The dubious exercise of assigning motive to high profile killings

I've watched two good videos and read one essay in the New York Times which make excellent points about political violence in America.

First, the essay by one Matthew Walther, with the title "Why do we think we know Kirk's shooter's motive".  Some extracts:

... the charging document suggests a relatively straightforward political profile and motive, especially when compared with the cryptic messages the shooter engraved on his shell casings, which were frantically mined for meaning in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Those inscriptions, the shooter told his lover after the killing, “were mostly a big meme.” He said that if he saw one of his scatological jokes mentioned on Fox News, “I might have a stroke.”

Perhaps it’s true that the opaque messages were a joke, from which his true intentions can be clearly distinguished. But when it comes to a person like this — that is to say, a young man who reportedly spent a great deal of time holed up in his apartment playing video games and using niche social media programs — I confess I have my doubts. I wonder if a legible political motive can neatly emerge from the fragmented, self-parodying, endlessly reflexive world of perpetually online discourse.

It is easy enough to imagine that this young man was radicalized. But it is also possible to see his radicalization, if that is the right word, as something post-political, a simulacrum of motive in a fantasy world...

He then goes through the meme-y messages left by the killer, and notes:

These inscriptions are the quintessential stuff of online gamer-style discourse: fragments without context, seemingly private jokes, missives designed not to persuade or even to be broadly intelligible but simply to circulate. In insular internet worlds, this style of communication is the point. And it produces an epistemic fog that can obscure the meaning of even the most intentional of gestures. ...

This is why it seems to me premature, at best, to speak of Mr. Kirk’s killer as if he were a left-wing militant. Say what you will about the members of the Weather Underground — their theories of revolution were facile, their moral compasses obviously malfunctioning — but at least their relationship to public life had a recognizable shape. A few middle-class college graduates wanted to become Marxist revolutionaries, and so they did.

Here's a key paragraph:

In the online world in which Mr. Kirk’s killer was steeped, heedlessness is rewarded. Half-thoughts are quickly replicated. It would not surprise me, in this context, if for some troubled individual, killing were to seem indistinguishable from posting — the ultimate trashpost, meant to be endlessly circulated, reinterpreted, willfully misunderstood, joked about, heartlessly recontextualized. 

Bear that paragraph in mind when watching the excellent commentary by Matt Bevan in his podcast when he talks about the young guy who tried to kill Trump. 

Here's the whole thing, and it's great: 

 

Bevan spends a lot of time noting the way the Right has reacted each time by endlessly repeating that "they" want "us dead"; a self serving rallying call that only serves to further polarisation and division.   (It is, of course, all in line with Trump's quintessentially authoritarian political tactic of continually claiming that those who oppose him are "bad", "evil" and deserve jail.)

Finally, while I certainly do not like Bill Maher as a personality, I still occasionally look at his takes on the current situation to see what line he is taking.   In this clip, he gives a useful summary of the general nutty, all-over-the-shop politics of several recent killers or assailants of political targets.   They rarely are coherent, and he decries the time wasted on trying to pin them onto one side or the other:  

 

While I think he makes a good case, there is no doubt that some shootings can legitimately be labelled as motivated by extremism of the Left or (more likely, as the FBI and researchers have been saying for years) the Right.   This is especially the case when the target is a group - a government building, a black church, or a gay bar, for example.   But when the targets are individual politicians, that is when it seems more common than not that the killer is a mental mess of one kind or another, and the motivation is often never clear or well rationalised.     

Update:  Since writing this post, I have learnt that even Karl Rove (!) has written an opinion piece attacking the Right's use of the blanket "they".  I assume I can't read it all at the WSJ, but here are some extracts from The Independent:

Longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove slammed those looking to politicize the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, stating that using it to justify retaliation against political rivals is “wrong and dangerous.” 

Conservatives have been pointing fingers at liberals ever since Kirk, 31, was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University last week. Authorities have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson with the killing, without indicating anyone else was involved.

President Donald Trump has also placed the blame on liberals, claiming, without evidence, that “most of the violence” is on the left. While the charging document against Robison says he “intentionally” shot the right-wing influencer due to a “belief or perception regarding Charlie Kirk’s political expression,” prosectors stopped short or providing a specific motive.

Despite this, right-wingers have followed suit with their blame game, claiming that an unspecified “they” is responsible for Kirk’s death – something Rove referred to as “a disturbing and growing undercurrent in our national conversation.”

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Rove noted that there is a a “pronounced emphasis on ‘they’ and ‘them.’”

“Charlie would be alive but for ‘them.’ ‘They’ killed him. ‘They’ are responsible for his death. ‘They’ must pay,” he noted.

“No. Charlie Kirk wasn’t killed by ‘them.’ ‘They’ didn’t pull the trigger. One person did, apparently a young man driven by impulse and terrible hate,” Rove continued.

“If there were a ‘they’ involved, law enforcement would find ‘them’ and the justice system would hold ‘them’ accountable. But ‘he’ and ‘him’ are the correct pronouns for this horrendous act,” wrote Rove, who was a senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. 

Rove later notes, “We aren’t helpless automatons whose actions are dictated by others.” 

“Using Charlie’s murder to justify retaliation against political rivals is wrong and dangerous. It will further divide and embitter our country. No good thing will come of it,” he wrote, adding, “It is also an insult to his memory.”

Rove concluded: “Above all, it needs to be repeated. Violence has no role in our country’s politics. Now or ever. Reasoned discourse is essential to our democracy. Charlie Kirk understood that. Let’s hope it’s a message his eulogists honor.” 

After a lone gunman shot Trump in the ear last summer, Kirk uploaded a YouTube video titled: “They tried to kill Trump.”  

Wow:  that last line.