Whenever there’s a horrible crime, people have the natural but kinda weird hope that the perpetrator was from “the other side.”
Somebody shoots up a school, or commits some hideous crime, and while we all feel terrible about the tragedy, we also have this secret (or not so secret) wish that the bad guy was from the other party, or other ideology, or whatever.
It’s natural, because we like to think that “our side” is good and righteous, while the other side is sick and twisted and evil.
This is a stupid reaction because everybody is sick and twisted and evil, and no matter how you divide up society, you’re going to get bad eggs in every group.
When you see a horrible act committed by the other side, you think, “see, I told you! This is what their hateful rhetoric leads to!” But when someone from your side commits a crime, you think, “there are crazy people everywhere.”
We need to stop that.
There are ideologies out there that promote violence, and we need to keep an eye on those people. But it’s another thing to assume that an ideology promotes violence, and that seems to happen far too often.
This guy was an anti-feminist. Does anti-feminism promote violence? I’m sure there’s some gender theorist out there who’s made that case, and I suspect the media will come up with a way to blame this on their favorite bogeymen.