Triggering always depends on frames. Was “news coverage of Donald Trump's Muslim ban and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's subsequent welcoming message” the actual cause of mass murder.
The man who killed six people in a Quebec City mosque last year was triggered to carry out the shooting when Canada announced it would continue to welcome refugees after US President Donald Trump implemented his travel ban in 2017.
Trump’s order singled out Syrians for the most aggressive ban, ordering that anyone from that country, including those fleeing civil war, are indefinitely blocked from coming to the United States.
Media effects arguments as rationalizations maintain their resilience, even as psychosis reigns supreme in the age of Trump.
And Islamophobia is seen by the deranged as heroic. Easy to rationalize hatred when there are “very fine people on both sides”.
As a confession, this “triggered” spree killing is more like a motive searching for a cause, yet the medium remains the message.
And the online searches tell us more about the homicidal narrative in terms of being racist and sexist as well as specifically Islamophobic.
Others who communicated with Bissonnette online said they had a drastically different impression of him.
The man convicted of killing six men inside a Quebec City mosque on Jan. 29, 2017, spent hours searching online for videos and references to mass murders in the weeks before he gunned down the worshippers, it was revealed Friday at a court hearing.
- Alexandre Bissonnette, 28, also entered online search terms for mass murderer Dylann Roof 201 times between Jan. 1 and Jan. 29, 2017 — the day of the attack. Roof killed nine people at a South Carolina church in 2015.
- One week before the mosque attack, Bissonnette watched a video montage made from the shooting scenes in director Denis Villeneuve's 2009 drama Polytechnique — a fictionalized account of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre that left 14 women dead.
- Crown prosecutor Thomas Jacques said Bissonnette also watched footage of the 1999 Columbine school shooting carried out by two students, who killed a dozen students and a teacher.
www.cbc.ca/…
Bissonnette pleaded guilty March 28 to six counts of first-degree murder, changing an earlier plea. He also apologized to victims and survivors, saying he was deeply sorry for the pain he caused and was ashamed of his actions.
His life was in turmoil. Troubled by suicidal thoughts for more than a decade, his doctor had recently switched his anti-depressants. His parents were worried about his heavy drinking. He had just quit university, unable to keep up. He was on sick leave after being chewed out by his boss.
And for months he had been terrified Muslim terrorists would strike in Quebec City, he told a Sûreté du Québec officer 14 hours after he had killed six Muslim men at a mosque near his parents’ home.
A video recording of Bissonnette’s three-hour interrogation was shown at his sentencing hearing Friday. He has pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder.
montrealgazette.com/...
Thus, the very first time he brought up the idea, the president both tied the two bans together and detailed—in a rare prepared, written speech—the exact legal strategy that he has used to implement them.
Incredibly, the administration’s brief in the Supreme Court case actually cites this speech as proving that he did not want to ban Muslims.
In a speech [3] and an interview [4] afterward, Trump explained that the “Muslim ban” or “temporary ban”—as he said he preferred to call the Muslim ban—would now apply to “in particular the terrorist states.”
[...]
Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that his fears of Muslims lead him to believe even the most outlandish lies about them and suggest policies that specifically target them as a group.
In defense of the ban, Trump stated, “I think Islam hates us.” He repeatedly praised the idea of murdering Muslim prisoners of war with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood purely because it would be scary to other Muslims. He repeatedly and falsely claimed that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in the United States cheered on 9/11. He said that the U.S. government should “shut down” mosques.
www.cato.org/...
How easy is it to project that frame globally.
The man who killed six people in a Quebec City mosque last year was triggered to carry out the shooting when Canada announced it would continue to welcome refugees after US President Donald Trump implemented his travel ban in 2017.
- We've reached a pivotal point in the Alexandre Bissonnette police interrogation video at his sentencing hearing.
- “Why did you chose that place?” the cop asks.
- "I wanted to save people." Bissonnette answers.
- From what?
- "Terrorist attacks."
- "Everything that happened, in Europe, in Canada, the United States. I told myself I could do something good," the killer says.
- The officer asks Bissonnette if Donald Trump is in line with his values. The killer asks for clarification. Say on immigration? "On that, sure."
- Was there a moment you started thinking about this? the officer asks.
- The Parliament Hill shooting, Bissonnette replies. And the truck attack in Nice. "I didn't want them to come kill my family."
- On January 29, the day of the attack, came a trigger. Bissonnette tells his police interrogator. He was watching news coverage of Donald Trump's Muslim ban and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's subsequent welcoming message.
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" “I was listening to TV and I learned that the Canadian government was going to take more refugees, you know, who couldn’t go to the United States, and they were coming here," Bissonnette says.
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The killer continues: “I saw that and I like lost my mind. I don’t want us to become like Europe. I don’t want them to kill my parents, my family."
- "I am not a terrorist," he insists.
- He then asks to go to the bathroom.