For My Fellow Posters Who Corrected Me: "It Not About Mental Illness - The Big Lie"

[RobertZ]

From Salon online magazine -
It’s not about mental illness: The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males


Blaming "mental illness" is a cop-out -- and one that lets us avoid talking about


I get really really tired of hearing the phrase “mental illness” thrown around as a way to avoid saying other terms like “toxic masculinity,” “white supremacy,” “misogyny” or “racism.”

We barely know anything about the suspect in the Charleston, South Carolina, atrocity. We certainly don’t have testimony from a mental health professional responsible for his care that he suffered from any specific mental illness, or that he suffered from a mental illness at all.
We do have statistics showing that the vast majority of people who commit acts of violence do not have a diagnosis of mental illness and, conversely, people who have mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.
We know that the stigma of people who suffer from mental illness as scary, dangerous potential murderers hurts people every single day — it costs people relationships and jobs, it scares people away from seeking help who need it, it brings shame and fear down on the heads of people who already have it bad enough.
But the media insists on trotting out “mental illness” and blaring out that phrase nonstop in the wake of any mass killing. I had to grit my teeth every time I personally debated someone defaulting to the mindless mantra of “The real issue is mental illness” over the Isla Vista shootings.
“The real issue is mental illness” is a goddamn cop-out. I almost never hear it from actual mental health professionals, or advocates working in the mental health sphere, or anyone who actually has any kind of informed opinion on mental health or serious policy proposals for how to improve our treatment of the mentally ill in this country.
What I hear from people who bleat on about “The real issue is mental illness,” when pressed for specific suggestions on how to deal with said “real issue,” is terrifying nonsense designed to throw the mentally ill under the bus. Elliot Rodger’s parents should’ve been able to force risperidone down his throat. Seung-Hui Cho should’ve been forcibly institutionalized. Anyone with a mental illness diagnosis should surrender all of their constitutional rights, right now, rather than at all compromise the right to bear arms of self-declared sane people.
What’s interesting is to watch who the mentally ill people are being thrown under the bus to defend. In the wake of Sandy Hook, the NRA tells us that creating a national registry of firearms owners would be giving the government dangerously unchecked tyrannical power, but a national registry of the mentally ill would not — even though a “sane” person holding a gun is intrinsically more dangerous than a “crazy” person, no matter how crazy, without a gun.
We’ve successfully created a world so topsy-turvy that seeking medical help for depression or anxiety is apparently stronger evidence of violent tendencies than going out and purchasing a weapon whose only purpose is committing acts of violence. We’ve got a narrative going where doing the former is something we’re OK with stigmatizing but not the latter. God bless America.
What’s also interesting is the way “The real issue is mental illness” is deployed against mass murderers the way it’s deployed in general — as a way to discredit their own words. When you call someone “mentally ill” in this culture it’s a way to admonish people not to listen to them, to ignore anything they say about their own actions and motivations, to give yourself the authority to say you know them better than they know themselves.
This is cruel, ignorant bullshit when it’s used to discredit people who are the victims of crimes. It is, in fact, one major factor behind the fact that the mentally ill are far more likely to be the targets of violence than the perpetrators–every predator loves a victim who won’t be allowed to speak in their own defense.
But it’s also bullshit when used to discredit the perpetrators of crimes. Mass murderers frequently aren’t particularly shy about the motives behind what they do — the nature of the crime they commit is attention-seeking, is an attempt to get news coverage for their cause, to use one local atrocity to create fear within an entire population. [[According to the dictionary, by the way, this is called “terrorism,” but we only ever seem to use that word for the actions of a certain kind — by which I mean a certain color — of mass killer.)
Elliot Rodger told us why he did what he did, at great length, in detail and with citations to the “redpill” websites from which he got his deranged ideology. It isn’t, at the end of the day, rocket science — he killed women because he resented them for not sleeping with him, and he killed men because he resented them for having the success he felt he was denied.

Yes, whatever mental illness he may have had contributed to the way his beliefs were at odds with reality. But it didn’t cause his beliefs to spring like magic from inside his brain with no connection to the outside world.
That’s as deliberately obtuse as reading the Facebook rants of a man who rambled on at great length about how much he hated religion and in particular hated Islam and deciding that the explanation for his murdering a Muslim family is that he must’ve just “gone crazy” over a parking dispute.
Now we’ve got a man who wore symbols of solidarity with apartheid regimes, a man who lived in a culture surrounded by deadly weapons who, like many others, received a gift of a deadly weapon as a rite of passage into manhood.
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/its_...y_white_males/

[soulster]

Amen! We must pay attention the subtleties of how the media talks about these things, and not get sucked into their games.

[MotownSteve]

Very well put.

[Jerry Oz]

The media downplays the reality of racism and how the US systemically supports White supremacy. To wit, look at how we've seen photos of the Charleston murderer as a child opening Christmas presents. We're left to wonder how this sweet boy could grow up to be a murderer and the suggestion is that 'something went wrong with him' [[read: he has a screw loose) as opposed to he is a clear-headed, hate-filled man who killed nine innocents by carefully considered plan. Has any of you seen photos of the victims as children? On their wedding days? Birthdays? What do you know about them other than their names?

Do you recall ever seeing childhood photos of a Black killer? It's as if they were always going to commit this act, so the photos would be of a Black child playing with a switchblade rather than a Christmas toy. Why do you suppose we humanize the killer when it's a White person killing Black people?

[marv2]

The media downplays the reality of racism and how the US systemically supports White supremacy. To wit, look at how we've seen photos of the Charleston murderer as a child opening Christmas presents. We're left to wonder how this sweet boy could grow up to be a murderer and the suggestion is that 'something went wrong with him' [[read: he has a screw loose) as opposed to he is a clear-headed, hate-filled man who killed nine innocents by carefully considered plan. Has any of you seen photos of the victims as children? On their wedding days? Birthdays? What do you know about them other than their names?

Do you recall ever seeing childhood photos of a Black killer? It's as if they were always going to commit this act, so the photos would be of a Black child playing with a switchblade rather than a Christmas toy. Why do you suppose we humanize the killer when it's a White person killing Black people?

This whole story has been handled differently. I noticed that they interviewed very few people from Roof's family, teachers, neighbors or from his past in general. They have not shown where he lives, the types of places he frequented, there has not even been talk about what possible associations he's had with organized White Supremacist groups and there are 20 known groups in S.C.

What about his father? What do we know about him? His Mom? What type of people are they? There are so many questions I'd like to see answers to, but so far there has been little to no background information provided on Dylann Roof.

[Jerry Oz]

I've seen plenty of photos of him as a kid but I've heard nothing about his life after dropping out after 9th grade. I've seen his Black 'friends' on TV, telling us how he never seemed like the guy who would commit mass murder. I've read reports 'from his family' expressing sympathy for the murdered.

But beyond that, all you see is average American baby Dylann contrasted with racist adult Dylann. Even while stating that he was radicalized, none of the mainstream outlets has taken one second to tell us by whom. They still want to portray him as an anomaly as opposed to an indicator that we have a social problem with the new breed of racists who are fueled by the belief that the president is coming to take their guns and their rights as Americans.

[RobertZ]

" They still want to portray him as an anomaly as opposed to an indicator that we have a social problem with the new breed of racists who are fueled by the belief that the president is coming to take their guns and their rights as Americans. "
PERFECTLY stated! And I have to tell you that since our original exchange about my quote claiming the shooter's "mental illness" I'm seeing more news / editorials that agree with your POV - amazing what one can learn from fellow posters if one chooses carefully!