Things to blame: the killer, jihadist ideology. Things not to blame: America and its attitudes on gays. My new post at Ricochet. Earlier on the Orlando Pulse nightclub attack here.
Things to blame: the killer, jihadist ideology. Things not to blame: America and its attitudes on gays. My new post at Ricochet. Earlier on the Orlando Pulse nightclub attack here.
7 Comments
Can’t help you, Mr. Olson. Within your field, you appear to be inerrant. It’s hard to come up with a comment.
Your analysis doesn’t hold up. Mateen having a wife doesn’t mean he had someone to “turn to in his torment” if his wife is part and parcel of the culture that created his torment in the first place. Witness the would-be-comical-if-it-wasn’t-so-infuriating parade of conservative politicians pushing anti-gay legislation, only to be caught in homosexual trysts.
Mateen shouting/phoning/posting his allegiance to ISIS and ranting against the US doesn’t strike me as particularly strong evidence of much; if he’s in denial about his homosexual leanings, what else is he going to do? Even the suggestion that he was a homosexual would have been anathema to him.
In fact, I don’t think the massacre can even be considered terrorism. Terrorism is violence in the name of furthering a political agenda, and terrorist strike at symbols of the strength of a country to show that they are vulnerable. What political agenda does murdering a marginalized group of people serve? A gay nightclub isn’t the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, and there are, sadly, significant numbers of bigots in our country who were probably secretly (and some even not-so-secretly) glad to see LGBT people killed. As an act of terrorism, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Terrorists strike at those things they consider to be a threat; the LGBT community doesn’t fit the bill. Even if we grant that Mateen thought of himself as a jihadist, his choice of targets was obviously highly personal to him. His father’s disgusting comments about how homosexuals would be punished by God is ample evidence of the environment Mateen grew up in. And his frequenting of the club (for years!) shows his fury wasn’t just holy righteousness.
“if he’s in denial about his homosexual leanings, what else is he going to do?”
But if he was a regular at gay clubs and was actively pursuing homosexual relationships he was not in denial about his homosexual leanings.
“Terrorists strike at those things they consider to be a threat”
No, they strike at soft targets marginally related to what they see as the true threat in order to spread fear and panic.
There’s no evidence he was a gay man. No person has come forward saying he had a relationship with him. There’s just a lot of speculation from naive Americans.
Why can’t we accept the words that we know (from 9-1-1 calls, calls to the news organizations, and his facebook posts) that this was an Islamic Jihadist attack? Why must you blame some alleged culture problem within the United States instead?
“There’s no evidence he was a gay man.”
You mean other than that there are multiple eyewitness accounts that he was a regular at multiple gay bars/nightclubs for years before the attack on Pulse? Or the reports that we was active on at least one gay dating web site?
“Why must you blame some alleged culture problem within the United States instead?”
Personally, I’m not blaming anything other than the attacker himself.
“there are, sadly, significant numbers of bigots in our country who were probably secretly (and some even not-so-secretly) glad to see LGBT people killed’
You been granted quite a gift, the ability to read the minds of and discern the numbers of others to whom you’ve never spoken and who haven’t publicly spoken on the subject.
Like Superman, use your powers wisely and only for good, Dan Welch.
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