The Real Motives Of The Buffalo Shooter: Freedom Of Speech And The Grey Areas Of Truth
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A recent tragedy occurred with the suspect now being dubbed as “The Buffalo Shooter.” What were the motives behind this live-streamed attack on civilians? Bill Stierle and Tom dissect the “The Great White Replacement” surrounding the issues and dive deeper into the real motives of “The Buffalo Shooter.” Was it an act bred from a basic need of respect? How does this reflect on our freedom of speech? What are the grey areas of the truth and why is it important for us to talk about them? Get into an insightful conversation with Bill and Tom by tuning in.
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The Real Motives Of The Buffalo Shooter: Freedom Of Speech And The Grey Areas Of Truth
In this episode, we are going to have a little discussion about the motives behind the Buffalo mass shooting. We have to call him suspect at this point. He has been arrested. He's in custody. He was live-streaming this whole thing on social media. I understand, Twitch, which is a gaming social media platform. It was taken down, obviously, but not before he live-streamed it, which is pretty horrific in itself.
He published a 190 pages manifesto or something like that. It's not that hard to see into his motivations, and one of the big ones is the idea or a conspiracy theory of the Great White Replacement. There’s a lot of scary amplification happening. What I think the whole concept is fear. It's fear-based. Isn’t it, Bill?
Fear is the emotion. There is what need of ours is causing the fear. Whenever we talk about motive, Tom, we talked about this on our show is that every behavior, every human action can be summarized into one sentence. Nobody says or does anything unless a need of theirs is being met. They are pursuing a need. The shooter is pursuing the need for identity. With that is the presumed need for getting respect, and with that, the presumed need for being heard. That's why the manifesto comes out the way it does.
It's because, “I need to be heard about how much pain I'm in, and I'm writing about it, and then I'm going to take an action about it. After I do that, I'm going to get recognition and respect because I'm talking about what's painful to me and taking an action towards others to let them carry the amount of pain. I'm in fear. You are going to be in fear too.” It's really hard to hold on to that truth because our brain wants to click on a very simple thought. They are crazy. We want to label and diagnose them but we can't do that. As soon as you label and diagnose them, you are now off the hook but you haven't done anything about the problem.
As soon as you call them a psychopath, you are off the hook. If you haven't done anything about the problem, how are human beings getting hooked or baited to take a violent action to get respect, recognition, and acknowledgment? How are they doing that? We've got to be careful not to let psychological labels fall into this.
Don't let our rational mind take over to try to justify, explain or try to understand it. I don't understand anything. It's a weird thing to say, but understanding is overrated here. I want to do something about the motive, which is how do we, as a nation, get the need for respect met in different ways other than killing other people?
It's interesting. It's a little different from where I thought you were gone with that but getting their need for respect met though, that need exists as a result of some message that they've heard and started to form a belief around which, in this case, we are saying is the Great Replacement. Not to do it complete justice, unfortunately, but for the sake of time, is this concept that the Jewish community is somehow going to replace us.
The minorities and people that are not like me.
That they are going to replace the majority with and in this case, the majority of being viewed by this guy and we have to admit in reality is White men in this country. There are a lot of different things that they fear being replaced by but one of them is third-world voters coming in and replacing them. It's like, “Does the Jewish community have that much power?” If you think about it rationally, I'm not so sure that it's something they are doing or that they even could do it if they wanted to do it.
This is a funny discussion because you did what I said that people do, which is I'm trying to understand this. It doesn't make any sense to me, and you are exactly right. Our brain walks us down the path, Tom. Thank you very much for doing that. It’s like, “This doesn't make any sense. Why would a woman vote for somebody that doesn't respect women?” It's because it meets the need for validation or even identity of authoritarian men get to tell women what to do. There are women that have the belief that men get to tell women what to do because it's in the scripture and multiple scriptures, not just in Christian but it's also in Islam.
Judaism has its own set of man authority kind of energy in it. We've got to pay attention to what is that thing? Why do people pursue these things? It’s because I don't want to change the way I'm thinking. I don't want to adjust my beliefs. I don't want to lose the stability and the certainty that I had growing up or that my religion gives me. I don't want to lose that. People cling to things that are older and don't fit our ethical, legal or even moral ethics. To take somebody else's choice away doesn't really stand for the thing that we are saying that we stand for.
