Puzzling, that, and illuminating of American hypocrisy and media bias at the same time.

Same hate, less fear....because....

Some where playing" it's all the mother's and brothers fault for influencing him" card with Tsarnaev too.

run ins with police and two arrests in Feb., March and April, before the June massacre. That's what I find disturbing and how it seems that the dysfunctional parents and family were absent from his life, possibly due to their own battling or just plain neglect. A troubled background, another 'lost' young man and nobody saw the signs? Who doesn't have some difficulties growing up? No excuse and no pass for this mess and horrific crime.

he was able to purchase a gun. No way he would be carrying if we had just a few laws governing who can possess these WMD's.

serious work in this country, as many have covered in this thread. Early reports stated his father bought him the gun, others said he used 21st birthday money. As I bring up in #28 he was a reclusive, estranged youth who left school in the 9th grade and wasn't working. That's a lot of free time over 5 years. Roof also was acting bizarre and had 3 police run ins and 2 arrests in Feb., March and April before the June 17 massacre he planned. Little is known about his background which is why I posted this article that has a bit more info. albeit heavily slanted to the troubled family life and upbringing rationale.

After the shooting some suggested his father and others were involved in forming his racist hate views. That might be, in which case it's being held back and is troubling. Who gave him the middle name 'Storm' as in Stormfront, the white Aryan hate group? Yesterday I saw a NYT article of June 18, a day after the attack which said people saw him sleeping in a car in the last year.

In any case it's clear few cared about him growing up and that he should have never been around weapons. But the poor, troubled white kid (he's an adult, age 21) with a dysfunctional family and possible mental issues underscored in this article is no excuse yet is becoming way too common esp. in M$M- whites are troubled or mentally ill (not racial white terrorists), whereas blacks and PoC are innate born criminals and thugs, and all Muslims are terrorists. This has to change somehow. Just think of the reaction if a black man had shot up a white congregation, as one poster commented.

no excuse for his murders of innocent people. Hell I had a hard life growing up, I'm felony free and I didn't have privilege. No pass here.

perhaps by looking at what went wrong in his life we can learn some insights about why things like this happen. And perhaps we can use those insights to attempt to find people like that before they can act out their demonic impulses.

Tough life growing up, that's sad but not an excuse.

be racist mass murderers.

"People around him worried about his lack of direction. He was spending too much time in his room in front of the computer."

Most internet users don't seek out hate sites & racist peer networks; and the internet clearly wasn't responsible for his drug & delinquency problems.

This guy's surfing habits clearly played into ideas & rhetoric he already harbored. No point trying to shift the blame.

If you're white and a criminal, you're treated like a victim.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

Some of it also depends on what's important enough to remember or considered valid enough.

Having what you read fit in with what you already think is a great aid to memory, as well. It would be interesting to pick a relatively recently publicized black killer (or alleged killer) and see what, exactly, was written about him and his "radicalization." Fewer of those shoot across racial lines. And, to be honest, if it's one African-American killing a lot of others the press tends to be a bit squeamish. It gets reported as news, but nobody dwells on it because discussing "radicalization" becomes a racial issue. To discuss such stories at length starts looking like a criticism of the entire AA community and its flaws. If a 21-year-old black man killed 9 church goers, it would sink and there'd be no big social issue at stake that anybody would want to have aired in public.

Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammed fit the criteria, though, but that was 2002 (Wiki tells me) and things change over the course of a decade. I don't know what was written about them and their radicalization at the time; I wasn't paying attention so much to the media then but remember there was some personal stuff about Malvo, especially. Muhammed was Nation of Islam, and that became a bit of a nightmare in so many ways for news coverage. NoI is considered a "black separatist" hate group by the SPLC, and that's toxic to the MSM, esp. since Muhammed was part of the Million Man March security force. You can talk about white separatist groups, except maybe on Fox, but black separatist groups ... Farrakhan distanced himself from Muhammed so fast you could hear a loud pop as the vacuum in the space he'd occupied collapsed in on itself.


One confound is this, however: Unless it's a well-publicized case you're not going to find the interest to care about the guy's history and research it for any MSM source. Nobody would want to read it, so you'd be relegated to looking at smaller websites or media outlets. Which in turn means smaller resource base and less depth or extent. The Internet helps nurture these kinds of stories so the further back you go the fewer such stories I'd expect to find.

Of course individuals are responsible for their actions, good or bad.

But context is also important. That's why it's a good thing that the Confederate flag is being taken down. Should have been done long ago. That's why Bree Newsome's act wasn't just symbolic. That's why people confront racism and bigotry, rather than just sit passively biting their tongue while the racism feeds on itself and grows. That's why analysis of and criticism of context, both microscopic as it impacted the individual and macroscopic as it impacts the whole culture, is important. The purpose of contextual analysis isn't to give the individual a pass on personal responsibility. Especially when, as is so bloody obvious, the problem is much bigger than any individual "bad apples".

and labeled a 'thug" and criminal. Yet a white killer is "troubled". It's like affluenza every day, no matter how rich or poor, when it comes to white youths.

