{"id":191694,"date":"2019-07-18T05:37:51","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T05:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=191694"},"modified":"2019-07-20T05:29:54","modified_gmt":"2019-07-20T05:29:54","slug":"ice-shooters-manifesto-is-hauntingly-close-to-what-aoc-has-been-saying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=191694","title":{"rendered":"ICE Shooter\u2019s Manifesto Is Hauntingly Close to What AOC Has Been Saying"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hide Out Now \u2013 July 16, 2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Roadblock near the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

It used to be that the weekend was when the news took a breather \u2014 aside, of course, from the Sunday morning chat shows, but even those didn\u2019t get discussed until Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the news still rests on the sixth and seventh days, this weekend was a bad example of it. The most visible story, of course, was President Donald Trump\u2019s\u00a0Sunday tweets<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, which seemed to refer to several progressive legislators \u2014 including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar \u2014 and were widely lambasted as being racist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even on such a weekend, however, the events that transpired at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, would usually warrant more of a look than they got, especially when you consider the\u00a0manifesto<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0the ICE shooter left behind.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the kind of politicized violence story that the media usually loves to play yarn-and-index cards games with.<\/span><\/p>\n

Only this time, the shooter couldn\u2019t be connected to the right. Instead, if you were going to look at the shooter\u2019s manifesto and pick an individual the rhetoric sounded most like, it would be none other than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When 69-year-old Willem Van Spronsen attacked the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington on Saturday morning, he left behind a manifesto. He was killed by police after lobbing incendiary devices, one of which reportedly consumed a car in flames. He was also carrying a rifle when he was killed by police.<\/span><\/p>\n

Van Spronsen was connected to antifa groups, several of which marked his passing.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/SEATTLEAFA\/posts\/912258672459522<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

His manifesto, which was mailed to friends on Friday, made it clear that he identified himself as antifa. However, many parts of the document look like they came out of an Ocasio-Cortez stump speech.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cevil says the flow of commerce is our purpose here,\u201d he said at the beginning of the manifesto. \u201cevil says concentration camps for folks deemed lesser are necessary. the handmaid of evil says the concentration camps should be more humane. beware the centrist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The concentration camp rhetoric, of course, was one of\u00a0Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s additions<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0to the debate over detention facilities for illegal immigrants. I\u2019m sure she wasn\u2019t the first person to use it, but she was the first major politician to do so and helped popularize the comparison.<\/span><\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the only part of the manifesto in which he used it: \u201ci\u2019m a man who loves you all and this spinning ball so much that i\u2019m going to fulfill my childhood promise to myself to be noble,\u201d he wrote in another part. \u201chere it is, in these corporate for profit concentration camps. here it is, in brown and non conforming folks afraid to show their faces for fear of the police\/migra\/proud boys\/the boss\/beckies\u2026 here it is, a planet almost used up by the market\u2019s greed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, the idea of \u201cconcentration camps<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u201d and the heartlessness of the market are common themes here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Van Spronsen also blames a few common betes noire of Ocasio-Cortez in another part of the manifesto:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFascism serves the needs of the state serves the needs of business and at your expense. Who benefits? Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Betsy de Vos, George Soros, Donald Trump, and need I go on? Let me say it again: rich guys (who think you\u2019re not really all that good), really dig government (every government everywhere, including \u2018communist\u2019 governments), because they make the rules that make rich guys richer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the big thing is the \u201cconcentration camps<\/strong><\/span><\/a>,\u201d mentioned four times during the three-page manifesto.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s odd is that, given a media used to poring over these manifestos for some way to connect attackers to some larger cause, few of the reports from major media outlets seemed to focus on this \u2014 or even mention it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where it gets curious is when you consider this quote from a friend of the attacker, who said she believed it was a form of political suicide: \u201cHe was ready to end it,\u201d a woman identified as Deb Bartley told\u00a0The Seattle Times<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. \u201cI think this was a suicide. But then he was able to kind of do it in a way that spoke to his political beliefs. I know he went down there knowing he was going to die.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is how\u00a0The New York Times<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0reported that quote: \u201c\u2019He was ready to end it,\u2019 she told The [Seattle] Times. \u2018I think this was a suicide.\u2019\u201d No mention of doing \u201cit in a way that spoke to his political beliefs\u201d or anything like that.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had come to believe that we\u2019d determined, as a culture, that the rhetoric of politicians was responsible for the actions of madmen.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what we were told after Pittsburgh. That\u2019s what we were told\u00a0after Christchurch<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. That\u2019s what we were told after Charlottesville. Granted, Van Spronsen didn\u2019t actually kill anyone. He was stopped before he could do so. However, death was certainly what he intended to cause.<\/span><\/p>\n

If we\u2019re going to say that rhetoric can directly set off madmen, then we need to hold Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s feet to the fire here.<\/span><\/p>\n

She\u2019s the one who made the ludicrous \u201cconcentration camp\u201d claims. She\u2019s been one of the primary voices attacking the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and claiming, without any evidence, that migrants are being forced to\u00a0drink from toilets<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0by Customs and Border Protection.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think anyone in the media truly intended to hold politicians responsible for actions due to their rhetoric, however \u2014 at least, not if that rhetoric was the correct, liberal sort of rhetoric.<\/span><\/p>\n

No, Van Spronsen didn\u2019t manage to end any life but his own, but that\u2019s not the only reason there was almost no coverage of this attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Covering it in-depth would have required covering the reasons behind it. That would have made for some very uncomfortable national discussions about things that Ocasio-Cortez has said about ICE.<\/span><\/p>\n

No, I don\u2019t think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bears any responsibility for radicalizing this shooter. I do wish, however, that everyone who blamed conservative rhetoric for other attacks would take this opportunity to admit they were full of bunkum.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also wish they would give as much attention to this attack as they have to\u00a0other similar incidents.<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Had he been a \u201cwhite racist\u201d the media would have gone to town. But because he didn\u2019t fit the \u201cracist\u201d profile the ICE shooting story has been played down by the media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Current_Affairs","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=191694"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191739,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191694\/revisions\/191739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}