What is known?
He was not registered with either/any political party
He did not bother voting in the 2024 election
He rarely seemed to surface from the deep end of the internet,
where he learned a language that included antifascist slogans
divorced from coherent ideology
Politics, for the shooter/sniper, existed alongside video games
as a source for a strange swirl of signifiers
He etched some of these allusions onto his bullet casings
In one of his texts, he explained the engravings were "mostly
a big meme"
ALL THESE ASPECTS ARE SHARED WITH
Butler, PA shooter who sniper-style killed a rally participant, missing then-
candidate Donald J. Trump before a MAGA crowd;
57-year-old assassin from Minnesota who shot State Repr.
Melissa Hortman & her spouse and Golden Retriever point-blank
while masked and continued on injuring others in point-blank assaults
26-year-old stalker-assassin who shot in cold blood the United Health
Care CEO on a Manhattan street after a brief tourist stay at a hostel
where he stalked his prey who approached a Stockholders' meeting
THE MESSAGES MAY BE GARBLED
with clear political targets in view
and the lethal actions have political
consequences. . .
How to understand political violence?
the ideologies of today are nihilism
and despair -- we have lone individual/s
lost in a conversation with an online void.
NY TIMES analysis by Jia Lynn Yang
