Politicians and activists should stop ratifying the fiction that Omar Mateen was motivated by anti-LGBT hatred. It dishonors the victims and obscures the real motive.
A similar dynamic happened last year with the Atlanta "massage parlor massacre." There was literally zero evidence for it being an anti-Asian crime (the killer made it quite clear it was all about his repressed sexuality, and religious-based guilt over having visited prostitutes). But intersectional zeal is unstoppable, and call-out culture warriors fell all over themselves trying to grab virtue tokens by claiming an anti-Asian narrative.
One strand of that effort that struck me as particularly bizarre was an implication by some activists that white people assume all Asian women are by default sex workers. The anti-Asian narrative also pretty much ignored as statistical noise the fact that 25% of the victims were actually white.
That horrific killing was not reported to have lead to any soul-searching on the part of evangelical churches and ministers, to consider their teachings, to tend their flock. But it was indeed seized upon by idpol activists to advance their personal and political agendas.
Its weird that Obama and Hillary would bomb civilians in Muslim countries and then turn around and try to "protect" the Muslim community by attributing the Pulse massacre to homophobia. Its not weird though, its exactly what Liberals and leftists and media corporations do all the time. They cover up their own atrocities with lip service, lies and manipulation. The Muslim community was not responsible for this horrible massacre, the shooter was, and he was motivated to do it out of revenge for neocon/neoliberal oil wars. The truth is less complicated than the lies.
The counter-factual mythology of the Pulse Nightclub shooting pales in comparison to the Matthew Shepherd Myth. To this day, he is sanctified as the quintessential gay hate crime martyr who was supposedly murdered by homophobic rednecks just for being gay. In fact, it's well documented that he was dealing meth and was killed by a man he had sex with who was trying to steal his drugs. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/the-truth-behind-americas-most-famous-gay-hate-murder-matthew-shepard
In short, he was merely a victim of the same sordid criminal drug dealing lifestyle that gets thousands killed every year. Yet everyone has sort of collectively agreed to ignore the facts and keep pretending the gay hate-crime narrative is real. After the true facts were known, they still named anti-hate crime legislation after Shepherd and they buried him in the National Cathedral like some secular saint. Most bizarre of all, Wikipedia says: "In June 2019, Shepard was one of the inaugural fifty American 'pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes' inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor." Whatever.
It's very odd how little facts matter when they get in the way of a useful story.
Maybe so, but polls everywhere in the world show that a majority of Muslims are stridently against gay legal rights of any kind. They are also more prone than other groups, as Glenn documents here, to kill others who offend their sensibilities, even in the abstract. Is there proof that the murderer didn't thank Allah for his luck on stumbling across a club full of fags to kill? The real crime here is the protection of Islamic criminals and their enablers by the DNC and progressives in general.
It seems relatively obvious that by claiming Matteen was anti-gay, ergo his attack on PULSE, or his choice of attacking gays and using it as an expression of his resentment towards the many deaths of Muslims in our Middle Eastern wars is so obvious. It allows the US and it's politicians who voted us into America's wars the opportunity to distract us from the carnage they help to create, Matten's message, and grab empathy for the gays slaughtered by him. The gay community was knowingly used by politicians as a distraction, the focus of attention, a source of empathy, instead of the deaths, the carnage the US created in the Middle East which is what motivated Matteen. I know they wouldn't have used that message had this happened in the 20th century when my brother was growing up gay.
The most sinister part of this to me is that this was an Islamic terrorist attack carried out on US soil and we've just let it go because we came up with a better narrative. Which means we never discussed "why do we have a massive illegal spying complex if they can't even stop a guy who practically announced his intentions on Facebook?"
And it's not just the self-interested politicians and activists. Tens of millions of my fellow citizens mindlessly repeat factual falsehoods while guarding their beliefs with angry and defensive self-righteousness. A nation slowly going mad.
Regardless of the facts, Pres. Biden, forever living in a fairy tale land, is about to make Pulse Nightclub a National Memorial. He has the help of the House and Senate to do this. I'm not saying our leaders are stupid, but...oh...hell...maybe I am. I mean, facts mean nothing to these people anymore. Just posturing, and The Narrative. And the media? They just pump out the Narratives one after another. Feed the cause- whatever it happens to be. Feed it, move on. Find another one. Feed it. Move on.
We've torn down statues of Thomas Jefferson because it seems he was, above anything else, a slave holder. He just happened to brilliantly (with other evil friends) start a new nation based on Individual Rights. It's as if starting up this unique new nation was a small quirk in an otherwise evil life. Good thing the nation means nothing to half the population anymore or this would be hard to swallow. In the meantime we've gone so far down a wrong road now that we're declaring a dumpy nightclub in Orlando a National Memorial because a Muslim decided to play ISIS with the club patrons. Only, if this had been regular club- that is- filled with straight, gay, black, white, all people, it would have been horribly sad, but not a Lets-make-a-National-Memorial-out-of-it level Narrative. So, facts be damned. We've got gay people we want voting for us and hopefully, they're just as stupid as our media and they'll go with it.
