Washington Post (Opinion)
By Sally Kohn
July 28, 2015
When will we start holding racism and misogyny accountable for the violence they rationalize and inspire?
The
man who opened fire in a Lafayette, La., movie theater showing of the
arguably feminist film “Trainwreck” was, by all accounts, a far-right
ideologue. “He was anti-abortion,”
a radio host who knew shooter John Russell Houser said. “The best I can
recall, Rusty had an issue with feminine rights.” He reportedly
encouraged “violent” responses to abortion and the idea of women in the
workforce. A bar Houser owned reportedly flew a
Nazi flag out front as an anti-government statement. He lashed out
against “sexual deviants.” He posted comments against immigrants and the
black community. Plus, he ranted against social service programs and
“had lot of anti-tax issues,” another person who
knew Houser said.
Houser
was steeped and stewing in right-wing xenophobic, homophobic,
misogynist and racist hate. He was obviously crazy. It’s generally safe
to assume everyone who commits
mass murder is. But Houser was crazy and held some beliefs that were
variations of more mainstream conservative beliefs. The roots of some of
Houser’s political views are hard to distinguish from ideas espoused by
many, if not most, of the candidates running
for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
I
want to be very clear here: I am NOT saying any of them would endorse
or remotely condone Houser’s violence or the extremities to which he
took his beliefs. Period,
full stop.
Still
it’s naïve, not to mention counterproductive, not to acknowledge that
what ensnarled Houser’s singular mind grew from seeds of a widely sowed
ideology. Houser was
a bad seed, of course. And he fell far from the tree. But he was of it.
Look
at Donald Trump saying that Mexican immigrants are mostly rapists and
drug dealers. Or Rand Paul saying paying taxes is tantamount to slavery,
or Mike Huckabee calling
gay marriage a “perversion” and Ben Carson calling women who take birth
control “entitled.” Not to mention the GOP repeatedly encrusting
anti-gay and anti-woman policies into its official platform while
consistently working to block everything from comprehensive
immigration reform to basic non-discrimination laws to equal pay.
Again, to say this rhetoric causes tragedies like those in Lafayette
would be too simplistic. But to say there’s no connection at all is
downright stupid.
When
there’s evidence that a mass shooting suspect who’s Muslim espoused
anti-American, pro-radical Islamicist views, we tie that suspect to the
broader ideology. Consider
the shooter in Chattanooga, Tenn., for instance, whom conservative
politicians linked not only to radical Islam but to ISIS specifically,
despite the lack of evidence for that link and even some evidence to the
contrary.
Black
Americans are presumed to bear blame as a group even when they’re the
victims of violence. This weekend, after a national gathering in
Cleveland, leaders of the
Black Lives Matter movement were tear-gassed by police. Some online
instantly implied that the activists must have done something to provoke
the police — reflecting the inherent bias about which Ta-Nehisi Coates
writes in warning to his black son that “you
must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which,
somehow, will always be assigned to you.” We automatically pathologize
all black people whether they’re perpetrating violence or the victims,
regardless of the facts.
And
yet when white men shoot up movie theaters or black churches, they’re
given the benefit of individuality. We don’t automatically assume that
they represent some disease
within all, or even a subset of, other white men. Even in the face of
evidence such as espoused racist, misogynistic views and participation
in organized hate groups, we still resist drawing any broader
conclusions about any white men other than the shooter.
Meanwhile, most mass shooters are white men. Communities of color or of
minority religions, as a whole, are rarely given the benefit of the
doubt of collective innocence. White men, and white people in general,
always are. That white privilege extends even
to white mass murderers shows just how insidious it is.
Houser’s
wife sought a restraining order against him. The alleged Charleston
shooter reportedly accused his black male victims of raping “our women.”
The mass shooter
at the University of Santa Barbara in May 2014 was active on “men’s
rights” Web groups and posted a misogynist screed. What’s wrong with us
if we refuse to see the troubling patterns here? And how those patterns
are extensions of far more commonly held and
espoused beliefs? How can we ever help to prevent future atrocities if
we don’t at least acknowledge these roots?
We
habitually scrutinize the ideology behind black and Muslim violence
while letting white men off the hook. If Republicans can talk about how
President Obama’s rhetoric
inspired riots in Baltimore, then we can as well and should talk about
how Republican rhetoric inspires many Americans to resent and hate their
fellow human beings.
After
running through Houser’s background of right-wing, hate-filled postings
online, the local KATC news Web site then wrote: “What prompted Houser
to kill people Thursday
night remains unknown.” Which is only partially true. Sure, there’s
more to discover about Houser’s particular motives and state of mind
that night. But we know what prompted Houser. We know he is not an
accident of a hateful, us-versus-them ideology, but
an automatic, albeit unfortunate, consequence. You cannot plant the
seeds of hatred and antipathy and then curse them when they grow beyond
your control.
Spread
misogyny and anti-immigrant nationalism and homophobia and anti-black
racial bias, and they will take root. As a seed, Houser was downright
rotten. But he clearly
fell from a very dangerous and rotting tree.
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