Coming out of the Highland shooting, one has to wonder,
what lesson, if anything, anyone will draw from this?
And I don't want to focus too much on just one piece of media, but
sometimes you see something that you feel like you just have to respond to,
and I believe Ben, that you responded this on Twitter as well.
I saw this tweet from NPR, says, it appears the Highland Park shooting suspect
has no ideological or political bent.
Yet extremism researchers say these acts may actually be part of a troubling new
trend, one that involves dark subcultures that glorify violence, and
foster nihilism.
Well, then that's the only thing to worry about,
these dark subcultures that have no ties whatsoever to anything political.
I'm not even saying that they necessarily have to have some sort of direct
causal constant, 100% verifiable link.
But the idea that there's no linkages,
there's no Venn diagram that we can diagnose the overlap there.
To say this person, because they apparently went to Trump rallies,
the Trump flag, whatever, also might have at one point called themselves a liberal.
Dave Rubin calls himself a liberal, I don't understand why someone calling
themselves that when it is not reflected in any way in their life,
is supposed to mean anything.
And by the way, more information is coming out every day from people who knew this
person, and said that they did not just go to one Trump rally,
they had been involved in these groups, so we'll see as more of that comes out.
But Ben, the idea that we come out of this, and literally, if there's anything
that interrupts a 100% pure narrative, well then, we can't say anything.
We don't know anything, there is nothing that can be learned from this,
other than that there's some dark stuff that happens online.
And I find it deeply depressing that that is what some, like NPR,
who we're supposed to consider them serious and reputable.
We're supposed to be able to have some sort of respect for them, expectations for
them, they're coming out of it saying, what are you gonna do,
nothing political be learned from this.
>> Yeah, I mean, ultimately, I think it all stems from this, I mean, the media
right, mainstream media outlets go out of their way to bend over backwards,
to give undue credit to right wingers.
And which is why, this is an explicit tactic that the extreme Right uses,
they say that they're being racist ironically.
They will post Nazi memes and say, it's just a meme bro, it's just ironic,
just a meme, I mean I'm at this Trump rally, but it's so ironic, right?
But it's not though, it's not, they say it's ironic as a way to
inject it into the mainstream, that's the whole point, right?
Of course, if you run around saying you're a Nazi,
people are gonna correctly hate you because you're a terrible person.
But somehow, when the media sees people posting pepe memes and
saying that they're like, they're just saying this Nazi stuff ironically.
Then all of a sudden, that teeny tiny bit of pretense is enough,
for so many people in the media to be like, I guess they're just being ironic,
and it's just terrible reporting.
And I think stems to this core belief among a lot of people in the media,
that feel like you have to take right wingers at face value.
That you have to take everything they say at face value, and not think maybe for
a second, that they might be being dishonest or manipulative in some way.
>> Yeah, I remember a great example of that from a couple of years ago,
was when the the OK symbol was going around.
And some people, I mean they weren't really white supremacists, they were
just doing it to make other people think that they were white supremacists, so
the joke's on you.
And I would ask the audience, do you know the difference between doing the ok symbol
because you're an actual white supremacist, and
doing it because you think the idea that you'd be a white supremacist is funny?
Because if you do, I'd love to know what it is, because it sounds like you think
this stuff that is life and death for a lot of people, is just a joke for you.
And I would say that while that may not be exactly at the same point on the white
supremacist spectrum as some others, it ain't on the good side of it.
I don't think people who take this stuff seriously, and understand how life and
death it is, think that it's fodder for little casual funny jokes, but
maybe that's just me.
We'll close this segment with one other bit of good news,
apparently the shooting at Highland Park, and by the way, there are other mass
shootings that happened on that same day, it was not the only mass shooting.
This is America After all, we contain multitudes of mass shootings,
could have been worse.
Police actually stopped in Richmond Virginia,
a planned July 4th mass shooting, after they got a tip
that led to the arrest of two people in the seizure of multiple guns.
They had apparently been targeting what's called Dogwood Dell,
a local amphitheater in Richmond Virginia.
