SHOOTERS AND THEIR FANBOYS AREN'T THE ONLY ONES WHO "GAMIFY" MASS MURDER -- SO DO REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS

Yesterday The New York Times reported that Maurcio Garcia, the gunman who killed eight people on Saturday at a Texas shopping mall, regularly posted racist, misogynistic, and neo-Nazi material on the largely unmoderated Russian site OK.RU, according to investigators. Aric Toler of Bellingcat found Garcia's now-unavailable profile on the site. Toler described what he found in a Twitter thread (which is also available here).

In addition to photos of the mall, images of the shooter's swastika and SS-logo tattoos, and rants justifying violence as a reasonable reaction to sexual frustration, Toler found that Garcia, like quite a few other mass shooters (and many of their fans), regarded mass murder as a game. Garcia was impressed by the "kill score" in the recent Nashville school shooting.

Flashback to @IwriteOK's 2019 Bellingcat article on how mass shootings have been "gamified", with the Allen shooter talking about a "decent kill score" in Nashville.https://t.co/arQCcxRtt6 pic.twitter.com/0xDEcGsn9l

— Aric Toler (@AricToler) May 8, 2023

(In Garcia's post, "ER" is presumably Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in a misogynist spree in 2014 and has since become a hero to angry incels.)

In the 2019 article Toler cites, Bellingcat's Robert Evans explains what the "gamification" of mass murder is, citing previous mass-casualty incidents:

Ever since the Christchurch shooting spree, 8chan users have commented regularly on Brenton Tarrant’s high bodycount, and made references to their desire to “beat his high score”....

What we see here is evidence of the only real innovation 8chan has brought to global terrorism: the gamification of mass violence. We see this not just in the references to “high scores”, but in the very way the Christchurch shooting was carried out. Brenton Tarrant livestreamed his massacre from a helmet cam in a way that made the shooting look almost exactly like a First Person Shooter video game. This was a conscious choice, as was his decision to pick a sound-track for the spree that would entertain and inspire his viewers.

The Poway Synagogue shooter attempted to copy Tarrant in both these tactics, posting a musical playlist along with his shooting.

When you "gamify" violence, you make a choice to leave humanity and empathy at the door. Garcia wrote:

Every school shooting, to me, is the perfect time to be a completely horrible person and see this event like a sport or comedy.... the heart of the matter is: we all know it's just a fucking spectacle at this point, and the spectacle and the killer are far more interesting than the boring fucks who were killed.

But shooters and their admirers aren't the only people who "gamify" mass slaughter. So do Republican politicians.

When message-board sociopaths "gamify" death, the game is relatively simple: First-person shooter. One psycho against the world. You kill, you win. Republican politicians see mass death as a more complicated game, a game in which winning takes several steps.

Here's a summary of Republican gameplay:

* Republicans, nationally and in red states, keep guns as widely available as possible. They describe this as the preservation of constitutional freedom and of a right granted directly by God; even though they work for the government, they embrace the notion that guns are there, when necessary, to be turned against he government (just not when they run it).

* Then a mass shooters kills and injures a large number of people.

* They offer thoughts and prayers. They categorically reject gun control. They chastise anyone who would "politicize" the slaughter.

* Liberals express outrage.

* The Republican politicans channel and magnify that outrage. They encourage their voters to believe that any restriction on gun ownership will instantly lead to a liberal-fascist confiscation of all privately owned firearms.

* Gun sales soar. Loyalty to the GOP increases.

* Conveniently for plutocrats throughout America, the politicians who rally their voter base around the threat of gun confiscation are the same politicians who most reliably vote in favor of lowering rich people's taxes and reducing regulation on their businesses. So mass slaughter is not only good for the gun industry, it's good for GOP and the fat-cat class.

This is how Republican politicians run up a high "kill score." They get campaign money -- not just from the NRA, but from billionaires who understand the game -- and they reinforce a sense of sociocultural solidarity with their voters. Their kills are at the ballot box.

This is why I'm tired of being told that Republican politicians are "cowards" who are afraid to do anything about gun violence. They're not cowards. They just don't care about anything but their careers. They're as drained of empathy as Mauricio Garcia was. Mass death is a game to them, the way it was to him. And they've been winning for a long time.