Every time there’s a mass shooting, progressives hold their breath, praying that it won’t be another Muslim or queer person. Every act of Muslim or trans terrorism punctuates their ongoing denial about the problem of these movements. The left confirms its awareness of the danger these ideologies present to public safety when the shooter is neither one of those types. When it’s a white man, presumably Christian, they call out “MAGA types” for their alleged silence. Yet, it’s the double standard on their side that proves the progressives are disingenuous—and confirms their penchant for projection.
The shooter in the latest high-profile mass shooting was a white man named Chad Williams. Armed with an AR-15-style rifle, the 24-year-old killed three people and wounded several others at an In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho, before taking his own life. Williams ended the nightmare after an armed civilian, Jordan Salinas, used his FN Five-seveN semi-automatic pistol to disrupt his plans.
The incident recalls another shooting, this one in Boise, Idaho, by Jacob Bergquist, a 27-year-old white male. Bergquist was a white supremacist. White supremacy suggests Bergquist’s motives. We’re still waiting to learn more about Williams’ politics, but the fact that he is white cannot explain the fact that he killed three people. We need to know what Williams believed.
There are two major problems with the obvious attempt to make conservatives appear racist and transphobic by leveling the charge of hypocrisy. Firstly, race tells us very little, if anything, about motive. Would not those defending their tribes agree? You’d think so, but you would be wrong. When the shooter is white, a category they narrowly circumscribe to mean right-wing Christian, his motive is his whiteness.
But this raises a problem for progressives. For, secondly, Muslim is not a race. The posts rationalize grouped variation in mass shootings by comparing white and Muslim as if they’re the same category of thing. The 9-11 hijackers were white men. They were not some other race because they were Muslim. Did their whiteness fly planes into buildings? No. They brought down those towers because they were Muslims. For the woke, America deserved it. It was a case of chickens coming home to roost.
Moreover, most trans shooters are white males. However, white men escape the wrath of woke zealots by declaring themselves to be women. Queer identity erases not only their maleness, but also their whiteness. Queer is the act of stepping into oppression. The man the transwoman was (and still is) is dead. Once a man identifies with an oppressed group, his acts of violence are transformed into justice or blamed on the oppressor.
Race is a category based on physical appearance. One is not white because he believes he is. White is not an ideology. If the Twin Falls shooter had been a Muslim or trans person, then it would be reasonable to ascribe motive, since Islam and gender identity are ideologies. One may be wrong to attribute motive to ideology. Not every Muslim kills for Islam. But it’s a fair assumption. If it turns out that Williams was a white supremacist like Bergquist, then that might suggest a motive, but we don’t have enough information yet. That he is neither Muslim nor queer is enough for woke types to flood X with charges of hypocrisy.
It is worth keeping in mind that, of the 440 million Muslims living in the Middle East and North Africa, the vast majority of them are white. Europe is home to 46 million Muslims—majority white. There are another 25 million Muslims in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Russia, and Serbia. Their race? You guessed it: for the most part, white. Many Muslims in the Western Hemisphere are white. Does whiteness explain Muslim terrorism? Or does Islam? Progressives get around the problem by reracializing Arabs.
If the shooter is a far-right terrorist, I will condemn it. But I already condemn it. I condemn mass murder whether the man is a white supremacist or a Muslim. Readers of this platform know that I spent a great deal of time raising awareness about patterns of gun violence and debunking political distortions surrounding it, such as the claim that most mass shooters are young right-wing white males.
It’s enough for me that Williams killed several random people to draw my condemnation. But I’m not like the woke leftist. I can and do condemn gun violence on all sides. The progressive only condemns violence when it is perpetrated by Christian white cismen. When the violence is coming from inside the house, his silence is deafening.
freedom and reason 