In a comment someone complained that I'd singled out the black-face for white supremacists, Candice Owens, as an inspiration of the New Zealand mass murderer. The short answer to that is that I didn't single her out THE MAN WHO MURDERED, AS OF NOW 50 INNOCENT PEOPLE AT THEIR PLACE OF WORSHIP NAMED HER AS INSPIRING HIM. We don't need anyone else to do that because he identified her as one of his sources of inspiration along with the Norwegian neo-Nazi who murdered so many in Norway and Donald Trump.
The comment said:
Imagine if the jackasses in the press were seriously considering what role Jodie Foster played in John Hinckley's attempt to murder Reagan. Yeah, just as dumb.
Well, guess what, we know FROM WHAT JOHN HINCKLEY SAID inspired him, the role that Jodie Foster AS AN ACTOR played in the movie Taxi Driver, a passive child-prostitute who became the obsession of the character the actor Robert de Niro played:
The film stars Robert DeNiro as the main character, Travis Bickle, a violent taxi cab driver alienated from society. Bickle becomes interested in a woman named Betsy who works for a presidential candidate, and tries to attract her attention, but is unsuccessful. Rebuffed by both society and the object of his affection, Bickle decides to assassinate the presidential candidate so that he may win Betsy's admiration. He is never able to get close enough to the candidate, however, to complete his assassination attempt. Bickle then becomes interested in saving Iris, a young prostitute played by Jodie Foster. He goes to the hotel where twelve-year-old prostitute brings her customers, and shoots her pimp, the hotel manager, and a client, rescuing Iris from the horrible environment. At the end of the movie, Travis Bickle holds a bloody finger to his temple, acting like a man who is blowing his own brains out. In the context of the movie, however, it is a gesture of triumph. Travis Bickle is a hero.
The difference is that Jodie Foster was acting in a movie and Candice Owens is pretending to be some kind of "commentator and political activist" in supposed real life.
He doesn't seem to want to reinforce my point that what when the media presents unreality, whether in a movie which is supposed to be taken as fiction by its audience or in the tsunami of lies that comes from the Republican-fascist friendly or controlled media INSPIRES PEOPLE TO TAKE UP GUNS AND KILL PEOPLE AND INJURE PEOPLE AND TERRORIZE PEOPLE. But that's exactly what he did. That is in opposition to the "free speech - free press" slogans that the idiot, atheist-secular play-left invented and which neo-Nazis now have adopted and find so useful, in and out of the American Supreme Court.
The claims that violent, hate-spreading media is harmless is bullshit pushed by ideological pseudo-science and the pseudo-liberal legal establishment, it was always as false as the same pseudo-scientific establishment also worked for the advertising industry to find better ways of them doing what the hate speech and promotion of violence does, influencing the behavior of the people who hear it. It's as obviously untrue because of the long history of the successful use of speech and press and,in the modern era, the most easily imbibed forms of media made possible by electricity and technological advancement. It was always a facile, obvious and self-interested lie that was sold to the biggest suckers of the 20th century, post-war American and English speaking liberals who bought it as sold by the same propaganda-ad campaigns as now sell anti-Muslim and other kinds of active hatred.
Candice Owens works in the hate-speech industry, acting as the black-face pushing white supremacist tropes and slogans. Only she doesn't claim to be an actor. That her mass murderer admirer had a similar and far worse reaction to John Hinckley's when he couldn't distinguish reality from movie-making make-believe isn't a surprise. He had access to far worse weapons and his target wasn't a single politician, it was a group of more than a billion and a half people.
Update: Rereading the description of the movie, I wonder if it's possible that John Hinckley's real obsession was really with deNiro and he's just in denial. He certainly had the most striking and eroticized role in the movie.
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