the media:
we’ll stop naming school shooters due to copycat killers
also the media:
his name was thomas matthew and here’s a 90 minute special about his preferred breakfast cereal
👀 👀 👀
If this encourages these psychos to stop shooting children and shoot politicians instead, I’ll take that trade.
I’ll say the name of anyone that takes a shot at a fascist, for any reason. Even being the wrong kind of fascist.
I’ve always said we need a Walter Audisio day as a national holiday.
Did the media ever really say they’d stop naming school shooters??
Also, I’m told this wasn’t a school shooting.
I know of one who should have been in school
The media is not one thing. Media is plural. Good luck getting “the media” to agree on anything.
They sure can agree on a few things:
- Ads make money.
- More ads make more money.
- Money.
- More money.
- 🦀 money money money 🦀
But are they concerned with making money? 😁
If they’re privately held, yes.
If they’re publicly traded, yes.
If they’re publicly funded, also yes, but only because they wouldn’t exist otherwise.Even if they don’t say it, it’s always a priority :)
There are several large nonprofit media corporations such as NPR.
I vaguely remember a pinky swear.
For like 2 weeks and they went back to it
I guess they made the call that releasing this information is the lesser of two evils, the other one being to withhold it and to let speculation run wild in a heated political climate, in which one side is not shy about threats of violence.
Wish.com Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t shoot up a school though
Noticed this too. They just plaster his face and have analysis and stories all over youtube and news. I thought US are already over this yet here we are.
ITT: Look at the parents, this kid was just rebelling!
Press X to doubt
Or… He was a conservative that saw MAGA as the existential crisis that it is. He decided that he had nothing left to lose. He went for it.
Let’s be real here. The only shame was that he missed.
I think he died for a cause. But that could just be my bias showing.
I just want to go back in history and ask at what point people would’ve considered it appropriate to use political violence against someone like Hitler, or was it never okay? Like was it post first coup? Post second coup? After invading Poland? Did they need to wait for gas chambers? I’m curious when public sentiment shifted.
Bitchass conservatives are always pushing for political violence. I’m tired of the left always trying to by the better man.
Well people tried to kill Hitler loads of times. 42 times according to Wikipedia. First was in 1932, before he became dictator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Adolf_Hitler?wprov=sfla1
That is a fantastic question. Pretty much everyone agrees that Hitler should have killed in the cradle given hindsight.
When is it moral to kill the motherfucker without having a crystal ball?
Earlier than most people will openly condone given the nature of their State and society.
However, what if that creates a big dumb Hitler martyr that a more effective fascist can wave as a bloody flag and things get worse due to better managed evil?
For much of the populace, sentiment only began to shift when life got harder for them personally. For some, that was when their children were killed in the war, for others it was when food shortages started to hurt, and still others would fully support the reich until it inevitably turned against them. Most personal impact that people felt was brushed off as “patriotic sacrifice” for the greater good. It was a bunch of small things that just piled up over time. Different people had different breaking points. But some people went through the whole war remaining fully supportive of the government.
You have to remember that propaganda was also much more effective then, when the government could fully control all media. Many Nazi supporters at the time had no idea what Hitler was really like or what was going on at concentration camps. The guards for those camps and other SS soldiers were chosen because they met certain loyalty criteria and would not go against orders. But everyone else was either oblivious to the cruelty, fearful of what would happen to their families if they went against the government, or just blissfully unaware and brainwashed by propaganda.
With the Internet today, it should be harder for people to fall for propaganda. The Internet really changes things now. You can see the disinformation influence everywhere but it’s much harder to silence all the dissenters now. There will always be people who refuse to seek answers or listen to opposing viewpoints and there’s not much to be done about that except teach open mindedness to children when they’re young. It’s why the fascists try to hard to simultaneously control and hamstring the education system. Unfortunately, they’ve been at it so long that there’s now a large portion of the population that grew up with poor education and are now easily influenced by the media sources that the fascists control. The propaganda today must focus more on convincing people that there is an existential threat in the form of a group, person, or ideology that only they can stop. They just need to convince enough people that doing evil things for “good” reasons is justified. They’re beginning to reach critical mass of supporters to where they can brazenly try to seize control of the government now, laws be damned. You see them pushing on those legal boundaries much more frequently these days. If they succeed, things will get worse for everyone (including their supporters) when they decide to fully drop their facades and begin doing evil things without any justification besides “because I felt like it”. Leopards will always eat faces, but for some reason people never learn that lesson.
People famously tried to kill Hitler many times. Dude was like a cockroach and kept getting away.
Or… He was a conservative that saw MAGA as the existential crisis that it is.
