UPDATE 2, 1 PM central time
Horrific news out of Orlando: A gunman armed with an assault rifle and other weapons killed at least 50 in a terrorist attack the Pulse nightclub in Orlando; more than 50 have been taken to hospitals.
The gunman, killed in a shootout with police, has been identified as Omar Mateen; the Daily Beast reports that he was previously investigated by the FBI. NBC is reporting that before the shootngs he called 911 and swore allegiance to ISIS.
NBC is also reporting that Mateen was a violent homophobe, according to his father. It seems clear that the club was deliberately targeted because it catered to the LGBT community. The father told NBC that the shootng was likely motivated by his son’s hatred of gays. “This had nothing to do with religion,” he told them.
His ex-wife told the Washington Post that he was an unstable and abusive man. “He beat me,” she saud. “He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”
Horrendous.
Meanwhile, 4chan trolls are busily spreading disinformation about the shooting.
Please post your thoughts, and any relevant information you run across.
Getting Tweets from Alt-Rightistan on Twitter. Amazing how much they “care” about LGBT people when it means they can hate on brown folks with impunity.
@ axecalibur
It’s where someone publicly adopts or supports a particular position to show what a sound person they are.
So a person may click ‘like’ on a Facebook post supporting refugees or start using #blacklivesmatter to demonstrate that they’re not racist.
There’s an implication though that the person doing it is more concerned with appearance than the actual substantive issue.
@Bonelady
Cool, but keep that stuff to yourself. Nobody wants to hear that you find them gross.
Short answer: “Virtue Signalling” == “Anyone who cares about anything doesn’t actually care, they just want to make themselves look good”. I.e. ad-hominem bullshit to be used against anyone who cares about a thing.
Virtue Signalling is a “theory” about why people do altruistic things. (Can’t ever do something for anything but selfish reasons after all – economics says so donchakno.) So the idea is that many people engage in altruistic behaviour to signal to other people that they are a good and worthwhile person, so as to raise their social status. There’s no actual desire to do good for other people involved – people do good things to make themselves look good.
To be fair this is a thing, to an extent. Sometimes people will brag about, like, recycling, or some other high-minded goal, and they stop doing the thing when they no longer get the social reward for it. But it’s far from a large motivation. As always, people are complicated and do things for many reasons. The phrase is overused and seems to be mostly a generic insult to shut down anyone trying to bring attention to something. It can be applied to anyone making a positive statement, and is also wholly unfalsifiable and has no bearing on the actual point – it’s just saying “You don’t actually care about the thing, you just want to look like you do!”
I think the phrase entered the alt-rightosphere by way of the blog Overcoming Bias, a companion blog (parent, perhaps) to Less Wrong. Overcoming Bias has a lot of contrarian positions which are excellent koans for meditating on bias, perception, and the nature of reality. It also too often boils everything down to economic theory, which makes the statements fall flat.
The straight people ignoring homophobia in order to argue for and against gun control or to be racist and islamiphobic are super gross. Like, this isn’t about you, shut the fuck up.
I’ve been crying in and off this afternoon. I don’t feel safe and I’m afraid for my friends. I know a gay man in Alabama, and he knows people who have been to that club. He likes to hang out in lgbt clubs, too and I thiiinnk he moonlights as a bar tender at one. He could be a victim if an attack like this, and that’s scary.
You’re right, @authorialAlchemy, this is about homophobia first and foremost. I’m sorry if I contributed.
One of the worst parts of this tragedy was all the racists, bigots, and general scum of the Earth who leapt at the opportunity to either a) make snarky remarks about how liberals will use this as an excuse to take their guns, b) attack Islam, or c) gloat at the fact that LGBT+ people were killed. I swear, I bet people like that sit around waiting for something like this so they can use it as a soapbox for their disgusting opinions
@authorialAlchemy – Sorry, I didn’t mean to erase the victims, or to overlook the understandable sense of fear amongst the LGBTQ community in the wake of this attack.
@Inkswitch:
Oh, but we’re the ones “politicizing” it.
Eh, no one here has been doing all that, I’m just talking about responses I saw elsewhere and in the media.
Apparently the “islamic terrorist” thing was started by a racist police officer.
In my more cynical moments, I think that the only way for this country’s leaders to finally take gun violence seriously en mass is when the victim lists start to include their own loved ones on them. Then, and only then, will they find the backbone to finally do something about the rising death tolls here. Until then, they aren’t going to care ’cause, in their minds, its not their problem and thus not that urgent to solve.
I hope and pray that it doesn’t take that to get them moving on the issue. 🙁
@authorialAlchemy Many rainbow internet hugs to you. :/
@Redsilkphoenix Sandy Hook didn’t do anything much, and that was murdering children. Wish I could be more hopeful. :/
Can anyone confirm this for me please?
It’s completely understandable why this atrocity is on everybody’s minds and the focus of people’s attention.
I am a bit frustrated though that now the Brock Turner story has been consigned to oblivion. I really thought it might be a catalyst for change, or at least a dialogue on rape culture. Although maybe I was right to be pessimistic when it wrote this on the other thread.
Like is say I’m not criticising anyone for focussing on this. It’s completely natural and understandable. But it is so infuriating and just another (maybe minor in the grand scheme of things) reason to hate this murdering bastard who did this.