Interestingly, I went down the same path as what you are talking about. In my own mind, I wasn't trying to explain it to myself or justify it. I was trying to get to what is the root cause of this concept of the Great Replacement because it's being amplified, and people are believing it. I was shocked that people are believing it, although I shouldn't be because it's a message that's getting amplified daily on American television, even by Tucker Carlson.
That's the way to think about it, Tom. I appreciate you circling back to that because it allows us to soberly stare at what Tucker Carlson is doing with his TV show getting eyeballs, ratings, and those kinds of people with those advertisers on there. Also, selling because that's the way that system is built. You are not on the air if you don't have good ratings, then you better say things that are going to get you good ratings because that's the kind of show that you have to get good ratings.
He's amplifying a conspiracy that is whipping up people to fear that result that conspiracy theory will speak toward and then getting them to take action to solve a problem or meet their needs, as you are saying. To meet their needs to solve a problem that doesn't exist is mind-boggling.
What it does is it engages a person's belief structure. It validates them where they are. “This is my identity. I'm losing my identity, therefore I'm losing my country.” Donald Trump easily stepped into that. “You better fight like hell or you are going to lose your country.” The thing that they were fighting for was the idea that they were going to be replaced, and this is our house, and we get to walk through it because we want everybody to know that White people are still in charge.
It's a little unsettling when I say it so flat like that because I'm not honoring how important our needs are as human beings, that my need for respect, your need for respect, and somebody that was in the insurrections need for respect is the same respect. We have different strategies to get them met.
One person might try to do it through money. One person might try to do it through service. One person might do it by marching through the Capitol building to try to stop a belief they think is wrong, and that's still an okay motive. It's not legal, it's not truthful but it's a motive. It’s not giving anybody permission here to do terrible things. I am giving us permission to talk about it openly so that at least we know what the ghosts we are that we are fighting because it's like swinging at something you can't see.
That's a very interesting phrase, “The ghost that we are fighting,” which implies that it's not truthful what you just said. Why is it that more people don't have a need to seek the truth to verify that what is getting them so upset is rooted in fact rather than in what's the opposite?
They are going to believe something that's not there. There are two specific reasons. Number one is validation and certainty. When I can believe something, I don't have to question. I don't have to think beyond my Black and White beliefs. I'm okay because this belief has served me. My parents taught me this belief. I'm getting reinforced this belief by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. I'm going to be supported by my beliefs people. I don't have to think beyond the belief because the truth is too much work.
It’s because the truth is too much work. It’s unsettling. You have to deal with the gray areas of truth. The gray area of truth is that as soon as you rob somebody of the need for choice, you are robbing your own need for choice because you just lost choice as a thing but you are not, and then you might lose privacy with that because you lost choice. You might lose your ability to make decisions because you lost choice and privacy. Now, you just lost your decisions.
If we made that an excerpt of this episode and put it on social media, people might think you are talking about the draft opinion in the Supreme Court to overturn Jane Roe v Henry Wade because they're equating that decision that at the time of recording this, hasn't come down yet, but we have only had the draft opinion. We are all thinking it's probably going to follow the draft opinion but they are equating this loss of choice over abortion with a lack of privacy on other things. That decision will be a slippery slope for other decisions that we'll lose privacy for people, in general, in our country. You were talking about it in this narrower field and topic but the same thing applies there. I know we didn't intend to take this episode that way.
The perfect question that you asked is, “What's the impact of a messaging like this?” The First Amendment Freedom of Speech, if you put losing the person's choice ahead of the speech, what happens is that you wind up losing speech later because you will lose speech, “I'm not going to be heard.” “Shut up. We know what the rule is. We get to execute you because the rule is like this.” You are taking the constitution, and when you reorder it, it doesn't work as well because the Freedom of Speech is we've got to be able to talk about things in the gray areas, where one person believes this thing and another person believes these things.
If you are not allowed to talk about the gray areas, you get Authoritarian Rule of Law, heavy police states, and communists. The authoritarian moves to the front of the list because I can kill, shoot or lock up anybody I want to. It becomes more the way the country works rather than people getting to say what they want, and we get to talk through the gray areas of being an adult. Not allow the government to be our parent, enforce rules, and give us a twenty-year time out in jail.
Is this whole reason that these needs exist, these feelings exist that rise out of the concept of the Great Replacement, which when you think about it, fits right into the pole Make America Great Again narrative of just people wanting to stay where they are comfortable?
