Online hate

Back in June, we urged voters to play their proper role in tamping down the rising tide of political violence, by voting out politicians who cling to power by furthering division in America. At the time, it was in response to the murder of Minnesota’s DFL House leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the shooting of DFL Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, by Vance Boelter.
This time, we reiterate that plea in the wake of the shooting of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. We agreed with very little of what Mr. Kirk stood for, except for his right to express his views without becoming a target of gun violence.
Those who seek to score political points in the wake of such acts are always quick to lay blame on their political opponents every time the bullets fly. This is not only unhelpful— it is based on a misunderstanding of what appears to be motivating gun violence in the U.S.
If there’s a common pattern among those who take up arms in the U.S. today to attack schools, political leaders, or government institutions, it is radicalization by social media.
Sites like 4chan, Rumble, X, Reddit, Discord, and others most of us have probably never heard of, have attracted the disaffected, particularly the young males who overwhelmingly perpetrate these shootings, like moths to a flame. The companies that operate these platforms provide little or no oversight of the material that gets posted by users. They have created a platform for nefarious actors to indoctrinate impressionable individuals through the constant repetition of falsehoods and incendiary bile.
These sites are little more than open cesspools, often infiltrated by foreign agents determined to contaminate the minds of Americans by spreading disinformation and nihilistic rage. Trying to ascertain the political allegiances of these shooters is usually a fool’s errand, since most of these individuals have no coherent political views or objectives other than to go out in a “blaze of glory,” increasingly streamed live for the entertainment of the social media viewers who encourage such actions.
The individual arrested in the shooting of Mr. Kirk grew up in a conservative Mormon family, had never voted, and registered in Utah as non-aligned. Messages reportedly written on shell casings found at the scene appeared mostly connected to video games.
On the same day Mr. Kirk was murdered in Utah, a 16-year-old boy shot two students and then himself at a local high school in Colorado. News reports point to his radicalization by “an extreme network” that espoused white supremacy and antisemitism, that he almost certainly accessed via social media. Was this just another example of right-wing violence or was it yet more evidence of the toxic nature of social media on young and vulnerable minds?
Just last month, the individual who shot nearly 200 rounds into the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control, killing a police officer and terrorizing workers there, was motivated by lies about the COVID vaccine, which have been widespread on social media since the pandemic. That shooter said he blamed the vaccine for his mental health struggles, including depression, but many psychologists believe social media is the biggest contributor to declining mental health in this country.
While responsible political leaders called for lowering the temperature of political rhetoric in the wake of Mr. Kirk’s assassination, the same social media sites that have inflamed so many Americans, were quickly filled with more incendiary commentary, including calls for civil war.
Sadly, at a time when Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox was wisely calling for Americans to “disagree better,” and put much of the onus for the shooting on the dark corners of social media, others with far larger pulpits took the opposite approach. From the White House, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller vowed to use the shooting of Mr. Kirk to justify “dismantling the organized left,” which he likened to domestic terrorists, using the power of the federal government. Never mind there is no evidence that the “organized left” is in any way responsible for the shooting of Mr. Kirk. Those now running the show in Washington hope to weaponize the shooting of Mr. Kirk to not only cancel individuals, but to cancel an entire political viewpoint that calls for a fairer and more humane society, a viewpoint held by much of the country.
While many political leaders recognize that America stands on a precipice and are urging that we step back from the edge, it appears that the Trump White House, which reposted Miller’s comments on its official X account, is ready to take the plunge into the abyss.
Americans need to ask themselves whether they’re ready to go to war against their neighbors. If not, we need to ask ourselves why we keep electing individuals so eager to egg us on.