A Deadly Cocktail: Self Expression, Fantasism, and Mental Ilness

Charleston shooter, Dylann Roof
When the news broke on Wednesday night that a rampage shooter had killed 9 people at a black church in Charleston, SC, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised.
Like most Americans, I’ve seen this horror show so many times now that I have become numb to it. Oh, here we go again, I thought. It seems like I turn on the news and every other month one of the most common things that I see is a “Breaking News” headline followed by intense media coverage of some manhunt in progress. This has been going on my entire adult life going back to even before I graduated high school in the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.

Eric Harris, left, and Dylan Klebold, right, the Trenchcoat Mafia, who shot up Columbine High School in 1999
Although some have already done so, I didn’t feel the need to “condemn” this incident for two reasons:
1.) First, what this guy did was so obviously immoral, and so repulsive to any Christian, that it doesn’t need to be stated. Maybe it does as America culturally decomposes and things like this happen, but it is distressing when we live in a world where Christians have to articulate such a basic notion that murdering innocent people is always wrong. How much simpler does morality get than “Thou Shalt Not Kill?” Only a fanatic would stand in “solidarity” with this individual after the crime he committed.
2.) Second, I don’t know this individual and had never heard of him until his name was announced on television. Since I don’t know him from Adam, I didn’t see any reason to condemn him. His own friends in that trailer park were the ones who knew about his planned attack months in advance. They were the only ones who were in a position to stop him.
As far as I was concerned, the only interesting question about Charleston, which after all is just one case in a far larger trend, was whether the shooter would turn out to be another self detonating vantardist, which occassionally happens, or a mentally ill nutcase who wasn’t politically motivated. We’ve seen examples of both over the years and it turns out, unsurprisingly, that Dylann Roof was of killer in the vantardist tradition.

Frazier Glenn MIller kills three in Overland Park, Kansas in 2014
Last April, Frazier Glenn Miller shot up a Jewish community center in Overland Park, Kansas, killing three people in the process. After concluding he was dying from emphysema, Miller went there to “kill Jews,” but none of his victims were Jewish. Instead, Miller killed a 14-year-old Methodist teenager, his grandfather, and a Catholic woman. He shouted “Heil Hitler” as he was driven away from the scene by the police.

Wade Michael Page goes on a shooting spree in a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin in 2012
The initial reports of the shooting in Charleston on Wednesday night immediately brought to mind Wade Michael Page who shot up a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012. In fact, before I signed off for the night, I left this blog with the thought of whether the Charleston shooter would turn out to be another Wade Michael Page or a Jared Loughner.

Jared Lougner shoots Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon, AZ in 2011
Who can forget Jared Loughner?
In January 2011, Jared Loughner shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in a supermarket parking lot in Tuscon, AZ. The juicy story of a political assassination attempt spread like wildfire through the media. Given the nature of the crime, it led to rampant speculation on the Left that Loughner was politically motivated and was affiliated with the Tea Party and had been influenced by Rush Limbaugh and FOX News. Instead, it later came to light that Jared Loughner was a drug addict and a severely mentally disturbed young man and that his crime was not motivated by Giffords’ political leanings.
At the time of the Giffords Shooting, which the media scandalously attempted to link Jared Taylor and American Renaissance, I condemned violence and warned about the connection between violence and sociopathic vanguardists in the White Nationalist movement. This, of course, was long before the shooting sprees of Wade Michael Page, Glenn Miller, and now Dylann Roof.
After the close call with Loughner, I speculated that “next time something like this happens we are unlikely to be so fortunate” and “I can’t predict when it will happen, but someday White Nationalists will reap the whirlwind of the morbid vanguardist fascination with violence.”

Kevin Harpham attempts to blow up a MLK Parade in Spokane, Washington in 2011
Next time was surprisingly not long in coming.
Less than two weeks after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, Kevin Harpham, a VNN Forum member aka as “Joe Snuffy,” attempted to blow up a MLK parade in Spokane, Washington. Fortunately, Harpham’s lethal pipe bomb which included shrapnel laced with rat poison failed to explode and we were spared the carnage being drug through the 24/7 cable news media. The failed attack was quickly forgotten in light of what followed.