I want to stay in a belief structure that I have lived by, validated, and I think is moral. It’s because I have a few sets of beliefs that are easy for me to follow and because it gives me a sense of identity and autonomy in my own small world. I don't have to think about the impact of my vote on somebody in a major city because my small town is the way I would like to see the world. Therefore, my values need to be over there in that city.
You live where you live, and we want you to live where you live because that allows you to live where you live but you can't influence the life in another part of the United States, which we can start dropping the united now. We call ourselves the States of America. We are just the states. We are not the United States where the States of America. Do you see how dangerous that is?
It's very dangerous, and it seems to me that what's happening with what clearly is a great divide in this country that's getting worse is the majority of Americans are not pursuing a more perfect union. You've got the struggle between those that want to leave things the way they are, and I to suppose, in general, if you are somebody that's experiencing the privilege of being White and/or being in the majority, you are wanting to live it the way it is because you are pretty happy. That's good.
If you are among all the people that are not benefiting from anything like that, you want to enact change. This is a big struggle between keeping things away from they are or even turning the clock back and making them more the way they were. Also, making change and progress to make things more equitable, it seems.
The equitability is tough. It's weird how this is mirroring the 1920s. It's our version of the upset but 100 years later, we are doing the same things that we fought through in the 1920s.
It took us as a country until pretty much the late 1940s to come out of it after a World War and all this conflict.
We sat on the sidelines. It’s weird to watch. World War I was us sitting on the sidelines. The US sat on the sidelines for most of World War I, just like we are sitting on the sidelines with Ukraine. We are doing it in that way, and then it was over sanctions of Germany that caused World War II.
We are doing the same thing to Russia now.
You are drawing the lines the way I'm drawing them. It's a wider view now. There are plenty of people that history will say, “This is not the same.” They are getting trapped and what we are saying is they are trying to figure it out and understand and look to try to make things match but the bigger issue is how do we get respect? How do we get an identity? The Republicans are trying to get an identity. The Democrats are fighting to try to hold on to a certain identity of America. The challenge is that we've got to remember that human beings are simple. We pursue needs, and there are people that are pursuing needs at the expense of other people.
That's common. People do that but if we don't talk about what needs they are trying to get met, we will not be able to dismantle it. We will not be able to reduce the tension. We can't because we are not able to see past right, wrong, good, and bad thinking because that's the way adolescents think. Right, wrong, good or bad, it's not fair unless I take all the marbles. You are going to get people not to want to play the game.
Now, that's important. You get people not wanting to play the game is called a flat middle-class. They don't want to play the game anymore. It's like, “What's the use?” “I will punch the clock and live in this small place. I'm not going to play the game until now, all of a sudden, I'm losing things. I'm pissed, and I'm ready to revolt, get angry,” and all that other stuff because you are taking all the marbles. You are bullying people while you are doing it. You are not figuring out a way to create middle-class equity that can actually cause a pretty strong 100 years of stability.
It seems what Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, who are on the same team, are doing is trying to let everybody know who's to blame for how they are feeling and to get them to be more on their team.
Where we can stick the landing here, Tom, because it's important to keep these things in nice listenable packets is that courage. We need the courage to speak up but also the courage to take the heat. Liz Cheney did that. She tweeted out the quote that you mentioned that the Republicans need to speak out against White supremacy.
That's what she said exactly. Actually, even more than that, the GOP leadership has enabled White nationalism, White Supremacy, and antisemitism. She's calling them out. She is trying to have them look at history. Basically, she says, “History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse.” Republican leaders, in particular, she's saying, must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them. She's talking about the Tucker Carlsons and the Donald Trumps of the world and all the people following him or spewing this stuff.
They don't have the courage to stare at the person in place, “America doesn't stand for that. America allows you to speak your opinion but it doesn't stand for that.” Your opinion doesn't get to the move to the front of the list because that's not what we stand for. You can fight for that cause. You can meet because you believe that cause but we got to watch it because that's not what America stands for. We need to have the courage to do that and say, “I can hear your belief that you have a belief that a White person has more rights than other Americans do than a minority does or a person of color does but that's not what we are standing for here. That's not what the United States stands for.”
That kind of level of courage is tough because if I'm saying this same rhetoric that I said in many other countries, I would be in jail. I couldn't say that I couldn't talk against the state, and people don't quite get that. We have a better line than most other nations do. Our line is, “I could talk but I can't act violently against others because there's a loss for that.”
Bill, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for putting a bow on that one and wrapping it up. That's very helpful.
Thanks a lot, Tom. It's great doing this.
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