Identifying The Next Mass Murderer—Before It’s Too Late
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/spycatcher/201506/identifying-the-next-mass-murderer-it-s-too-lateWhat to look for.
Narcissistic Traits –They believe themselves to be special, to have the right to do and say, but also to act out as they wish, feeling omnipotent in their beliefs and assured that only they have the wisdom, vision, and understanding of the problem and of course the solution. They narcissistically have the right to devalue others (people of color, minorities, abortion clinic doctors, police, etc.) with impunity and without remorse. These narcissistic beliefs will spew out in their conversations and rants. For the most part, narcissistic traits are seldom hidden, they ooze out of the narcissist when they speak, how they view others, through their worldview, and of course through the disdain they show for those they hold in contempt.
Paranoid Ideation (link is external) – All of these individuals irrationally fear something though they are
loathe to label it as such—they prefer to call it hate—but in essence it is driven by fear. Ted Kaczynski feared technology—hated scientists; Timothy McVeigh feared the militarization of police departments (if he could see things now?)—he grew to hate the federal government so he bombed the Murrah Building; Anders Behring Breivik feared Muslims taking over Europe—he killed the children of politicians he hated; and now it appear that Dylann Storm Roof, if the government is correct, feared blacks or African Americans—so he murdered them out of hate.
Passionate Hatred (link is external) – Paranoia, literally the irrational fear of things or people, fuels hatred
to the point it becomes passionate hatred—the kind that drives in turn irrational action or criminal behavior. Passionate hatred is palpable from the conversations and statements made by these individuals or the adornments (clothing, tattoos) they display; so it is detectable, but here is the catch: Hatred, as Eric Hoffer warned us in his book, The True Believer, can bring people together and can unite them—and there are a lot of haters in this country and around the world. Unfortunately, this hatred is often masked or covered up by those who are willing to look the other way, including family members or by those who are also true believers.
Passionate hatred need not be a collective enterprise, as it was for the Nazis who used it to unite the German people against the Jews. Hatred can also be a solo, twisted, paranoid fueled affair, where the person self righteously only sees black and white, no middle ground or consensus. This kind of rigid unyielding thinking fuels hatred but it also does something curious that Hoffer also warned us about. Hatred, but especially passionate hatred, can give purpose to an otherwise unfulfilled life as was noted in the book, Hunting Terrorists (link is external). Look
back and see how often these individuals lead marginal or unfulfilled lives.They all do or did.
The danger also of passionate hatred is that no matter how irrational it is to us, it is not to them. Fueled by paranoia and their narcissistic certainty and infallibility, they assume that that which they fear or loathe is an existential threat. Technology was an existential threat for the UNABOMBER Ted Kaczynski, just as irrationally as people of color can be an existential threat for the likes of Anders Behring Breivik and Dylann Storm Roof. Sick as those rationales are, people kill, even start civil wars over such paranoid-fueled hatred.
Wound Collectors – In past articles I have talked about wound collectors. These are individuals who collect social or historical slights, procedural wrongs, injustices real or imagined, mistakes, faux pas, on and on for a purpose. That purpose is to validate their hatred and paranoia and justify just how correct they are. And they don’t just collect wounds they nurture them so they don’t die out. They take them out, dust them off, tell and retell them, think about them, and garnish them, so that they become almost mythically powerful through repetitive admiration (story telling, ideation, writing, rituals, etc.). Thus, wound collection is essential, it provides the justification for acting out. Regular criminals, incidentally, don’t collect wounds; they don’t have to. All of the above individuals did.
Communication – Invariably communication, in all its variety, follows wound collection as they tell others of their thoughts, fears, concerns, and hatred. Communication almost always precedes action whether it is nonverbal (signs, symbols, attire, tattoos, ornaments, tags, patches on clothing) or verbal. The question then is, “Is anyone listening or looking?†or are the clues being dismissed. Humans are a communicative species. They talk to their friends and family, they write in their diaries, they email, they text, they Tweet, they publish manifestos (link is external), post on Facebook or Instagram, or they upload videos on Youtube. Invariably
there is a trail of words that precede action or as in the case of Terry vs. Ohio (392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1968), actions in the form of body language telegraphed what the suspect was planning—to rob a store.
Violence as Magic – For these individuals as they ideate about what they hate and they methodically build their rationale based on collected wounds, at some point, and it varies with each; violence becomes the “magical†solution. At that point they have given up on all other methods of dealing with their paranoid-fueled hatred or fear. Violence becomes the solution and they psychologically and irrationally dismiss alternatives. It’s here that these individuals begin to seek out weapons or the means for carrying out their violence. At this point there are usually few if any intrinsic restraints left—in other words the person has made up his mind as to what action to take.
Isolation – But before violence takes place or the actual act is committed something else takes place. At this point these individuals have either been in the process of self-isolating: first psychologically and then physically. By self-isolating the individual assures that he is not listening to outside factors (extrinsic) that would derail his thinking or ideation. Coupled with physical isolation, the individual insures no outside distractions, and they can focus on their ideology, collected wounds, and the magical solution to solve the issue. In physical isolation, they can further focus their hatred, refine their magical solution, plan how to execute their action, come to terms with their decision and how the violence will be carried out.
The Lethal Cocktail – When you have all of these things in place; the narcissistic personality with paranoia fueled hatred that embraces violence as the means to bring forth change, you have a lethal cocktail which makes the individual truly meta-stable – extremely volatile and dangerous. This is an individual that has crossed the philosophical line and is ready to act out. At this point, it is often too late, though not impossible, for friends, family, neighbors, associates, and law enforcement to intercept.
This sounds like a DUmmy/leftist/Jihadist to me. I see those characteristics in them.
Looking at DU, I see narcissism, paranoia, hatred, obsession about injustices, and isolation as a major theme there.
