Crooks was registered as a Republican voter but records show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on the day Joe Biden was sworn into office.
  • polonius-rex@kbin.run
    26010·
    1 year ago

    the media:

    we’ll stop naming school shooters due to copycat killers

    also the media:

    his name was thomas matthew and here’s a 90 minute special about his preferred breakfast cereal

    👀 👀 👀

    • David_Eight@lemmy.world
      1051·
      1 year ago

      If this encourages these psychos to stop shooting children and shoot politicians instead, I’ll take that trade.

      • Grass@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        1 year ago

        you know what, fuck yeah. People can only afford so many bullets these days, so just like Halloween warnings avout drugs and the reality of who the fuck would waste their hard earned drug money on random kids, why should anyone waste bullet money on them either. shoot a politician, save a child.

      • KingOfSleep@lemmy.ca
        533·
        1 year ago

        The media is not one thing. Media is plural. Good luck getting “the media” to agree on anything.

        • pivot_root@lemmy.world
          392·
          1 year ago

          They sure can agree on a few things:

          • Ads make money.
          • More ads make more money.
          • Money.
          • More money.
          • 🦀 money money money 🦀
            • pivot_root@lemmy.world
              81·
              1 year ago

              If they’re privately held, yes.
              If they’re publicly traded, yes.
              If they’re publicly funded, also yes, but only because they wouldn’t exist otherwise.

              Even if they don’t say it, it’s always a priority :)

            • aidan@lemmy.worldM
              1·
              1 year ago

              Yet I feel like every time I listen to them they’re basically running an ad for a movie/TV show/book through a fluff interview with someone who worked on it.

              • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
                1·
                1 year ago

                But there is no incentive to get more money than they need to operate, because the shareholders and board don’t profit from it personally. NPR income is spent over 92% on program funding and 7% on administrative.

                It’s basically run the same way as Wikipedia. If enough people donated, there would be no ads at all.

                • aidan@lemmy.worldM
                  11·
                  1 year ago

                  They run programming that they suspect will get them money, either through donations or government funding- because for those working to get raises the organization needs to have money. (As well as other reasons of course)

    • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
      15·
      1 year ago

      I guess they made the call that releasing this information is the lesser of two evils, the other one being to withhold it and to let speculation run wild in a heated political climate, in which one side is not shy about threats of violence.

    • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
      5·
      1 year ago

      Noticed this too. They just plaster his face and have analysis and stories all over youtube and news. I thought US are already over this yet here we are.

  • Jessica@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    13118·
    1 year ago

    ITT: Look at the parents, this kid was just rebelling!

    Press X to doubt

    Or… He was a conservative that saw MAGA as the existential crisis that it is. He decided that he had nothing left to lose. He went for it.

    Let’s be real here. The only shame was that he missed.

    I think he died for a cause. But that could just be my bias showing.

    • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
      64·
      1 year ago

      I just want to go back in history and ask at what point people would’ve considered it appropriate to use political violence against someone like Hitler, or was it never okay? Like was it post first coup? Post second coup? After invading Poland? Did they need to wait for gas chambers? I’m curious when public sentiment shifted.

        • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          There are some absolutely cunning and insane stories in here. Fascinating.

          In a last-ditch attempt, Fabian von Schlabrendorff gave a time bomb camouflaged as a package of two liqueur bottles to an officer in Hitler’s entourage, as a supposed gift to a friend in Germany. The bomb was supposed to explode on the return flight over Poland. The package was placed in the hold of the aircraft, where it iced up, causing the detonator to fail. Realizing the failure, Schlabrendorff immediately flew to Germany and recovered the package before it was discovered.

      • Sweetpeaches69@lemmy.world
        161·
        1 year ago

        Bitchass conservatives are always pushing for political violence. I’m tired of the left always trying to by the better man.

      • shastaxc@lemm.ee
        10·
        1 year ago

        For much of the populace, sentiment only began to shift when life got harder for them personally. For some, that was when their children were killed in the war, for others it was when food shortages started to hurt, and still others would fully support the reich until it inevitably turned against them. Most personal impact that people felt was brushed off as “patriotic sacrifice” for the greater good. It was a bunch of small things that just piled up over time. Different people had different breaking points. But some people went through the whole war remaining fully supportive of the government.

        You have to remember that propaganda was also much more effective then, when the government could fully control all media. Many Nazi supporters at the time had no idea what Hitler was really like or what was going on at concentration camps. The guards for those camps and other SS soldiers were chosen because they met certain loyalty criteria and would not go against orders. But everyone else was either oblivious to the cruelty, fearful of what would happen to their families if they went against the government, or just blissfully unaware and brainwashed by propaganda.

