are glad to have you.
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by SookieIlychStackhouse)
2021-10-15T02:48:28+00:00412803</p><style type="text/css">.custom412800{color:#000000 !important; background-color:#FC8D72 !important; }</style><blockquote class="custom412800"><em><a href="/forum/post/412800/">tears</a> posted:</em><br/><p class="postbody_text">wanted to throwing my "bit" about how the majority of shootings are not the headline bait stuff, and once you strip out inter-lumpen shootings you are left with the majority of shootings being a middle aged white man shooting a former or present female sexual partner and maybe their children too. draw some parallels with relationship between rapists and their victims.
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<br/>combine how the man is brought up to understand that they are owed the labour of a wife with the UI/UX friendly features of the gun in the minecraft style crafting furnace that is the united states of amerikkka and bake for a couple hundred years</p></blockquote><p class="postbody_text">
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<br/>yeah gun violence generally is a completely different story. it i wanted to explore the totality of gun violence i’d probably start with the number of cops who shoot their spouses and work from there.
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<br/>i was focused on spree shooters specifically with this post but i started from a premise that i’m realizing was half baked and it kind of serves to make the rest incoherent.
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<br/>i stand by the stuff about the petty boog nature of the political class and the way the false narrative of access to political power drives despair at addressing your grievances through the political process, but the source of the grievances for the kind of person who becomes a spree shooter is much more bound up in a threat to their position of middling power from all sides rather than anger upward being misguided downward as i originally posited.
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Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by tears)
2021-10-14T23:59:07+00:00412800wanted to throwing my "bit" about how the majority of shootings are not the headline bait stuff, and once you strip out inter-lumpen shootings you are left with the majority of shootings being a middle aged white man shooting a former or present female sexual partner and maybe their children too. draw some parallels with relationship between rapists and their victims.
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<br/>combine how the man is brought up to understand that they are <em>owed </em>the labour of a wife with the UI/UX friendly features of the gun in the minecraft style crafting furnace that is the united states of amerikkka and bake for a couple hundred years
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by shriekingviolet)
2021-10-14T16:39:38+00:00412786</p><style type="text/css">.custom412784{}</style><blockquote class="custom412784"><em><a href="/forum/post/412784/">colddays</a> posted:</em><br/><p class="postbody_text">You don't need to be a veteran of the Nepalese civil war or a regular contributor to Quishi to post here,</p></blockquote><p class="postbody_text">
<br/>but it helps!
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by colddays)
2021-10-14T14:59:19+00:00412784Hi SookieIlychStackhouse, welcome to the forum. Thanks for posting your thoughts. I agree with most of the points brought up about it here in this thread. I see that you're reading Settlers right now, which is a great choice. Most of the criticisms of your post here have a background in the arguments outlined in that book. In short, the settler nature of the "white working class" and its resulting alliance to the bourgeoisie makes mass shootings carried out by this class not just programming from the bourgeoisie, but their own (semi)independent initiatives in service of their own goals. There is a contradiction between the class interests of the white working class and the racialized workers of the usa that cannot be put down to bourgeois trickery.
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<br/>I hope the style of some posters doesn't chase you away from here. Also, it's definitely a good idea to read some older posts, especially the ones in the archive tab on the front page, but just cause something got discussed in a thread in 2016 doesn't mean you shouldn't post about it. It's good to re-examine topics from time to time, and the forum can benefit from more activity anyways. You don't need to be a veteran of the Nepalese civil war or a regular contributor to Quishi to post here, it's just an internet forum not a cadre organization or any kind of political organization at all. That being said, some ideas are already so established here that posts which aren't aligned with them will cause a large volume of responses, which can feel overwhelming even if they were all very nice and gentle. A lot of these established ideas are practically impossible to seriously and rigorously discuss in any other online space, so some posters can be very rude and outright hostile in their responses to try and preserve this one island.
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<br/>Thanks again for posting, I look forward to posting with you more.
