Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

also one crime does not a trend make, i know, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Sikh_temple_shooting

xxxpYou've seen personally or in some chart you pulled out of your ass?

we discussed it on another thread recently:
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2013/topic-pages/victims/victims_final

Religious bias
Of the 1,223 victims of anti-religious hate crimes:

60.3 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias.
13.7 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.
6.1 percent were victims of anti-Catholic bias.
4.3 percent were victims of bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).
3.8 percent were victims of anti-Protestant bias.
0.6 percent were victims of anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.
11.2 percent were victims of bias against other religions (anti-other religion). (Based on Table 1.)

we can rehash the statistics but from what i've seen blowback against muslims is not particularly significant as far as hate crimes go compared to other groups

wasn't there a bunch of news about the terrible people in Texas who posted the addresses of all the supposed muslims in town? the same town where the guys with guns decided to follow people home from the mosque?

not trying to impose a hierarchy of hate crimes and threats but islamophobia in the wake of recent events is not made up

mordy, we have a front-running presidential candidate suggesting that we bulldoze mosques and force muslims to 'register' with the federal gov't. sure, donald trump is not going to be president (knocking on wood several times right now) but it's not as though anti-muslim sentiment isn't a major part of our discourse.

and my link (about the sikh temple shooting in milwaukee a few years ago) was meant to point out that this sentiment has turned to violence in the past (and probably will again).

i don't think you're a bigot! i just can't quite grasp what your grievance is here. it reminds me a little of the people yelling about people offering condolences to france and not giving equal time to every other tragedy that occurred. it's a non-problem.

i guess i am sensitive to islamic terror and what i see when something like this happens is that the moment is happens the left starts praying that the killer was a white guy and not a muslim and then when it is a muslim they start praying it has nothing to do with islam and then when it does have something to do with islam they start worrying about the blowback. it seems bizarre to me and yes makes me worry that it's bc the left in general would rather not deal w/ it at all if they could avoid it.

and fwiw i very much worry whenever israel does something awful that there will be 'blowback' in the form of attacks on jews in other places (or in israel for that matter) that had nothing to do with it. although in that case it's less about one particular thing israel did as the kind of pervasive, day to day awfulness of israeli policy.

xpost

i wonder how you are construing 'the left' -- like what are the constituent components of 'the left' that allow you to make this generalization. that is an honest question, not needling.

I particularly liked the speculation that they were muslim affiliates of the sinaloa cartel. I wanted to believe.

xp idk obv the left is a complex multifaceted group among which i even include myself but am i wrong that this thing exists? doesn't every event like this immediately get followed up w/ concerns about islamophobia? are you saying you aren't observing what i'm noticing, as opposed to observing it but thinking it is a completely innocent well-meaning compulsion?

i don't know, i have everybody hidden on my facebook feed and don't read twitter, so i don't always know what "the reaction" is to stuff.

not literally everybody, but pretty much everybody who posts dumb things about politics.

One of the reasons I get concerned about anti-Muslim blowback is that it serves as very effective propaganda for ISIS and its allies.

i love that this is a "handgun". that you can actually buy. i guess you buy this to protect your other smaller guns.

http://www.gandermountain.com/modperl/product/details.cgi?pdesc=CZ-USA-805-Bren-S1-Handgun&i=913928

like is this an unfair characterization: many people on the left are much more concerned with anti-muslim blowback to islamic terror than they are with islamic terror? acknowledging that they're both legitimate and real problems i'm questioning whether that makes a whole lot of sense. i'm more concerned about islamic terror for probably selfish reasons - it frequently targets jews and jewish spaces (which is why my daughter's montessori is put under police observation whenever there's an elevated threat and why they recently installed an expensive and complex security system in the building). i'm also concerned about anti-muslim backlash but tbh that's a secondary concern to having my family personally targeted.

I'd point out that data appears is totally context free. A simple google search will indicate that concerns about spikes in hate crimes re: Muslims are pretty high and rates have jumped considerably in recent years (heck even in the last year).

xp that's an unfair characterization.

But at same time this particular crime is so fucking weird I don't really blame people for being like "oh great dude's got a Muslim background now that's all we'll hear about for a few moments".

many people on the left are much more concerned with anti-muslim blowback to islamic terror than they are with islamic terror?

i think it almost insane to suggest that, actually.