'innately' violent criminals, even at a young age as old Ron Paul said. Pure racism, fear and hate. The class system is in play when affluent people have a 'drinking problem', regular and poor folks are 'drunks'. The wealthy are 'eccentric, the poor and vulnerable are 'crazy'. And gender also- men are 'players', women are 'sl*ts'.

happen? How can we prevent it?" next time around.

I hope there is more study of the killer. Not just reporting.

But the reporting is a beginning, an attempt to answer the natural journalistic question "why?" And maybe it will lead to more thought on what practical things we can do to head off horrific events like this, and if it is feasible.

Maybe this story will make people look more closely at the people around them whose behavior has changed, who are acting oddly, and maybe they'll be more proactive in doing something about those people who are only troubled now & haven't done anything horrific yet.

side of the world and tried this shit we would send drones and kill the little kids next door to him to scare his ass, maybe kill him. And perhaps Guantanamo.

He does the same shit over here and we have a judge who damn near stands up and applauds, and a whole bunch of people who want to put him in a hospital because he is troubled.

I can't help thinking we are missing the boat by not insisting on calling him a terrorist, but maybe it isn't politically popular right now - I wonder who is scared?. Associating guns with terrorists might well be a way to make an inroad into control.

but it does not explain, cause or excuse mass murder.

And when you're 21, your parents don't control you in any way.

One person I knew quite well growing up committed a really awful murder as a young adult. He was a really nice kid. His family and brother were nice (I went to school with the brother, and my older brother with the boy who became the murderer). And I really did know them. The older boy came over to the house quite a bit - we lived in the same town pretty close. My parents thought very well of both boys and the family as a whole. They had a sister, who was very nice.

I still don't know why. I still can't fathom it. It happened. He did get into drugs and alcohol in his early twenties, and I suspect that had something to do with it.

Do some have a screw loose? Do some just make the wrong cognitive choices? I don't know. Two out of three of the kids in this family did very well. No one understands what happened to the third. No one can see how that happened or understand why.

My mother was crying when she told me. I still want to cry when I think of it, and when I read the story about this killer that's the first thing that popped into my mind. There was not a trace of meanness or nastiness in that family. They weren't raised that way, and J. never showed any of that even as a teenager.

Some things are unfathomable.

I think it's a very important part of trying to understand what happened to make someone do what some have done. We do focus on parents, but there are many other life experiences that are part of what we become. Even being able to contain emotional states instead of eventually going out of control: that is taught through many different means. One of which is a sense of security that enables enough confidence to circumvent violent behavior.

I'm glad you posted because I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about these interactions, and trying to find possible solutions. I still maintain that it's obvious.

The woman grieving, who forgave him. That's the kind of behavior that we need in this world. If everyone were as giving as her, maybe the world could slowly begin to heal.

Last edited Sun Jun 28, 2015, 01:48 AM - Edit history (1)

of course his hatred is deranged! why else would someone murder 9 people in a church during a prayer meeting!

why do people keep linking "yahoo news" tea party propaganda bullshit on here?

before the June massacre he planned. Yes there are real problems in this country. He also repeated 9th grade, his last year of school. Between that time as a teen and turning 21 recently what was going on with him besides being a reclusive, unproductive and sick young person increasingly alienated from family and friends.

That's a lot of idle years not spent going to school, working or doing anything worthwhile. As far as we know he was apparently a young man that nobody cared about even when he was seen sleeping in a car, as I just read in a NYT article of June 18, the day after the shooting. Nothing I've seen so far examines his past or upbringing, except this slanted article today. More about him should and will come out, one way or another.

If we had a real plan of action and when we see some one behaving differently, becoming loners we have to take action. How many innocent people who has to die before some chances are made. I am not to the point of forgiving Roof as the families have. We will have to start paying attention to those around us, start speaking up when things appears out of the ordinary. I really don't think those attending a bible study realized anything out of the ordinary but some if the things said by friends is not ordinary.

It can be done...just look at the sudden demise of the Dixie swastika..

I went to their main page for a look. Found some headlines:

"Jewish Problem"

"Crazed Black Troglodyte with Giant Machete Attacks Asian Woman"

Just reading the headlines were enough, I didn't read the articles.

and msm is all over it along with white washing the entire southern nazi flag of hate, murder, slavery, and lynchings -

are easily swayed into radicalism (as we've seen with Hitler Youth, Neo-Nazis, ISIS, etc). I think Roof here was game to learn how to hate and be violent because he learned it from his surroundings, making him an easy grab for hate groups.

But let's be real; he may have had a troubled past, but who on this planet hasn't? Not every white boy from South Carolina is gonna rampage through a black church and kill whoever they can. Roof isn't a kid anyone nor is he some naive little victim; he knew what he was doing and now he has to pay the price!