Or he was a conservative and thought that Trump wasn’t racist enough.
Or seen the Epstein stuff, and felt incredibly betrayed.
Former rightist here, I not only got my face eaten by the Fidesz leopards (gutted health-care, gutted job security, gutted disability benefits that are now also harder to get, etc), and I remember the day when I’ve read that Fidesz lowered the age of consent to 12 in case both parties are under 18. I thought a “conservative” party would do the opposite, and raise it to 18 with some exceptions. I remember being so angry I couldn’t sleep that night at all, seen the sun rising, and my luck was that I didn’t have school on that day. And after the whole cHiLd prOteCTion fiasco, one of their politician even married an 18 year old he groomed since she was 14. Many claim the low age of consent of my country is only for close-in-age relationships, but it doesn’t stop much greater age differences, which are dangerously popular, because “boys at my age are stupid and don’t have cars” as some of those teen girls would say, others are being groomed with “but age differences are natural” if they were skeptical and didn’t want to run into such a relationship.
I took the whole “child protection” thing seriously. I knew victims. Many of them were my age. However when I had to realize some was just using it as an issue to get me to vote for them, while they themselves were doing it, often way more publicly than how Trump did it.
Damn…it sucks that I can’t call that idea far fetched lol
A few things, like the shirt he was wearing, makes me wonder if it was Trump’s stance on gun control that triggered this.
According to reports from classmates he failed to make the school rifle team because he was a poor shot - but also the instructor noted that he made “crass jokes” and FWIW got a poor impression of Crooks. I mention that tangentially it could apply to racism or who knows what or who he made the crass jokes about while shooting. Was he joking about shooting minorities or something?
I feel that everyone should resist the urge to act like psychics or psychologists right now. We know far too little at this point to speculate on this kids state of mind before or during the shooting.
As we learn more, perhaps that will change, but - and this is the terrible truth - we may never know. and we’re ALL going to have to learn to process and move on from this either way.
Seriously. It might not have been political at all.
When John Hinckley Jr took a shot at Reagan, he was trying to impress Jodie Foster…
Removed by mod
There is no need to bring psychology here at all.
how did you read me saying, “I feel that everyone should resist the urge to act like … psychologists,” and think i was in disagreement?
you’re pretty much calling every single american ancestor that died for 4th of July America’s independence a mentally ill
i most certainly did nothing of the sort
my point is that we know so very little factual information about this kid that nobody can do more than to speculate or guess as to his actual motivations, so we shouldn’t until we learn sufficient facts to draw a reasonable, logical conclusion.
The more we know, the more this looks to me like a suicide by cop that wanted (and failed) to leave a huge thing done so people remembered him.
He was a self proclaimed Pedo Hunter
That explains his target
Zing!
Not even a zing, it’s a sad fact
That’s exactly what Trump heard on that stage.
I keep hearing this but what’s the source?
The only place I’ve seen that is screenshots of clearly fake Instagram account bios.
Which is definitely why the media is posting his picture and personal details everywhere right? To make sure other people aren’t persuaded to seek fame in the same way.
Uh I think they’re just doing it for monies, dude
The guy tried (and almost managed) to kill an ex-president and candidate for a second term. Of course the media is going to cover all the shit they can. It gives them clicks and that’s all that matter.
On the other handl, apparently, the guy had some mental health issues was bullied and honestly, what other outcome can you expect if not a very fast death when you try to do what he did in the way he did it?
Either he was out of his mind and was completely delusional, or was trying to leave the world with a huge kill in his name to be remembered.
Edit: typo
I absolutely agree, but I think it’s important to neither glorify nor demonize the attacker. This isn’t a route we should keep open to gain fame/infamy.
We shouldn’t demonize him, but we should be sober about him.
He was a loser who intended to make our country worse.
Highly skeptical on that worse part.
How so?
I’m also skeptical. Just like the candidate, I feel like this sort of behavior tends to be very self-centered. Maybe his action will leave the country worse off but I doubt he thought beyond himself, that he would do something significant and be remembered.
Worse how?
Had he been successful, the far right would likely start engaging in Timothy McVeigh style acts of terror.
Seeing that he failed, we will probably still get that, except they have Trump to be the general giving orders.
Look at all these down votes I have gotten for calling this kid a loser incel. Some of these down voters, considering the demographic of people who use Lemmy, are going to be the victims dying in the name of Trump’s revenge.
the far right would likely start engaging in Timothy McVeigh style acts of terror.
Sounds like they’re a dangerous bunch and 2nd Amendment people should do something about their leader.