They say that this citizen overheard a conversation where the attack was being
planned.
And officers responded to that tip, went to the location and
seized two assault rifles, handgun, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from
a residence, where the firearms and related material were in plain view.
We don't know much more aside from that, in terms of motivation,
how they got the weapons, what the exact content of the weapons were.
But we could have had another mass shooting on that same day Ben,
so, good work there.
Both in terms of the individual who, unlike the father, in this other case,
took it seriously, and the police who actually stopped this from happening.
>> Yeah, it's just so wild, because literally there was a mass shooting,
there were four mass shootings that day.
One of them was a mile from where I live in Minneapolis, and
I mean it's just really terrifying, but unfortunately,
this is the type of violence that the United States was built on.
I mean, quite literally the 4th of July what it represents,
is one of the main reasons why the colonizers declared independence.
Was because King George signed an agreement with indigenous folks,
to say that they weren't going to expand beyond the Appalachians, right?
And that agreement apparently enraged the founding fathers so
much, that they declared independence, just so
that they could keep expanding their genocidal program.
And so the unfortunate reality is, this is reflective of some of
the roots of American society that we've never really dealt with.
>> 100% yeah, and look, you mentioned earlier, we probably should have also
thrown this in with the NPR thing, but you mentioned that this person clearly had,
there was aspects of clear, murderous anti Semitism as well.
They had just gone to a synagogue earlier and then thankfully did not shoot up
that place, but they shot up an area that has a large Jewish population.
Again, the ideology, in the same way we haven't grappled with
as you were saying some of the legacies of colonialism, like the deep anti Semitism.
We like to take one tweet from someone and digest it and
say, good, well we've dealt with the anti Semitism.
No we have not, the roots run deep and they are very accepted,
even by some people who pretend to have issues with tweets or whatever.
One final point I want to make, I mentioned this in our production this
morning, So the people like the Alex Jones' and the Marjorie Greene's,
who believe that literally every mass shooting is a false flag.
including by the way the one in Highland, Marjorie Greene was saying that on her
show that she has for some reason, what about this one, what happened?
The government went to all the trouble of arming these two individuals,
giving them weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, then what?
The people that the FBI chose, just oops, oopsy-doopsy,
we mentioned it in public and the whole thing was sprung, but wait,
but I thought the whole government was in on this.
So was this one not a false flag, can it not be a false flag as long as it stopped,
is it only a false flag as soon as it happens?
Did the government just, oops, we messed up what, what a goof,
how exactly does that work and the ones that actually get stopped?
None of this makes any sense.
>> Yeah, no, I mean, that's like a whole another thing about how right wingers,
I mean, because the thing is right?
Right wing, they don't believe that, they don't actually believe that
it's a false flag, they just want to find some way to either blame the government,
or blame the left for mass shootings, so that they can justify further violence.
But as soon as the further violence happens,
then they turn around and pretend, it was the left that did it,
or it was this false flag operation to create even further justification.
It's just this self serving lie, that once again,
I think a lot of people take at face value, but it serves a very clear
political purpose for the right wing, that is very dangerous.
>> Yeah,, I would also say, and
this is something we usually talk about, that the more deranged the theory that
you begin to hear from people in positions that are supposed to be serious.
Like a congresswoman, a Marjorie Greene, or from Tucker Carlson,
in continually spreading absolutely insane impossible theories.
You make a mockery of the idea that politics is a serious thing that one could
talk about seriously, that one could think about seriously,
that has real-world serious consequences.
You train your audience to think that everything is fair game, everything
gets to be a joke that we all get to make fun of, and that's fine for their side.
After all, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Greene have already won the game,
they're rich and powerful, they don't need anything to change, and
they would very much like for it not to.
But if you are someone for whom you have not yet
won, that you have been left behind, that you are losing ground economically.
Things don't get to just be effing games to you ,because you can't win
playing games, it has to be serious.
We have to identify actual problems, we have to figure out the solutions,
we have to actually persuade people to do them, we have to be serious.
And all along the way,
they make a mockery of the idea that any of this even could be serious.
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