Conspiracy theories and mass shootings

Created
Fri, 27/01/2023 - 01:00
Updated
Fri, 27/01/2023 - 01:00
Your evil government, the lizard people’s evil government A report issued Wednesday by the Secret Service finds that one-quarter of mass shootings in the U.S. between 2016 and 2020 were motivated by ” a belief system involving conspiracies or hateful ideologies involving anti-government, anti-Semitic, and misogynistic views.” Lina Alathari, the chief of the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, told reporters the conspiracies included beliefs such as 9/11 never happened, or that the United Nations was coming to take their guns, or that aliens or lizard people were preparing to take over the world. “Mental illness is not a barometer for dangerousness and it is not a correlation for mass attacks. The vast majority of individuals with mental illnesses in this country will never be violent. In fact, often, they are the victims of violence,” Alathari said. At least six were radicalized online. “One attacker had started subscribing to an online message board about 18 months prior to his attack,” she said. “He later told law enforcement that that’s when he became radicalized and started hating Jewish people.” Half were motivated by personal grievances (the typical perpetrator) including romantic or family relationships, work, or legal issues. Over half of attackers experienced depression, psychotic symptoms, or suicidal thoughts prior to the attacks. The report, the latest in a string of such NTAC studies, examined 173 attacks over the period during which three or more people were injured or killed, excluding the attacker, in a public or semi-public place. In sum, 513…