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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MAKAVELI" data-source="post: 1359694" data-attributes="member: 43825"><a href="http://mnprogressiveproject.com/50493/" target="_blank">http://mnprogressiveproject.com/50493/</a>Conservatives make false claims about mass shooters – both political affiliation, and mental health statusThe idea that recent mass shooters are mostly registered Democrats is a mythBased on the assertions of Roger Hedgecock a right-wing radio show host,the meme that the five worst recent mass shootings were committed byregistered Democrats is making its way through e-mail chains and socialmedia. Hedgecock asserts, without providing any evidence or sources,that the Ft. Hood shooter, the Virginia Tech shooter, the Aurora Theatershooter and Adam Lanza of Sandy Hook infamy were all “registeredDemocrats”. He acknowledges that Klebold and Harris (the ColumbineColorado shooters) were too young to be registered voters but asserts,again without providing any evidence, that Harris and Klebold’s parentswere progressives or liberal Democrats.In another forum, the radical righties insisted that, ok, so this author debunked the last five mass shooters — but those OTHER shootings were all by lefties! No. Wrong. Factually false. 1. Elliot Rodgers the most recent mass shooter was proclaimed a ‘lefty’ because he subscribed to the youtube feed from the Young Turks.THAT does not define someone as a lefty; I follow Fox News on Facebook, it doesn’t make me a right wing nut. What does appear to show a larger and more valid claim to political orientation and affiliation however is the links to the ultra-conservative male-dominionist men’s rights movement expressed in his videos and manifesto, and supported apparently by his reported internet history. 2. Another example claimed — that James Holmes was a member of Occupy San Diego. That is also factually false. At no time was Holmes involved in any way with Occupy San Diego, nor so far as I can find, did he have any political opinion. He appears to have been apolitical. We don’t know definitively yet if Holmes was mentally ill, or if he was, that mental illness had any causational role in his actions. In contrast, we know that Jared Loughner suffered from severe schizophrenia, but that appears to be the exception to the rule, not typical of mass shooters. 3. Claims that Karl Pierson was a ‘lefty’ also don’t hold up well to scrutiny. The basis for that claim appears to be that he was an advocate for Keynesian economics, and that one student at his school variously claimed he was a communist or a socialist. What is not at all clear is if the student who made those claims even knew Pierson, much less knew him well. There are Keynsian economists and advocates or proponents across the political spectrum; being a Keynsian is not even remotely the same thing as being a ‘commie’ or a ‘socialist’. There appears to be zero factual basis for the claim that Pierson was a socialist, ‘commie’ or in any other way a ‘lefty’. What is clear from the way those words lefty and commie and marxist are used on the right, however, is that most of those who use those terms casually and interchangeably have no clue what the terms mean. Rather they lob them like bad-word grenades to name-call people with whom they disagree, without regard to actual definitions. 4. Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter has been incorrectly identified over and over on the right as a ‘lefty’ and a registered Democrat. He was not a lefty, and not a registered voter. If he was mentally ill, we have no diagnosis of it sufficiently chronologically proximate to the shooting, nor do we know if his mental health had any direct causation on his actions. What we do know is that he seemed to share his mother’s ultra-conservative views, and that she was a right wing prepper crackpot, of the variety that believes the rubbish promoted by the likes of Glenn Beck. 5. Jared Loughner — yup, he was severely mentally ill, and yup, that had a direct causational role in his mass shooting. But no, he was not a lefty, and to refute some of the claims made on the right, he was never a volunteer working for Gabby Giffords. What we do know is that he had some vague left-leaning political notions while he was still sane, but that as he became increasingly erratic and his mental illness worsened, he began to visit extremist conservative crackpot web sites, and the ideas from those right wing websites were repeated in communication to Giffords and the Gifford campaign, and that he appears to have targeted Giffords for rejecting those ideas (or at least, not supporting them). Some mass shootings ARE political in nature, but those are NOT also mental illness caused attacks. Those mass shootings have been, consistently, by radical right wingers.</blockquote>

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