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by solidar)
2021-10-14T13:24:36+00:00412780I want to say up top that this is a bit of scattered thoughts I had but don’t have the motivation to make more coherent and cohesive
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<br/></p><style type="text/css">.custom412775{}</style><blockquote class="custom412775"><em><a href="/forum/post/412775/">lo</a> posted:</em><br/><p class="postbody_text">hello op. you might want to consider that a lot of mass shooters seem to have state/intelligence connections(there's even that one crankish book programmed to kill that argues that all mass shooters and serial killers are products of mkultra type programs) and when you combine this idea with awareness of things like gladio and the strategy of tension you get the impression that a lot of these events are probably deliberately encouraged by the state rather than being spontaneous violence. this doesn't really contradict your basic conclusion that america produces mass shooters by design but it's a bit more of an overt production process than the one you were talking about i think. </p></blockquote><p class="postbody_text">
<br/> To be fair to ‘programmed to kill’ I don’t think it talks about any mass shooters - it mostly focuses on serial killers and the case it makes certainly implies that all the prominent ones it covers come from MK-like programs but more concretely (and imo somewhat convincingly) shows that they were not just “crazy lone wolves” but individuals with some powerful connections and/or group that helped them kill and then scapegoated them.
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<br/>I was thinking along the lines of your post. Not just with mass shooters but nearly all the actions lumped together under “terrorism” in the US tend to end up having a helping hand, or at least a blind eye turned, by the state. It feels cliche and empty to say at this point but i was also thinking of where organs outside the official state also encourage this kind of violence. The pentagon sponsored action movies and military video games, the guilt-free slaughter of zombies anywhere they show up, the constant stream of copganda television, the dexter or squid game or amerikkkan horror story tv shows that turns killers to protagonists, the internet fan-clubs that some killers have gained, the true-crime podcast craze, the immediate news-media attention any attack gains. Not all of these are state sponsored or co-signed, much of it has overt targets for its violence outside US boarders. It’s a whole class (or classes) - many political groupings (from fascists to law and order liberals) - that could see their cause furthered by gladios and semi-randomized violence and might have thought that encouraging that broadly is worth funding.
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<br/>One theme that seems to come up often in MK stuff, cults, anywhere else where control is pursued is that intense trauma inflicted early and often on children tends to make them easier targets later.
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Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by SookieIlychStackhouse)
2021-10-14T05:51:10+00:00412776yeah there’s definitely something to the notion that mass shooters are acting out of defense of their class position against the oppressed masses who must break down the white class’s power to gain liberation and the white supremacist government can only benefit from the direction of this violence being toward the racialized masses rather than toward the capitalists that have continually contracted the economic position of the white labor cohort as their labor becomes less necessary in the face of increased extraction of wealth from the global south.
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<br/>i don’t think my instincts were necessarily leading me in the wrong direction but i definitely could have put this through a few more drafts to tease this out more. i really appreciate all the thoughts so far!
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<br/>except the shit posters, you i will encircle from the countryside (a vpn link from vietnam) and conquer you (stew a little bit with my tender femoid feelings hurt)
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by lo)
2021-10-14T05:08:54+00:00412775hello op. you might want to consider that a lot of mass shooters seem to have state/intelligence connections(there's even that one crankish book programmed to kill that argues that <em>all </em>mass shooters and serial killers are products of mkultra type programs) and when you combine this idea with awareness of things like gladio and the strategy of tension you get the impression that a lot of these events are probably deliberately encouraged by the state rather than being spontaneous violence. this doesn't really contradict your basic conclusion that america produces mass shooters by design but it's a bit more of an overt production process than the one you were talking about i think.