Truth and actual motives don't matter to Democrats, the MSM, and Democrat politicians. You know this.
There have been times when it didn't matter on the right as well -- "they hate us for our freedom" was the excuse given for the actions taken after 9/11. When the truth was that it was motivated by having US troops in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. But, telling that truth wasn't going to be conducive to starting a second Gulf War, so it's our freedoms that they hate!! Most conservatives know that the GWB Administration lied repeatedly, and that's how you got Trump with extremely high approval ratings among conservatives. He pointed out the lies and the liars.
Where are the Democrat politicians who will confront the endless lying that their party members and voters engage in and believe? I get that there's no power in telling the truth to people who will believe any lie that you tell them, but at some point, these chickens are going to come home to roost.
@Glenn - the problem is that we've institutionalized everything. Under the new definitions: Racism has nothing to do with individual animus. The ATL spa shooting was racist simply because the victims were minorities. The PULSE night club shootings homophobic and bigoted simply because the victims were lgbtq and at a club specifically for them.
So we end up with the 'all squares are rectangles' problem. Where any hostile act against a minority or group of them, is racist. Therefore the offending individual's motivations are irrelevant (and likely racist in some broader way).
While we know that this situation, and the ATL rub and tug spa shooting were not individually motivated by racist animus on the parts of the shooter, they are 'racist' in so far as they are each an attack on minorities.
I agree with you that they miss the point on the individuals motivation, and its importance, but I think you're also missing their point. Which I'm sure you can quite elegantly address.
I think we may be seeing a similar unmovable narrative developing around children buried at residential schools in Canada.
So far the only evidence produced has been radar detection of “turned soil.” No bones have been unearthed, and radar is unable to produce images capable of confirming bodies.
Additionally I’ve seen no investigation of the circumstances surrounding these graves, if they are graves. These schools operated for decades at a time of high child mortality and during the influenza pandemic of 1918. Natural causes are plausible.
Yet politicians and the press are fully onboard with the narrative that an atrocity has been uncovered.
Keeping the time honored tradition where the only deaths that matter are those where loss of life can be redeemed for political advantage.
We are entering an age where the "story" is more important than the truth since the progressive point of view is that there is no truth, just stories.
A similar dynamic happened last year with the Atlanta "massage parlor massacre." There was literally zero evidence for it being an anti-Asian crime (the killer made it quite clear it was all about his repressed sexuality, and religious-based guilt over having visited prostitutes). But intersectional zeal is unstoppable, and call-out culture warriors fell all over themselves trying to grab virtue tokens by claiming an anti-Asian narrative.
One strand of that effort that struck me as particularly bizarre was an implication by some activists that white people assume all Asian women are by default sex workers. The anti-Asian narrative also pretty much ignored as statistical noise the fact that 25% of the victims were actually white.
That horrific killing was not reported to have lead to any soul-searching on the part of evangelical churches and ministers, to consider their teachings, to tend their flock. But it was indeed seized upon by idpol activists to advance their personal and political agendas.
Its weird that Obama and Hillary would bomb civilians in Muslim countries and then turn around and try to "protect" the Muslim community by attributing the Pulse massacre to homophobia. Its not weird though, its exactly what Liberals and leftists and media corporations do all the time. They cover up their own atrocities with lip service, lies and manipulation. The Muslim community was not responsible for this horrible massacre, the shooter was, and he was motivated to do it out of revenge for neocon/neoliberal oil wars. The truth is less complicated than the lies.
Thanks for your work Glenn! One of the few remaining journalists out there speaking truth to power on both sides of the aisle.
The counter-factual mythology of the Pulse Nightclub shooting pales in comparison to the Matthew Shepherd Myth. To this day, he is sanctified as the quintessential gay hate crime martyr who was supposedly murdered by homophobic rednecks just for being gay. In fact, it's well documented that he was dealing meth and was killed by a man he had sex with who was trying to steal his drugs. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/the-truth-behind-americas-most-famous-gay-hate-murder-matthew-shepard
In short, he was merely a victim of the same sordid criminal drug dealing lifestyle that gets thousands killed every year. Yet everyone has sort of collectively agreed to ignore the facts and keep pretending the gay hate-crime narrative is real. After the true facts were known, they still named anti-hate crime legislation after Shepherd and they buried him in the National Cathedral like some secular saint. Most bizarre of all, Wikipedia says: "In June 2019, Shepard was one of the inaugural fifty American 'pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes' inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor." Whatever.
It's very odd how little facts matter when they get in the way of a useful story.