        With the Internet today, it should be harder for people to fall for propaganda. The Internet really changes things now. You can see the disinformation influence everywhere but it’s much harder to silence all the dissenters now. There will always be people who refuse to seek answers or listen to opposing viewpoints and there’s not much to be done about that except teach open mindedness to children when they’re young. It’s why the fascists try to hard to simultaneously control and hamstring the education system. Unfortunately, they’ve been at it so long that there’s now a large portion of the population that grew up with poor education and are now easily influenced by the media sources that the fascists control. The propaganda today must focus more on convincing people that there is an existential threat in the form of a group, person, or ideology that only they can stop. They just need to convince enough people that doing evil things for “good” reasons is justified. They’re beginning to reach critical mass of supporters to where they can brazenly try to seize control of the government now, laws be damned. You see them pushing on those legal boundaries much more frequently these days. If they succeed, things will get worse for everyone (including their supporters) when they decide to fully drop their facades and begin doing evil things without any justification besides “because I felt like it”. Leopards will always eat faces, but for some reason people never learn that lesson.

        • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Thanks for the response.

          I think the internet is now a double-edged sword, and I can speak to this coming from a former Republican household in the 2000s.

          Back then, pre-Facebook (and to at least the very early stages when it was a College-oriented platform), the internet was far less segregated into marketing platforms. You really would be exposed to anything and everything and that, combined with my parents’ upbringing in the 60s really had an impact on our family’s perception of events, including the Iraq War.

          Nowadays, marketing algorithms are fine-tuned to preach to the choir and simply create massive echo-chambers. You can see this if you just create a new YouTube account and see the default content that shows up, like Joe Rogan… Just watch let alone like one of his videos, and next you’ll have Jordan Peterson clips filling your feed and as this happens any contrarian viewpoint gets marginalized.

          If we had the internet of today back then, I’m not sure my family would break our rural right-wing religious pro-life bubble. It is VERY hard today unless you’re already well-versed in critical-thinking, have a major dose of introspection and humility, and are internet-savvy.

      • Machinist@lemmy.worldEnglish
        101·
        1 year ago

        That is a fantastic question. Pretty much everyone agrees that Hitler should have killed in the cradle given hindsight.

        When is it moral to kill the motherfucker without having a crystal ball?

        Earlier than most people will openly condone given the nature of their State and society.

        However, what if that creates a big dumb Hitler martyr that a more effective fascist can wave as a bloody flag and things get worse due to better managed evil?

        • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          However, what if that creates a big dumb Hitler martyr that a more effective fascist can wave as a bloody flag and things get worse due to better managed evil?

          Yeah I agree, which is why I’m actually in the camp that I’m glad the_dumbass lived. If we can’t defeat this buffoon, then shit, we couldn’t defeat anyone.

          Moreover I’d rather see him rot in prison. In order to set this country straight again, he has to be brought down by the Justice system.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        Oh sometime between liberating the first camp and he shot himself too soon probably.

        I say Wannsee at the latest. WWI would’ve been fair.

    • EleventhHour@lemmy.world
      621·
      1 year ago

      I feel that everyone should resist the urge to act like psychics or psychologists right now. We know far too little at this point to speculate on this kids state of mind before or during the shooting.

      As we learn more, perhaps that will change, but - and this is the terrible truth - we may never know. and we’re ALL going to have to learn to process and move on from this either way.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
      162·
      1 year ago

      Or… He was a conservative that saw MAGA as the existential crisis that it is.

      Or he was a conservative and thought that Trump wasn’t racist enough.

      • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
        161·
        1 year ago

        Or seen the Epstein stuff, and felt incredibly betrayed.

        Former rightist here, I not only got my face eaten by the Fidesz leopards (gutted health-care, gutted job security, gutted disability benefits that are now also harder to get, etc), and I remember the day when I’ve read that Fidesz lowered the age of consent to 12 in case both parties are under 18. I thought a “conservative” party would do the opposite, and raise it to 18 with some exceptions. I remember being so angry I couldn’t sleep that night at all, seen the sun rising, and my luck was that I didn’t have school on that day. And after the whole cHiLd prOteCTion fiasco, one of their politician even married an 18 year old he groomed since she was 14. Many claim the low age of consent of my country is only for close-in-age relationships, but it doesn’t stop much greater age differences, which are dangerously popular, because “boys at my age are stupid and don’t have cars” as some of those teen girls would say, others are being groomed with “but age differences are natural” if they were skeptical and didn’t want to run into such a relationship.

