On guns, terrorism, American exceptionalism and rituals, David Frun in Th Atlantic:
'White nationalism is emerging as a deadly international terrorist movement. El Paso is only the latest in a line of killings. Yet 48 hours before the El Paso mass shooting, the Italian interior minister erupted in a racist tirade against Roma people. It was not a first offense from Matteo Salvini, an admirer of President Donald Trump. Italy has a lively far-right political movement, which stages public demonstrations to honor Benito Mussolini. You know what it does not have? Mass shootings.
Like Islamic extremism, white nationalism is a dangerous internal political threat to democracy. Like Islamic extremism, white nationalism extends across borders, targeting isolated and angry young people for online radicalization. Like Islamic extremism, white nationalism can turn murderous even in countries—Norway, New Zealand—where guns are rationally regulated.
Like the threat of Islamic extremism, the specter of white nationalism summons Americans to defend their institutions and values against a repugnant, violent ideology. But it is not because the U.S. is uniquely afflicted with either Islamic extremism or white nationalism that it suffers vastly more gun deaths than the rest of the developed world. America’s uniquely bloodstained record of violence is a consequence of America’s uniquely reckless attitudes toward weapons of mass death.
More guns, more killing. Fewer guns, less killing. Everybody else has figured that out. Americans—and only Americans—refuse to do so.'
Read the article here.
A few remarks:
All nationalism in the West is white nationalism and it's a bigger threat to the ideal of an open society and democracy than terrorism.
After Norway and New Zealand indeed, to name just two, (what about right-wing terrorism in Germany?) I would not bang on the drums too loud that it it's the stupid Americans with their stupid gun laws. Yes, the gun laws in the US are fairly stupid and immoral, but no disaster till today was big enough to change the minds of the supporters of these gun laws.
Even after this weekend many Americans will believe that free speech and the right to bear arms are more or less the same.
It's not so much the gun laws, it's the culture: life is cheap and so is dying.