Don’t Tell Mama

feeling your brain latch onto the stupidest shit ever and not being able to do anything about it is a kind of saw trap

One of the things that’s so ridiculous about citing someone getting bullied in high school, or being downwardly economically mobile, as a causal explanation for them becoming a school shooter or a nazi or whatever is that those things are extremely common. Most people were bullied in school at some point in their lives. Most people are downwardly mobile as young adults. Most people have dysfunctional and/or limited social circles. Like it’s just such a weak claim. It purportedly attempts to use broader social trends to explain anti-social behaviour, but the net is cast so wide as to be meaningless, so it ends up (maybe ironically) becoming a very individualistic explanation - becoming a school shooter is because this guy, specifically, was poor. Becoming a nazi is because this guy, specifically, had a dad who didn’t care about him. It essentially lets this behaviour off the hook because it positions those social/economic circumstances as unique to Nazis and school shooters. It engages in the idea that poverty, poor education, and family dysfunction (which is only something that happens in poor households) is what produces bigotry - the unwashed ignorant masses are where bad ideas come from

i think the key is that they use these particular explanations mostly for young white men, i.e. those whom the system is designed to privilege, protect, and empower. the deep & unspoken implication, in my view, is that whereas being bullied / socially outcast or being poor are the rightful positions of other kinds of people, it was insulting to the dignity of this young white man's privileged identity to be treated the same. and it is normal for men to respond to certain insults to their dignity with rage and violence. it mirrors the way that people talk about violence committed by adult men -- someone hurt or insulted his family, or his sexuality, or his team, or any of the myriad things men are expected to protect with righteous and exceptional violence, except it's keyed to the world of the young man who merely expects to inherit all these things rather than the man who protects them from atop his barricades.