You got downvoted for the make our country worse part. He would have made it better no matter how YOU want to view it. The racist rapist with 34 felonies is not only a terrible human being, he literally wants to be Hitler. Fuck that, and fuck anyone voting for him.
Welcome to late stage Capitalism.
You’re not wrong, but it can be put even more succinctly: “But, money!”
If there’s one guarantee in this world, it’s that shooting someplace up will always get your name in the news.
Although in the US it’s so common you’ll be forgotten in days unless the target is somebody famous.
Good. Let’s keep running that so the famous people are the ones getting shot. Not our nations children in schools 😊
Here is my irresponsible speculation: kid did it to get back at his dad. Dad was a republican flying trump signs in the yard, mom is registered democratic. Kid grows up wearing hunting outfits to school, trying to get on the shooting team, getting bullied (even after that time he tried to fit in by getting on the antitrump bandwagon following j6), trying to be the version of manliness his conservative father believes in, seaking his father’s approval, and paying the price socially with his peers. But as much as he tries, and fails, to get dad’s approval, mom is always there for him. Mom is a dem, probably secretly, with dad forcing strict “traditional” family roles (hence the signs in the yard, mom probably didn’t agree with but was powerless to stop). Kid seems to fit the stereotype of young man, bullied in school, working a dead end job, few if any friends, no future to speak of, just generally mentally unstable, ripe for suicide by cop alreadt. Then something happens, dad hits mom, dad cheats on mom, dad screams at kid calling him a loser and also yells at mom for rasing a mommas boy, something like that. Kid snaps, betrayed by his father again, but also protective of his mom who was always there for him. Kid decides rather than killing his dad (either because of unshakable childhood fear, or a desire to cause more pain to his father then death would afford), he would kill something his dad loved more than anything, more than his dad loved his mom, and especially more than his dad loved him. He’d kill dad’s god king Trump, and go out along with him. His dad would lose his hero, and the world would know his dad was responsible because he failed as a father, and thus his father would be the greatest traitor to the Maga movement ever.
I base this on no evidence other than the couple of facts we know about voter registrations and the yard signs and the like. Again this is just my speculation, which it is completely irresponsible to engage in right now (fun though!).
really thought you were going to end that with the source of the truma being because in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell.
We really need users like that on Lemmy to replicate the positive aspects of the Reddit community that are worth bringing over. Something original to here, hopefully.
I base this on no evidence other than the fact that in nineteen ninety eight the undertaker threw mankind off hеll in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer’s table.
Your chair must have massive armrests
Seems as reasonable as most other theories
Like you already said, you’re obviously speculating, but I think you might be onto something re: the dad. Dad trauma combined with suicidal ideation…it’s plausible and way more reasonable a motive than a lot of the stuff out there.
You are right, this post was incredibly irresponsible.
It very well could be that. It could also be a girl told him she’d let him touch her boobies for 10 seconds if he shot Trump.
You should write… because you basically nailed a believable story here.
Wasn’t that $15 from a 69 year old veteran with the same name?
I’ve tried to find sources for this, but all lead into a circle of people just saying this without providing an actual verifiable link or anything.
Edit: This comment from someone was the closest I got: https://lemmy.world/comment/11189733
Funny how I heard about the $15 on the news but not about how it turned out to be a better person with the same name.
This has been disproven.
Eyup
Wasn’t this proven false?
What, you expect journalists to investigate claims?
Or be a human being?
This guy looks like a dorkier HP Lovecraft
Also
there have been pro-Trump signs on display in the yard of his family’s home.
Is a much different message than “signs in his yard.” Don’t worry though, I’m sure all of the kid’s life is being scrubbed by every agency in America and in sixty years we’ll know why he really did it.
Because of woke. And
Auntie FaAnne Teepha.Wasn’t she in final fantasy? Ann Elizabeth Tifa - I mean.
Coming into this comment thread relatively late, but I briefly wondered after reading the headline if this was a rebellion against the views his family instilled in him.
Obviously, it’s a heck of a rebellion if that idea holds even an ounce of water, but I could see rebelling against parents, coupled with the existential frustration that most folks feel about the current political situation, paired with the inexperience/poor decision making of youth, or even the beginnings of schizophrenia leading down this path.
Definitely filing that line of thought into the “complete speculation, and almost certainly not what really happened” bin, though.
This guy looks like a dorkier HP Lovecraft
Kinda looks like fetal alcohol syndrome to me.
I’m confused.
With the timing, I think it’s stuff like the epstein news that broke something for him
You know how some hunters want to hunt a particular majestic animal? Except for “majestic”, of course.
Makes sense, most shooters show warning signs.
Dude could have been in a hero if he had better aim.
you know the more you say this the less Tenacious D we get?
