John Daniel Davidson of the Federalist focuses on politicians and pundits who blame the president for mass shootings.
Two mass shootings in 24 hours. Three in the space of a week. How are we supposed to think about this? How do we make sense of it?
Some commentators and politicians on the left are blaming President Trump and the GOP for these shootings, as if that’s reasonable, as if one side of our political divide has a monopoly on divisiveness. Former representative Beto O’Rourke said President Trump was a “racist” and had “a lot to do with what happened in El Paso yesterday.” Sen. Cory Booker was yet more blunt, saying, “Donald Trump is responsible for this.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren called out the president “for advancing racism and white supremacy.” Plenty of others in prestige media echoed these sentiments.
But let’s take a step back. Who are these gunmen, and what do they say about what they’re doing? Like the Christchurch shooter, the El Paso shooter was an eco-fascist with strong anti-corporate and anti-immigrant views. Both were ideologically committed political terrorists—white nationalist terrorists, if you like. Like ISIS or al-Qaeda fighters, they might be profoundly wrong about everything, but they aren’t lunatics. The same was true of Dylann Roof no less than Osama bin Laden. We can’t sooth ourselves by saying these men are merely insane.
From ISIS to El Paso, then, the terrorists in question are driven by a purposeful—obviously evil—ideology.