I'm obviously not defending him, but those were 16-18 year olds who were already party members.
My point is: it's easy to find flaws in the reasoning of extremists, and use that to show how "crazy" and "illogical" and "insane" they are, and thereby distance ourselves (mentally) far from them. What we need to do however is face the much more scary truth that even the people who commit atrocities are for the most part reasonable and (somewhat) intelligent people, with some sort of roots in "normal" society, who for some reason just get one idea in their head very strongly (and act on it), and this can happen to many (I won't say "all", but I would say "most") people.
This sort of cases is not about isolated loners that we cannot possibly understand; freaks of nature who are not like the rest of us "normal" people. They can show up anywhere for reasons and through processes we just don't quite understand. But we have to not delude ourselves and see them as an "out group" - radicalization can happen to many people you would bump into in your street, every day.
I'd lay off. You seem to be walking onto "no, the 9/11 hijackers must have been cowards, and if you suggest that maybe cowardice wasn't high on the list of their faults, you're a monster" ground. Being correct within the limited context of what's at question isn't important to a lot of people, in these kinds of conversations. They find it hard to divorce that from the rest of what happened.
The point you made seems to be remarkably overlapping with that it is ok to shoot children that are members of some political party, which I hope was not what you intended.
You're 'obviously not defending the guy' with words that are pretty close to if not already across that border. When you step into the breach for some monster weigh your words a bit more carefully please.
How can you construe anything I said as defending anything? I was super careful not to do so, my point wasn't even about this particular shooting at all. At some point, when writing or saying anything, you have to rely on the person reading or hearing you to have some baseline of capacity or willingness to understand, which in this case I can only assume you do not have, if you insist (or even imply) that I am somehow "defending" this shooting (or any ideology that led up to it). In fact, it seems that your reaction is exactly what I warn against in the actual point I was trying to make.
My point is: it's easy to find flaws in the reasoning of extremists, and use that to show how "crazy" and "illogical" and "insane" they are, and thereby distance ourselves (mentally) far from them. What we need to do however is face the much more scary truth that even the people who commit atrocities are for the most part reasonable and (somewhat) intelligent people, with some sort of roots in "normal" society, who for some reason just get one idea in their head very strongly (and act on it), and this can happen to many (I won't say "all", but I would say "most") people.
This sort of cases is not about isolated loners that we cannot possibly understand; freaks of nature who are not like the rest of us "normal" people. They can show up anywhere for reasons and through processes we just don't quite understand. But we have to not delude ourselves and see them as an "out group" - radicalization can happen to many people you would bump into in your street, every day.