“Apparently the “islamic terrorist” thing was started by a racist police officer.”
Nope, it’s been confirmed. Shooters name was Omar Mateen from Port Saint Lucie, Florida. He was a muslim that fell in with the Radical Terrorist crowd and was homophobic for many years.
You know, just this afternoon I saw “Coming Out”, an East German film about a gay man living in East Berlin just before the Wall came down. A bit of trivia: the movie premiered the day the Wall came down, and might have suffered a lack of attention because of that. The characters talk about being afraid, and some of them are ashamed at being gay, but in the end the story seems to say the best thing to do is accept yourself for who you are, as long as you don’t hurt anybody. It’s a movie from almost 40 years ago. Then I get home and see this.
Maybe there will always be people who hate anyone in any sort of minority, but for fuck’s sake, they can be aware that they have the problems, and nobody else needs to be a target. It’s just so disgusting and typical that the hateful attack groups that don’t threaten them, or anyone in any real way. Cowards, the lot of them. May the ghosts of their own hate always be in their peripheral vision.
Oh jesus fucking Christ I just had a brief conversation with my mum who said that the gunman must have been mentally ill or “unbalanced” because “nobody just goes out and kills like that.” I tried to insist that it was probably just rampant hatred that made him do it but she just repeated herself again.
Argh. Please tell me there has been nothing in the media that tried to argue the same tired old excuse.
This is so tragic, how many more innocent people have to die before we enforce the gun control laws!? How many of us have to die before we become more stricted towards hate and discrimination!? What should we do besides praying and share info around!?
My heart goes out to the victims and their families. I will pray for them.
It makes me sick to see people do these horrible things and people will either defend or praise them. Yes it’s terrorism but in the media, comment section, society in general if you’re not white then you are a thug or/terrorist but if you are white then you are “mentally ill”, “misguided”, etc.
I want to cry now.
Sunnysombrera
Ugh yeah I dealt with people like her as well.
@Alan:
Between Brock Turner, Christina Grimmie, and now this, I’m really rather not feeling proud to be an American.
@Fruitloopsie, the only thing I’ve ever heard that makes any sense on what to actually do about it is a hassle, really: Organize. Get on the phone and the internet, and get local people together. Bombard your congressperson with mail, and let them know two things: 1) If they fight for gun control you will volunteer for their campaigns, keep them in office, etc, and 2) if they don’t fight for gun control you will do everything you can to get them kicked out of office for someone who will.
The NRA Lobby’s leash is around the government’s necks, but at the end of they day they need to be elected and re-elected for that to mean anything. That gives you a tiny bit of leverage. Schedule some time every week for working on it, and do it. Lean on’em until they cry, and then keep pushing until they do it.
The federal government is bought and sold but not so much the states. Work local, organize, get active. It’s the only thing I can think of that would have a chance of doing anything about this. They can ignore one person. Ignoring thousands of motivated, active people? Politicians usually know better than that. I imagine local LGBT groups would be a great place to start looking. Local (progressive) churches as well, perhaps.
Whatever happens, I hope something is done for you guys down there. It’s a nightmare.
Hearts and hugs to all my southern neighbours <3
@ dslucia
You (and your fellow Americans) are no more responsible for those things than every Muslim is responsible for the events last night or I am for the behavior of British football hooligans in France.
Trigger warning for memories of similar events
Just listening to a programme over here that analyses tomorrow’s early editions of newspapers. Our papers have gone down the route of comparing this to the Bataclan massacre. I can see why; but to me it’s more reminiscent of the Admiral Duncan attacks.
It is true that in ISIS’s magazine there’s a sort of ‘how to’ guide guide for lone wolf Jihadis; and one suggested target is gay nightclubs. However, in the same way that MRA groups (and I do think there’s a parallel) capitalise on malcontents’ pre-existing hate, I get the impression that this guy had issues with gay people regardless. He may have carried this out in the name of ISIS; and their sick ideology may have provided him with a justification; but I’m not sure he wouldn’t have done it anyway.
Orlando local here, and I’d like to make a request of anyone reading these comments. Our local blood donation centers have been inundated with wonderful people stepping up to help the wounded, and they need supplies to handle the large crowds. Amazon Prime Now is live in Orlando, so if you can send anything, gatorade, water, boxes of cookies and other snacks, etc, it would be greatly appreciated! I’m not sure what their operating hours are right now, but that info will be on their websites. Thank you! <3
The assumption is that if someone walks into a church or a school or a club and opens fire he is “crazy”, therefore take guns away from “crazy” people and every thing will be totes fine. *sigh* And you can’t tell any of those parroting this crap any different.
These people aren’t “mentally ill” in the sense that they heard Manson in their head telling them to do what they did. Instead, they had our culture telling them it was ok to do what they did, AND handing them to the tool to do it with.
TL;DR: A guy who shoots 100 people because he hates gays isn’t “crazy”. He’s a fucking asshole.
Tangent: Uruguayans often assume I am from one of several Scandinavian countries due to my red hair being very rare here and more common there. Today I didn’t bother to correct anyone. I was too ashamed to admit where I was from.
Scildfreja
Thanks