Good.
Idk what made you so upset, but I am very glad it happened.
Stay mad.
Thanks I like this phrasing
It is crazy how missing one shot could have changed the course of history. People are really trying to paint this guy as a leftist because of a donation lol.
The donation of a 69 year old man with the same name…
Can you provide a source?
I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, I’ve seen the donation and registration myself and all details matched. So unless those details were altered by someone managing either of those two registries, it doesn’t seem like those were made by 2 different people.
Edit: that being said the donation is inconsequential at best, it could have been something like “donate and get a funny hat” or anything like this.
Considering that address match, and the fact that the location on the in-question FEC filing does not exist in Pittsburgh, evidence favors the conclusion that the shooter made the donation — not someone else with the same name.
So he spent $20 on trump signs. Are we in agreement he was a fucking Nazi dickwad as well?
To be fair, I think he was living with his parents so there’s no way to know who wanted them. Maybe they all did, maybe not.
Either way, from what I’ve heard it doesn’t seem like he was that political. It appears like he was just a kid who liked guns but was such a bad shot the shooting club at his school wouldn’t let him in. He then decided to immortalize himself as a presidential assassin, but instead immortalized himself as the terrible shot everyone thought he was.
False flag is a possibility but the US has enough crazy for something like this to just happen.
Evidence or stfu
Evidence for what? I didn’t state any fact. My comment was clear speculation
you want evidence that the USA has crazy in it?! what, are you new to this planet?
Here you go!
The State Of Mental Health In America
I’ll give you a freebie from it: over half of adults with a mental illness don’t receive treatment for it. Goooo USA!
Thanks for the evidence of the non-controversial, well established part of the comment
that’s the only part of the comment.
there’s crazy people. End of evidence.
what other part do you think exists?
Read the comment chain again. Use the context clues. I believe in you
Chill. Dude said it was a possibility.
Do records show that he donated to a progressive PAC? I thought they show a person with the same name donated but that the age was different
Look at the timing - Jan 20th, 2021. The day Biden was sworn in.
$15 is not much and could very well be him delivering on a bet over the election
Or a friend donating in his name as a joke
No. Giving 15$ dollars to a liberal cause is a clear indication that you are a political dissident willing to die for the DNC. End of story.
I mean it doesn’t sound like he has friends, but it is weird that a 16-17 year old would donate on his own. It feels like it would go through his parents. Did they give him a credit card or something? Was it cash?
Coudl have friends online, back when I was 16-17 thats how I was. Mind you im only friends with the ones Ive met IRL at this point but thats because my other groups imploded or went nuts for no reason.
Arma ops group imploded because of a shit Zeus.
And the EU4 group devolved into femcatboy roleplay server, which made me uncomfortable because most of them were like 30.
Yeah that kind of struck me as a potential possibility. Maybe he bet someone that small amount that Biden wouldn’t actually be seated.
The address on the filing has his street address and zip but the wrong city.
Would be common to use the city of Pittsburgh for the suburb of Bethel Park:
(have not looked into the guy nor his possible donations at all myself)
I fell into that initially as well, but I checked the FEC filing to get the address, then used the address to check property records, then went back and looked at the interviews with his folks to see their names for reference. The residence is that of his parents, so it seems to be him that donated.
It says Pittsburgh, but 15102 is the zip code for Bethel Park
If it’s 30 minutes from the city people will call it Pittsburgh.
This one has gone back and forth a couple of times, but snopes says it really was him. shrug
Removed by mod
Who’s seen the new season of the boys
I feel bad for the yard-neighbor, bet it hurt to get impaled with those signs.
I just saw a headline on 1440 that the Secret Service around Trump had been increasing security due to an Iranian security threat and that this shooting may be related to that.
I don’t buy it, but do think it is a signal of where our next Middle East War will be.
Middle East III: Ayatollah We’d Be Back.
Because when the Ayatollah wants someone killed he picks a bullied kid who’s also a terrible shot. /s
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A neighbor of the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump said there have been pro-Trump signs on display in the yard of his family’s home.
Authorities identified Thomas Matthew Crooks as the gunman who opened fired from a rooftop as the former president spoke at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
He was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania, but records show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on January 20, 2021—the day President Joe Biden was sworn into office.
A neighbor in Bethel Park, the Pittsburgh suburb where Crooks lived, said they saw pro-Trump signs in the family’s yard as recently as a few months ago.
Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022 and worked as a dietary aide at a nursing home less than a mile from his family’s house.
His father Matthew Crooks told CNN late on Saturday that he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” and would not speak publicly about his son until after he talked to law enforcement.
The original article contains 416 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