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<br/></p><style type="text/css">.custom412759{}</style><blockquote class="custom412759"><em><a href="/forum/post/412759/">babyhueypnewton</a> posted:</em><br/><p class="postbody_text">Also when did "settler colonialism" and "decolonization" become the new liberal buzzwords? Never thought I'd see the day.</p></blockquote><p class="postbody_text">
<br/>i'm pretty sure i've see liberal types on twitter and such using them but as you would expect basically devoid of any radical content or analysis. it's probably not surprising that's happening given that there seems to be more awareness of stuff like sakai's writing on the internet in general now
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by karphead)
2021-10-14T00:57:46+00:00412769and welcome to the forums
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by karphead)
2021-10-14T00:57:33+00:00412768hey, op, duh doy
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by tears)
2021-10-13T23:00:18+00:00412767</p><style type="text/css">.custom412723{}</style><blockquote class="custom412723"><em><a href="/forum/post/412723/">SookieIlychStackhouse</a> posted:</em><br/><p class="postbody_text">Right wing media takes advantage of white supremacy to eliminate class consciousness.
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<br/>i disagree
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by SookieIlychStackhouse)
2021-10-13T21:38:13+00:00412766</p><style type="text/css">.custom412764{}</style><blockquote class="custom412764"><em><a href="/forum/post/412764/">babyhueypnewton</a> posted:</em><br/><p class="postbody_text">The large majority of socialists are liberals. I would even go so far as to say the large majority of Marxists are liberals. Liberalism is a very powerful ideology and imprints itself onto you through the act of living under capitalism. It must be constantly fought through the method of critique, the most dangerous thing is to treat it as an identity one chooses or rejects since that is when liberalism truly does its work.
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<br/>For example, you are not actually critical of capitalism. You are critical of "finance capitalism" or "neoliberalism."
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<br/></p><blockquote><p class="postbody_text">This is another kind of violence, the theft of liberty through theft of livelihood. It’s inflicted by a bourgeoisie whose profits are now completely decoupled from productivity. The rich no longer need to make anything, even through hired labor, to get richer. The best way to grow money is to invest it into financial instruments that only attain reification in physical goods or services at the bottom of a dozen-layer Seussian maze of equities, hedge funds, and short sales.
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<br/>Besides the fact that this connection is simply untrue given that white gun violence is far older than neoliberalism, even if it were true why would we care? Will bringing back "good" capitalism for the American working class end gun violence? Instead of understanding the logic of Trump supporters, you seem to have become absorbed in it. </p></blockquote><p class="postbody_text">
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<br/>i think you’re picking up on a poor articulation on my part rooted in the fact that i wrote this in response to an argument.
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<br/>i was attempting to characterize the worldview of the people who commit violence but i seem to have portrayed it as my own worldview.
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<br/>i plan to revise this essay extensively based on the responses i’m getting here.
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by pogfan1996)
2021-10-13T21:31:08+00:00412765In this essay I will prove that I am not a liberal. Merriam-Webster defines a liberal as
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by babyhueypnewton)
2021-10-13T21:23:04+00:00412764The large majority of socialists are liberals. I would even go so far as to say the large majority of Marxists are liberals. Liberalism is a very powerful ideology and imprints itself onto you through the act of living under capitalism. It must be constantly fought through the method of critique, the most dangerous thing is to treat it as an identity one chooses or rejects since that is when liberalism truly does its work.
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<br/>For example, you are not actually critical of capitalism. You are critical of "finance capitalism" or "neoliberalism."
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<br/></p><blockquote><p class="postbody_text">This is another kind of violence, the theft of liberty through theft of livelihood. It’s inflicted by a bourgeoisie whose profits are now completely decoupled from productivity. The rich no longer need to make anything, even through hired labor, to get richer. The best way to grow money is to invest it into financial instruments that only attain reification in physical goods or services at the bottom of a dozen-layer Seussian maze of equities, hedge funds, and short sales.
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<br/>Besides the fact that this connection is simply untrue given that white gun violence is far older than neoliberalism, even if it were true why would we care? Will bringing back "good" capitalism for the American working class end gun violence? Instead of understanding the logic of Trump supporters, you seem to have become absorbed in it.
Discussion :: Laissez's Faire :: Mass Shootings Are a Feature of Amerikan Democracy, Not a Bug (by SookieIlychStackhouse)
2021-10-13T20:22:03+00:00412760man i know i’m new at this but calling me a liberal? ouch