James Holmes shoots up a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado at the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in 2012
In July of 2012, James Holmes shot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado during the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises. He killed 12 people while injuring nearly 70 others. Holmes was a brilliant neuroscience student who was suffering from schizophrenia. During his interrogation by the police, he told them that he was “The Joker.” Holmes had no ties to the White Nationalist movement.

Adam Lanza shoots up Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012
By far the worst attack of 2012, worse than James Holmes in Aurora in July or Wade Michael Page that August, was Adam Lanza’s attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School in December in Newtown, Connecticut. Lanza exterminated 20 children, his own mother and 6 adult staff members at the school. He suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome and had no ties to the White Nationalist movement.

Seung-Hui Cho shoots up Virginia Tech in 2007
Let’s back up for a minute: Seung-Hui Cho who shot up Virginia Tech in 2007 is still the all time record holder of mass shooting fatalities in America. He killed 32 people and wounded 17 others. Cho was also mentally ill. He left a suicide note in which he talked about his hatred of “rich kids” who had ripped out his soul and who had left him no other choice but to retaliate against them in revenge.

James von Brunn shoots up the US Holocaust Museum in DC in 2009
It’s always the same story, but the fantasy and the target varies. Like Frazier Glenn Miller, James von Brunn went after THE JEWS. In 2009, vantardist James von Brunn attacked the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. He killed a security guard. Also like Miller’s attack in Kansas, no actual Jews were wounded or killed.

Nidal Hasan shoots up Fort Hood, Texas in 2009
Several months after James von Brunn attacked the DC Holocaust Museum in 2009, Major Nidal Hasan shot his fellow soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas. Shouting Allahu Akbar, he opened fire and killed 13 people while injuring over 30 others. Like the Tsarnaev Brothers, Hasan was motivated by Islam and foreign policy grievances.

“Supreme Gentleman” Elliot Rodger targets sorority girls in Isla Vista, California in 2014
Last May, a little over a month after Frazier Glenn Miller attacked the GD KIKES in Kansas, Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger launched his Day of Retribution against humanity and the sorority girls of the University of California, Santa Barbara in Isla Vista. Rodger uploaded a viral video to YouTube in which he explained all the grievances he had endured since puberty at the hands of women who had rejected him.

The Tsarnaev Brothers blow up the Boston Marathon in 2013
Guns are not always the weapon of choice.
In April 2013, the Tsarnaev Brothers blew up the Boston Marathon. They were motivated by their Islamic religious beliefs and resentments toward US foreign policy in the Middle East. The Tsarnaevs, too, had no ties to White Nationalism, but were motivated by acting out their fantasies on a grand stage before the world media.

The DC snipers terrorize the Washington metro area in 2002
Lest we think black people are exclusively the victims of violent, mentally ill fantasists like Dylann Roof, it is worth recalling that the most memorable and terrifying spree killers of my college years were the DC Beltway Snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo, who terrorized the Washington metro area in 2002. The DC Snipers were motivated by their hatred of White people.

Christopher Dorner goes on a rampage against racists in 2013
Two months before the Tsarnaev Brothers blew up the Boston Marathon, former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner went on a rampage against the racist White cops in the LAPD who had wronged him. In his 15,000 word manifesto, Dorner condemned the hopelessly racist system which was stacked against him.
White liberals took to the streets in support of Dorner who was compared to “a real life Django Unchained.” 20,000 people liked a Facebook group called “We Stand With Christopher Dorner” and thousands of enraptured SJWs supported him during the manhunt under the hashtag #TeamDorner.
In August of 2012, ten days after the Wade Michael Page rampage shooting, the terrorist Floyd Corkins entered the headquarters of the Family Research Council in Washington, DC. Armed with a gun and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches, which he intended to smear with the blood of his dead victims and stuff in their mouths, Corkins opened fire in attempt to kill as many people as possible. Like Joe Snuffy’s botched bombing in Spokane, Corkins attack was a dud and was quickly forgotten.
Floyd Corkins told the FBI that he targeted the Family Research Council after learning they were an “anti-gay group” from the SPLC’s list of active “hate groups.” This incident got considerable attention in the rightwing media because the SPLC has listed so many of its political enemies as “hate groups.” While I am honored to be listed as two “hate groups” by the SPLC, the precedent set by Floyd Corkins has made me wonder if my family might one day be targeted by a similar armed lunatic.

