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Fightdirecto -> Conservatives spreading lie about mass shooters being 'registered Democrats' (1/27/2013 11:53:17 AM)
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quote:
Based on the assertions of Roger Hedgecock a right-wing radio show host, the idea that the five worst recent mass shootings were committed by registered Democrats is making its way through e-mail chains and social media.
Hedgecock asserts, without providing any evidence or sources, that the Ft. Hood shooter, the Virginia Tech shooter, the Aurora Theater shooter and Adam Lanza of Sandy Hook infamy were all “registered Democrats”. He acknowledges that Klebold and Harris (the Columbine Colorado shooters) were too young to be registered voters but asserts, again without providing any evidence, that Harris and Klebold’s parents were progressives or liberal Democrats. All of these charges are utterly baseless and perhaps do not even deserve a response. However, given the effectiveness of right-wing lies in saturating social media and duping the incurious (a far too numerous segment of the population), some more detailed debunking is in order…
Let me also state that given that neither major political party condones mass shooter violence in any way, shape or form, and that all these acts are individual acts of violence that are not sanctioned by either elected Democrats or Republicans (at least not mainstream leaders in either party), the very notion that they are acting on behalf of a political party is itself problematic. This is not to say that mass shootings are apolitical acts, but rather it is to say that as political acts they may express an ideology (racism, misogyny, entitlement, psychosis, etc) but they do not in general express alignment with a political party or if they do it is not an association that the Democrats or Republicans would accept as legitimate (neither party wants to claim James Holmes or Adam Lanza as a member in good standing, no matter what Holmes or Lanza feels about them). In any case, we can categorically reject the notion that any of the shooters in question has been shown to be a registered Democrat on a case by case basis.
1. Nidal Hasan (the Ft. Hood shooter) lived in either Virginia (his state of residence prior to being sent to Ft. Hood) or Texas, neither of which has partisan registration. Therefore the claim that he was a "registered Democrat" is false. I do not know if he voted or how he voted, but I do know that unless he was registered in a state in which he did not reside, that the claim that he is a registered Democrat is FALSE.
2. Since Virginia does not have partisan registration there is also no way to tell whether Seung-Hui Cho was a Democrat, but again because there is no partisan registration in the state we can say that the claim that he is a registered Democrat is FALSE.
3. The allegation that James Holmes was registered Democrat was based on a Breitbart blogger Joel B. Pollack, who found voter registration records for a DIFFERENT James Holmes who was about the same age. Alex Jones’ Infowars and other right-wing websites then dutifully repeated the lie without verifying it. It was later determined that the Colorado Theater Shooter James Holmes was NOT registered to vote, as evidenced by this retraction…However, most of right-wing media continued to promote the lie without printing Breitbart sites retraction. The claim that James Holmes was a registered Democrat is FALSE.
4. The claim that Adama Lanza is a registered Democrat has been suggested based not on any evidence that he was registered as one, but on the rather dubious claim that because Connecticut has almost 2 to 1 Democratic registration over Republicans, he was probably a Democrat. (Claim: "Adam Lanza, NewtownConn murderer. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by about a 2-1 ratio in Connecticut. The odds are therefore that the Lanza family are (sic) Democrats.") This of course is a bogus argument to begin with, but even if we were to make the claim that a mass shooter’s political affiliation must be the same as the majority of the people in his area, we can debunk this foolish idea by taking this shoddy analysis down to the local level. Yes, Connecticut voted for Barack Obama, BUT THE CITY OF NEWTOWN VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY. If we look at the results we find that Mitt Romney defeated Barack Obama in Newtown by 7451-6784 votes or 51.7 percent to 47 percent. Republican Senate candidate and Tea Party favorite Linda McMahon carried the city over Democrat Chris Murphy by an even larger margin. Add in the other information we have that Lanza’s mother was a “doomsday prepper” and a home schooler in a Republican-leaning city and we can pretty well dispense with the erroneous assumption that Lanza must have been a Democrat…We can therefore claim that with no evidence to support the claim, the assertion that Lanza was a Democrat is not demonstrated and that in the absence of any evidence it is likely FALSE.
5. Klebold and Harris of course were not old enough to vote and they had no apparent political affiliation. Allegations that they came from families of Democrats or liberal progressives appear to have no sources to substantiate those claims. What little ideology the boys demonstrated owed mostly to an admiration for Timothy McVeigh, not Ted Kennedy. Harris’ father was a retired Air Force pilot and Eric Harris wanted to join the Marine Corps. The boys lived in Littleton, Colorado a relatively conservative and affluent suburb of Denver. The claim that their parents were Democrats is UNSUBSTANTIATED. Any suggestion that the two boys were Democrats is demonstrably FALSE.
The article then cites 15 mass murders or politically motivated murders committed between 1984 and 2012 by White supremacists, Sovereign Citizens, “pro-life” movement members and a former Republican campaign volunteer.
[image]local://upfiles/42188/C5D3E17295A84001BB5B8E30A41E7DDA.jpg[/image]
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