Maybe so, but polls everywhere in the world show that a majority of Muslims are stridently against gay legal rights of any kind. They are also more prone than other groups, as Glenn documents here, to kill others who offend their sensibilities, even in the abstract. Is there proof that the murderer didn't thank Allah for his luck on stumbling across a club full of fags to kill? The real crime here is the protection of Islamic criminals and their enablers by the DNC and progressives in general.
Glenn, at this point you’ve got to feel like the child who shouted the empower has no clothes.
It seems relatively obvious that by claiming Matteen was anti-gay, ergo his attack on PULSE, or his choice of attacking gays and using it as an expression of his resentment towards the many deaths of Muslims in our Middle Eastern wars is so obvious. It allows the US and it's politicians who voted us into America's wars the opportunity to distract us from the carnage they help to create, Matten's message, and grab empathy for the gays slaughtered by him. The gay community was knowingly used by politicians as a distraction, the focus of attention, a source of empathy, instead of the deaths, the carnage the US created in the Middle East which is what motivated Matteen. I know they wouldn't have used that message had this happened in the 20th century when my brother was growing up gay.
Thank you, Glenn. The political use of victims to promote ideological power is totalitarianism. Pure and simple.
The most sinister part of this to me is that this was an Islamic terrorist attack carried out on US soil and we've just let it go because we came up with a better narrative. Which means we never discussed "why do we have a massive illegal spying complex if they can't even stop a guy who practically announced his intentions on Facebook?"
And it's not just the self-interested politicians and activists. Tens of millions of my fellow citizens mindlessly repeat factual falsehoods while guarding their beliefs with angry and defensive self-righteousness. A nation slowly going mad.
Regardless of the facts, Pres. Biden, forever living in a fairy tale land, is about to make Pulse Nightclub a National Memorial. He has the help of the House and Senate to do this. I'm not saying our leaders are stupid, but...oh...hell...maybe I am. I mean, facts mean nothing to these people anymore. Just posturing, and The Narrative. And the media? They just pump out the Narratives one after another. Feed the cause- whatever it happens to be. Feed it, move on. Find another one. Feed it. Move on.
We've torn down statues of Thomas Jefferson because it seems he was, above anything else, a slave holder. He just happened to brilliantly (with other evil friends) start a new nation based on Individual Rights. It's as if starting up this unique new nation was a small quirk in an otherwise evil life. Good thing the nation means nothing to half the population anymore or this would be hard to swallow. In the meantime we've gone so far down a wrong road now that we're declaring a dumpy nightclub in Orlando a National Memorial because a Muslim decided to play ISIS with the club patrons. Only, if this had been regular club- that is- filled with straight, gay, black, white, all people, it would have been horribly sad, but not a Lets-make-a-National-Memorial-out-of-it level Narrative. So, facts be damned. We've got gay people we want voting for us and hopefully, they're just as stupid as our media and they'll go with it.
We truly live in the Bizarro world.
Truth and actual motives don't matter to Democrats, the MSM, and Democrat politicians. You know this.
There have been times when it didn't matter on the right as well -- "they hate us for our freedom" was the excuse given for the actions taken after 9/11. When the truth was that it was motivated by having US troops in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. But, telling that truth wasn't going to be conducive to starting a second Gulf War, so it's our freedoms that they hate!! Most conservatives know that the GWB Administration lied repeatedly, and that's how you got Trump with extremely high approval ratings among conservatives. He pointed out the lies and the liars.
Where are the Democrat politicians who will confront the endless lying that their party members and voters engage in and believe? I get that there's no power in telling the truth to people who will believe any lie that you tell them, but at some point, these chickens are going to come home to roost.
They can't keep lying forever.
@Glenn - the problem is that we've institutionalized everything. Under the new definitions: Racism has nothing to do with individual animus. The ATL spa shooting was racist simply because the victims were minorities. The PULSE night club shootings homophobic and bigoted simply because the victims were lgbtq and at a club specifically for them.
So we end up with the 'all squares are rectangles' problem. Where any hostile act against a minority or group of them, is racist. Therefore the offending individual's motivations are irrelevant (and likely racist in some broader way).
While we know that this situation, and the ATL rub and tug spa shooting were not individually motivated by racist animus on the parts of the shooter, they are 'racist' in so far as they are each an attack on minorities.
I agree with you that they miss the point on the individuals motivation, and its importance, but I think you're also missing their point. Which I'm sure you can quite elegantly address.
I think we may be seeing a similar unmovable narrative developing around children buried at residential schools in Canada.
So far the only evidence produced has been radar detection of “turned soil.” No bones have been unearthed, and radar is unable to produce images capable of confirming bodies.
Additionally I’ve seen no investigation of the circumstances surrounding these graves, if they are graves. These schools operated for decades at a time of high child mortality and during the influenza pandemic of 1918. Natural causes are plausible.
Yet politicians and the press are fully onboard with the narrative that an atrocity has been uncovered.