^^^ amateurist otm

Well Idk I had to spend three days of the Thanksgiving holiday listening to people say that Muslims are uniquely evil among all other faiths of the world and shouldn't be allowed into this country so I might have a different perspective on this ish right now (also am still furious).

i can see where mordy is coming from. i think such public declarations to be concerned for muslims ring falsely. empty platitudes on the level of "praying for you".

let's see some real action towards protecting their rights. no politician has the balls to say anything positive, it always has to be negative.

But at same time this particular crime is so fucking weird I don't really blame people for being like "oh great dude's got a Muslim background now that's all we'll hear about for a few moments".

like i'm not sure it's a bad thing to hear for a few minutes about how he's a religious muslim who became radicalized in saudi arabia (assuming that information turns out to be true). that's not just an incidental factor in the event. it's not like this is really about gun control but those nasty right-wingers want to trick us into thinking it's about radical islam. it's most likely about both things. nb in orbit i love muslims and i love islam and don't think it's a uniquely evil religion. i do think that radical islamic terror is a major problem, though.

cool then let's not isolate it to just religion and guns, but talk about US foreign defense policy as well then

wait, has there been any sort of connection between the san bernardino coule and being "radicalized" in saudi arabia or pakistan or elsewhere? admittedly i haven't read the news on this in over 2 or 3 hours, but the last i heard was that the guys parents were born in pakistan, his fiancee was in the U.S. on a work visa, and that they had been in Pakistan in 2014 (presumably because that's where she's from and where his parents are family are from). none of that implies radical terrorist indoctrination

i linked to this above about possible radicalization: https://twitter.com/CNN/status/672464419620810752

and this says he went to saudi arabia recently where he met his wife?
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-syed-farook-had-traveled-to-saudi-arabia-married-appeared-to-live-american-dream-co-workers-say-20151202-story.html

They said Farook recently traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with a new wife he had met online. The couple had a baby and appeared to be "living the American dream," said Patrick Baccari, a fellow health inspector who shared a cubicle with Farook.

his father said he was very religious. it seems possible that his religious beliefs contributed to his actions.

then let's just arrest allah and get this over with

we can rehash the statistics but from what i've seen blowback against muslims is not particularly significant as far as hate crimes go compared to other groups

Well done USA, you must be unique in the Western World there.

#NotAllAllahs

tbf to europe they might have significantly more anti-jewish crime if they hadn't done such a good job getting rid of most of them

#NotAllAhs

"it's most likely about both things"

Well that's still assuming it's about the second thing at all and of course it's possible for this dude to be radicalized and this to still have been about something else more mundane (it's not like there was manifesto that's been found yet that says "we struck this holiday work party in the name of Allah").

it seems unlikely to me that his wife participated in the shooting bc of his workplace rage

I don't think either scenario makes a heck of a lot of sense, frankly, so I'll reserve judgment until something definitive comes out.

i guess all mass shootings are inherently bizarre and somewhat incomprehensible, but this one is off the charts

dunno if this was covered earlier -- current NYT lede:

The couple suspected of killing 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., had built more than a dozen pipe bombs and stockpiled thousands of rounds of ammunition, officials said.

so, likely not essentially party-argument-related

is there precedent of a terror attack (assuming for the sake of argument this is what this was, not actually assuming this) against workplace colleagues?

not that the party argument line makes any more sense obv

and not counting the armed forces

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Fort_Hood_shooting

and not counting the armed forces

i guess the ft hood shooting violates that restriction, although probably not in the way you meant

I think that's exactly what he meant.

the workplace thing to me just seems like a target of opportunity or like he had work rage and wanted to (ugh) kill 2 birds etc

Vester Flanagan left a political manifesto iirc but that is an arguable case. Xps

there was a lot of criticism directed toward, I dunno, everyone from Obama to holder and on down for labeling the ft hood shooting as workplace violence as opposed to Islamic terrorism, but I am personally unclear on the benefit of labeling it as one thing rather than another

I thought some sort of legal definition was required? What do I know about the US legal system though.

why is it beneficial to know the motivations of any shooting? it seems important that dylan roof was inspired by white supremacist and eliot rodgers by misogyny. isn't it also important to know what inspired the ft hood shooter?

or are only certain crimes or perpetrators emblematic of underlying cultural problems