Caitlyn Jenner is unveiled on the front cover of Vanity Fair
You might be wondering why I have chosen to include Bruce Jenner in this article about rampage shootings. After all, what does a trans woman like Caitlyn Jenner have to do with a rampage shooter like Dylann Roof?
Actually, Caitlyn Jenner is another excellent representative of the present cultural moment in American history, as she too incorporates all of the extreme individualism, the self expression, the fantasism, and the mental illness that is the connecting tissue that binds all of these rampage shooters. The only difference is that in Caitlyn Jenner’s case the violence and the harm of the unshackled will is turned inward on her own body rather than projected outward toward the bodies of others. This is why trans women like Caitlyn Jenner have a suicide rate 20x that of their comparable peers.

Former president of the Spokane NAACP and “transracialist” pioneer, Rachel Dolezal
Because I have been trying to focus more intensely on the South, I had hoped that I could avoid bringing up Rachel Dolezal on this blog. For the past week, this defiant black woman has been the laughingstock of the entire world after her transformation from a white woman to a black woman was revealed by her biological parents.
Like Caitlyn Jenner, who was erotically aroused by the fantasy of himself being feminized in a woman’s body, Dolezal was aroused by the fantasy of seeing herself in the body of a black woman. Whereas 66-year-old Caitlyn Jenner expressed herself as a pinup on the cover of Vanity Fair, Rachel Dolezal expressed her True Self as a righteous black woman and crusader for social justice who has been victimized by racism.

Chloe Jennings had a persistent fantasy of being paralyzed
Speaking of sad sacks, I am editing this post to include a shout out to all the “transablests” out there: people like Chloe Jennings here who fantasize about being disabled and mutilate their bodies to realize their True Self:
“A Cambridge University educated research scientist is so desperate to live the life of a wheelchair-bound person she is prepared to pay a doctor help her become disabled.
Since childhood, Chloe Jennings-White has made several attempts at injuring herself so she can finally climb into her own wheelchair.
In 2010 she even found a doctor overseas willing to help her become disabled by cutting her sciatic and femoral nerves, but she could not afford the £16,000 costs. …
She fantasises about having a car crash without hurting anyone else just so she can damage her own legs.
‘Any time when I’m driving I sort of conjure up accident scenarios in my mind where I will become paraplegic,’ she admitted. ….
Yes, this is a real thing:
“When he cut off his right arm with a “very sharp power tool,” a man who now calls himself One Hand Jason let everyone believe it was an accident.
But he had for months tried different means of cutting and crushing the limb that never quite felt like his own, training himself on first aid so he wouldn’t bleed to death, even practicing on animal parts sourced from a butcher.
“My goal was to get the job done with no hope of reconstruction or re-attachment, and I wanted some method that I could actually bring myself to do,” he told the body modification website ModBlog.
His goal was to become disabled.
People like Jason have been classified as ‘‘transabled’’ — feeling like imposters in their bodies, their arms and legs in full working order.”
After spending the day reflecting on the Dylann Harris rampage shooting, I found my mind had fixated on a topic I had read about a long time ago:

