A New Radicalization Wrinkle

The site of this one was a place called Antioch High School in Nashville, and the perpetrator was a young man named Solomon Henderson. Some of the details of this kid and the situation are spotty, and most of the “reporting” out there is saying “allegedly” or “unconfirmed,” so it feels like they have social media accounts and writing that could be him, but they don’t entirely know for sure. He apparently did attempt to live-stream the actual shooting.

It seems like he shot one person (fatally) and then, instead of expanding the massacre, he killed himself. As a result, because of how Americans process this stuff, we won’t remember it in 10 months — the body count was too low. Although, ironically, Las Vegas is one of the biggest in terms of body count, and we don’t talk about that as much as you’d think. And when we do, it’s normally Jason Aldean going on Tucker Carlson and saying Saudi helicopters were hovering over the Strip, or something. I’m lost.

You can get some limited details on Solomon here.

It is important in these discussions for people to find a “why,” although when they do, the “why” never suffices, because most people cannot wrap their heads around walking into a school and shooting other people. In this case, we have some idea that the “why” came from guys like Tucker and women like Candace Owens — apparently Solomon was “ashamed” to be African-American. He also had some views on Israel, which is interesting that he listened to those two, because Candace is almost anti-Semitic in rhetoric, and Tucker is not. That’s a split atom.

The radicalization of young men is an increasingly important topic in recent years — one can easily argue it’s a domestic terror threat — and yet, while people are studying it (including some at the FBI, I’m sure), we mostly just dismiss these guys and gals as “crazy” or (recently) “trans and fucked up.” We lay stuff at the foot of the parents, which is reasonable, but except for the Crumbley case out of Michigan, we never prosecute the parents for these things. (I’d argue we should do it more.)

Here is some reporting on Henderson’s writings, and this part should jump out:

“I was so miserable. I wanted to kill myself. I just couldn’t take anymore. I am a worthless subhuman, a living breathing disgrace. All my (in real life) friends outgrew me act like they didn’t f — ing know me. Being me was so f — ing humiliating. That’s why I spend all day dissociating.”

Most of these incidents are ultimately a deep crisis of belonging, but we try to make them about guns (which are a factor, absolutely) and mental health (same). A person’s mental health can get very bad when they feel they aren’t tethered to any thing, place, or group. I’ve felt that often. Now, I’ve never wanted to shoot people, but I understand how that could happen at the intersection of the three things I just mentioned: mental health, guns, and belonging.

Here’s an interesting wrinkle too. In that same article linked above, you have supposedly his thoughts on school:

“School is a daycare,” he wrote. “It’s just impossible for you to actually think. You say things because other people have said it before then go repeat ad nauseum somewhere else. In school, we’re taught to wake up early, shut up, sit for long periods of hours do tasks you hate then repeat.”

This one is interesting ideologically. Conservatives obviously decry this kid, because he did something horrible, but — let’s be honest — in part because he’s a minority, and in part because if he was truly influenced by Candace and Tucker, who are flag-carriers for the current conservative talking points, they need to distance themselves from him quickly.

So conservatives are saying “no, no, no” on this kid, as anyone should.

And yet, his thoughts on public education are deeply aligned with how conservatives talk about it when they argue for religious charter schools or blowing up the Department of Education or whatever else. Personally, I do think public school is day care in many places, but that’s a much deeper economic and social issue than can be easily discussed.

Seems like this kid had a lot of contradictions within himself, including apparently hating himself for even being African-American. This is a confusing one and hard to put in a neat little box — but in reality, most of these horrors are confusing, multi-layered, and hard to put in a box. But we try to do it anyway! And maybe if we just looked at the primal root causes of these things, typically around belonging and alienation, we could start to help more kids. I don’t think we could ever solve them, no, but we can do better.