        I took the whole “child protection” thing seriously. I knew victims. Many of them were my age. However when I had to realize some was just using it as an issue to get me to vote for them, while they themselves were doing it, often way more publicly than how Trump did it.

      • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
        6·
        1 year ago

        A few things, like the shirt he was wearing, makes me wonder if it was Trump’s stance on gun control that triggered this.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        According to reports from classmates he failed to make the school rifle team because he was a poor shot - but also the instructor noted that he made “crass jokes” and FWIW got a poor impression of Crooks. I mention that tangentially it could apply to racism or who knows what or who he made the crass jokes about while shooting. Was he joking about shooting minorities or something?

  • defunct_punk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    804·
    1 year ago

    This guy looks like a dorkier HP Lovecraft

    Also

    there have been pro-Trump signs on display in the yard of his family’s home.

    Is a much different message than “signs in his yard.” Don’t worry though, I’m sure all of the kid’s life is being scrubbed by every agency in America and in sixty years we’ll know why he really did it.

    • Monument@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Coming into this comment thread relatively late, but I briefly wondered after reading the headline if this was a rebellion against the views his family instilled in him.

      Obviously, it’s a heck of a rebellion if that idea holds even an ounce of water, but I could see rebelling against parents, coupled with the existential frustration that most folks feel about the current political situation, paired with the inexperience/poor decision making of youth, or even the beginnings of schizophrenia leading down this path.

      Definitely filing that line of thought into the “complete speculation, and almost certainly not what really happened” bin, though.

  • Suavevillain@lemmy.world
    57·
    1 year ago

    It is crazy how missing one shot could have changed the course of history. People are really trying to paint this guy as a leftist because of a donation lol.

  • workerONE@lemmy.world
    452·
    1 year ago

    Do records show that he donated to a progressive PAC? I thought they show a person with the same name donated but that the age was different

    • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
      472·
      1 year ago

      Look at the timing - Jan 20th, 2021. The day Biden was sworn in.

      $15 is not much and could very well be him delivering on a bet over the election

        • TooManyFoods@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          I mean it doesn’t sound like he has friends, but it is weird that a 16-17 year old would donate on his own. It feels like it would go through his parents. Did they give him a credit card or something? Was it cash?

          • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            1 year ago

            Coudl have friends online, back when I was 16-17 thats how I was. Mind you im only friends with the ones Ive met IRL at this point but thats because my other groups imploded or went nuts for no reason.

            Arma ops group imploded because of a shit Zeus.

            And the EU4 group devolved into femcatboy roleplay server, which made me uncomfortable because most of them were like 30.

      • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 year ago

        Yeah that kind of struck me as a potential possibility. Maybe he bet someone that small amount that Biden wouldn’t actually be seated.

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        12·
        1 year ago

        Would be common to use the city of Pittsburgh for the suburb of Bethel Park:

        (have not looked into the guy nor his possible donations at all myself)

    • ThiccSemperTyrannis@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I fell into that initially as well, but I checked the FEC filing to get the address, then used the address to check property records, then went back and looked at the interviews with his folks to see their names for reference. The residence is that of his parents, so it seems to be him that donated.

    • LEX@lemm.ee
      64·
      1 year ago

      Look at people still arguing about this niggling little detail.

      The RW propaganda machine is powerful af.

    • Pyr@lemmy.ca
      1·
      1 year ago

      Maybe he missed on purpose and it was all a ruse to give trump a bump in the polls or demonize the Democrats?

      • Sorgan71@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        You cant miss like that on purpose. If trump had moved slightly differently the shot would have hit. It was within inches

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldBanned
      47·
      1 year ago

      You know how some hunters want to hunt a particular majestic animal? Except for “majestic”, of course.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    A neighbor of the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump said there have been pro-Trump signs on display in the yard of his family’s home.

    Authorities identified Thomas Matthew Crooks as the gunman who opened fired from a rooftop as the former president spoke at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.

    He was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania, but records show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on January 20, 2021—the day President Joe Biden was sworn into office.

    A neighbor in Bethel Park, the Pittsburgh suburb where Crooks lived, said they saw pro-Trump signs in the family’s yard as recently as a few months ago.

    Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022 and worked as a dietary aide at a nursing home less than a mile from his family’s house.

    His father Matthew Crooks told CNN late on Saturday that he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” and would not speak publicly about his son until after he talked to law enforcement.

    The original article contains 416 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!