If the eyes are a window to the soul, this is the gaze of a mentally ill fanatic
“His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason – because it was, in his words, “good for his soul.” What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.”
For Rachel Dolezal, wearing blackface is a symbolic way of repudiating her whiteness and acting out her fantasy of being a righteous black woman, even at the morbid cost of disfiguring her own body. According to Bruce Jenner, he has always known that “Bruce” was a lie, and that “her” was his True Self.
“And what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy – a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent antiwar demonstration he was in no sense aiming at coercing others to conform with his view, for that would have still been a political objective. Instead he took part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of being among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical materialism.”
From Dylann Roof’s perspective, he was a heroic soldier who was left with no other choice than to strike back against the blacks who are taking over our country and raping our women. Shooting them was something he had to do. He was going to singlehandedly ignite the race war in which White people would ultimately emerge victorious. In the cases of James von Brunn and Glenn Miller, they too were heroic soldiers striking back at the GD Kikes. Floyd Corkins was striking back at bigots and homophobes and Malvo and Muhammad were striking back at white devils.
“It is a common human weakness to wish to make more of our contribution to the world than the world is prepared to acknowledge; it is our fantasy world that allows us to fill this gap. Normally, for most of us at least, this fantasy world of our stays relatively hidden, and indeed a common criterion of our mental health is the extent to which we are able to keep our fantasies firmly under our watchful control.
Yet clearly there are individuals for whom this control is, at best, intermittent; its failure results in behavior that ranges from there merely obnoxious to the clinically psychotic. The man who insists on being taken more seriously than his advantages warrant fall into the former category; the maniac who murders an utter stranger because God – or his neighbor’s dog – commanded him to do so belongs to the latter.
These are people like the artist James “The Joker” Holmes, who made his debut in the movie theater in Aurora in front of an audience who had come to watch The Dark Knight Rises, or the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger who played the starring role in The Day of Retribution in Isla Vista.
“What is common in such interactions is that the fantasist inevitably treats other people merely as props: there is absolutely no interest in, or even awareness of, others as having wills and minds of their own. The man who bores us with stories designed to impress us with his importance or his intellect or his bank account cares nothing for us as individuals, for he has already cast us in the role in which he wishes us to play: we are there to be impressed by him. Indeed, it is an error to suggest that he is even trying to impress us, for this would assume that he is willing to learn enough about us to discover how best we might be impressed. Nothing of the kinds occurs.”
For Frazier Glenn Miller, 14-year-old Reat Griffin Underwood was one of the GD Kikes who are destroying the White race, and he did not hesitate to unload righteous justice against him. For Seung-Hui Cho, every one of those rich kid bastards on the Virginia Tech campus had been cast in the role he assigned them to play in his script.
“And why should it? After all, the fantasist has already projected onto us the role we are to play in his fantasy. And no matter what we may be thinking of his recital, it never crosses his mind that we may be utterly failing to play the part expected of us; indeed, it is sometimes astonishing to see how much exertion is required of us to bring our own profound lack of interest to the fantasist’s attention.”
Adam Lanza never gave his own mom the chance to prove that she was not playing the role he had assigned to her in his psychodrama or the children he executed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. When he blew Gabrielle Giffords brains out in Tuscon, Jared Loughner was just as far gone into an indecipherable schizophrenic world of conspiracy theories, government mind control, and manipulated grammar.
“I have therefore elected to call the phenomenon in question, if only for lack of a better term, fantasy ideology – political and ideological symbols and tropes used not for political purposes but entirely for the benefit of furthering a specific personal fantasy. It is, to be frank, something like Dungeons & Dragons carried out not with the trappings of medieval romance – old castles and maidens in distress – but entirely in terms of ideological symbols and emblems. The only important difference between them is that one is an innocent pasttime while the other has proven to be one of the most terrible scourges to afflict the human race.”
In light of the successful prediction that I made after Gabrielle Giffords was shot in 2011, let me make another prediction: if history is our guide, by the time the American public has digested the Dylann Roof shooting in Charleston, yet another rampage shooting starring a different character with different motives will have seized national headlines. In hindsight, it is amazing how quickly the public loses interest in even the worst atrocities, as there is always another self-detonating fantasist out there ready to tee up the next dish of carnage.
And you know what? Next time there is a rampage shooting, and the next time after that, and the next time after that … and talking heads wonder aloud about the “root causes” of “the sickness in America,” the same deadly cocktail of expressive individualism, fantasy ideology, and mental illness will rear its ugly head. When the next self righteous narcissist walks down the catwalk of the 24/7 cable news media, only the details will be different.
Oh, and that Confederate flag … that’s just a small, irrelevant detail.
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