The underlying motives behind aspiring mass murderers are sometimes opaque and sometimes made explicit. In the latest case there has been no declaration of intent, but from what’s been made public it’s clear it was at least partially politically motivation. No one is responsible for the actions of the shooter other than himself, but it does show that self-radicalization is not unique to any one ideology. In many past cases such actors are accompanied by a history of mental illness, and though his disjointed past suggests that it may play an element, at this time it does not appear to be the case. Instead this seems to be the portrait of a man inspired to commit acts of political violence through the consumption of increasingly violent viewpoints. The events in Charleston, Orlando, and Boston all carry some parallel to this shooter. Largely, if not wholly, independent of any larger organization they self-radicalize on a violent ideology and aim to further that ideology in their own interpretation. The shocking aspect about this attack was its direct intersection with domestic US politics. Other attacks had ambiguous targets with a broad idea of promoting their ideological goals. This one directly agitated for violent change in the political system, targeting a specific political party. There will always be fringe elements of society that disavow the social structure and seek to forcefully upend it, but it is when calls for ideologically inspired violence become prevalent in the larger social lexicon that concerns must be raised. His radicalization did not occur overnight, but from repeated doses of moralized propaganda with increasingly violent calls for action. This isn’t about ‘political rhetoric,’ but about calls for actual violence against political opponents, primarily from a group dubbed ‘Antifa.’ It hasn’t just been talk, the country has already seen repeated political violence since Trump has been elected. There have been few efforts by the Democrat party to renounce it. It may seem unfair to require such a response, but the Antifa agenda shares many similarities to the policy platform of the Democrat party and uniformly opposes anyone tangentially related to the Republican party. The alleged attacker joined wholeheartedly with the Occupy Wallstreet movement, an early iteration of Antifa. The shooter’s political views motivated him to violence and his beliefs and actions closely align with Antifa’s aims.

There have been efforts to dissuade the blaming of ‘political rhetoric,’ but we shouldn’t confuse rhetoric with sincerity. There have been calls for political violence from broadly Democrat supporting groups that have been followed through on. When a man believes in a political ideology that calls for violence and then commits political violence, the connection seems clear. While this attack isn’t the fault of the Democrat party, their refusal to disavow the radical, violent elements in their party certainly is.

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