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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Oregon shooter targeted Christians AND supported the IRA on a MySpace page
I heard the first part on the local RW radio station news update. Fox News has that as their lead. CNN has a quote from a survivor's father saying that students were told to stand and state their religion he the reportedly said that they were "about to meet God".
MBC has that he supported the Irish Republican Army on a MySpace page.
I see elsewhere that he may have posted on a blog under the name lithium_love.
So sad the whole thing.
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)But there's always a first time.
underpants
(182,794 posts)The IRA thing doesn't make sense but then I saw the MySpace mention and literally shook my head.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)I could see how the IRA might attract psychopaths.
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)Who would target non-Irish, non-British non-combatant Americans in OREGON?
Come on, now.
underpants
(182,794 posts)So the IRA at thing makes no sense other than this is a kid looking to rebel anyway possible. Plus he obviously was all kinds of messed up.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)It's not the politics of the IRA that would attract someone looking to hurt people, but the reputation. Protestants, Catholics, and occupation are likely irrelevant... I'm guessing he came for the nail bombs, the Tommy guns, and the Molotov cocktails.
AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)Hates his dad, lives with mum.
cwydro
(51,308 posts)His father is Irish if I'm not mistaken. I have relatives and friends in Ireland.
In no way does that mean his father is pro-IRA, but may explain that he has more knowledge than the average 36 year old in regard to the IRA.
I think he was just a psycho looking for a cause.
razorman
(1,644 posts)something? The IRA? MySpace? Does MySpace still exist?
MineralMan
(146,288 posts)It no longer exists, and there is a very nasty Malware that tries to load if you click the link.
countingbluecars
(4,766 posts)has an accent-sounds Irish. Could be why he had an interest in Irish Republican Army.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)cwydro
(51,308 posts)Haven't seen anything on that however.
My parents are English, but other relatives are Irish, as well as my friends. Sure sounded Irish to me.
However, most Irish don't support the IRA, which pretty much disappeared years ago anyway.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)His accent is borderlands English.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11906041/Chris-Harper-Mercer-what-do-we-know-about-the-Oregon-gunman.html
malaise
(268,980 posts)He did sound Irish
MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)If true, any kind of delusional thinking, including supporting the IRA, makes "sense."
Baitball Blogger
(46,704 posts)MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)olddots
(10,237 posts)diagnosing and arm chair detective work won't stop this .We in this country can get a weapon of mass detruction for less than a weeks groceries .The solution is simple = civilization or barbarism .
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,181 posts)Who was just all over the place in various expressed ideologies. Mainly he was just insane, sadly.
itsrobert
(14,157 posts)The Internet is a great source for many things, but there is a bunch of bullshit on it. It's shocking how many people are easily swayed by a blog or other baseless claim on facebook or website.
Johnny2X2X
(19,062 posts)He describes himself as a Conservative Republican on his dating profile.
He was a gun nut and was mentally ill, he had no business owning guns.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)the protestant Christians was a the issue. I wonder if he asked just if they were Christians or if they were protestants?
Zorra
(27,670 posts)The overwhelming number of English in Ireland are Protestant. At various times over the past several centuries, the English forbade Catholics to practice Catholicism, and Catholics were beaten, imprisoned, dispossessed, and murdered for practicing Catholicism. The English tried, through the use of brutal force and political and social machinations, to make the Irish to join the Church of England.
This gives many people who are not familiar with Irish history the mistaken impression that IRA activities are, and have been, about religion. They are not.
The English murdered, tortured, beat, dispossessed, oppressed, starved, and did every evil rotten thing they could to subjugate the Irish people, but they never succeeded, the Irish people never gave up, and after centuries of Irish nationalist groups fighting for their freedom for several centuries, the IRA successfully drove the English out of most of Ireland in the first half of the 20th century. After centuries of genocide at the hands of the English, most of Ireland gained independence, and became the Irish Free State.
Six counties in the province of Ulster, in the north of Ireland, still remain under English control. Factions of the IRA have split off from the original group. There are still some, but very few, who advocate using violence to end English control of the Six Counties. Today, however, most everyone in Ireland recognizes the fact that the days of English control of the Six Counties are numbered, and that the Six Counties will, through peaceful process, reunite with the Irish Free State (the Republic of Ireland) relatively soon, and English control in Ireland will be no more. This is one primary reason that there has been so much less violent activity directed at English imperialists in the north of Ireland in recent years. English control will simply wither away on its own sometime before 2050, and probably sooner.
The only difference, ethically speaking, between Native American tribes in N. America who fought for centuries to drive the British imperialist occupiers out of their lands, and the Irish tribes who fought for centuries to drive the British imperialist occupiers out of their lands, is that the Irish eventually won.
Both groups only simply wanted to drive the genocidal English imperialist invaders from their lands.
The IRA has never been about religion, per se. It's always, and only, been about driving the English imperialist occupiers out of Ireland. Forever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army
jwirr
(39,215 posts)the early 60s and at one time supported them.
Are all the students in this school protestants? I am asking if the shooter was pinpointing victims as to their Christianity or as protestants because of his claim to support the IRA?
As a supporter I would not have equated all Christians as the enemies of the IRA.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)and I was thinking you didn't know either, hence my explanation.
Apologies.
It would be pretty twisted if Mercer asked victims what religion they are to see if they were Protestant or Catholic based on some twisted concept of the IRA,
But anyone who deliberately kills innocent people is totally twisted from the get go, so you may be on to something there.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)either he was being misled by someone or he was very mixed up.
I read that his father was shocked. I think it is amazing that so many of these shooters can keep these feelings in so long and not be open to anyone else.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)Last edited Fri Oct 2, 2015, 02:13 PM - Edit history (1)
they're more anti-English than the IRA itself (especially since the Ulstermen are *Scots*: they've actually been one political zone since 570s Dalriada ...)
the IRA itself had many far-left elements and atheist leaders, and it was immediate excommunication from the Catholic Church the moment your conscience elects to join it; it's ethnic as much as religious, and pretending the civil wars since 1916 are over transubstantiation is missing the point
overall the religious questioning sounds a bit like Columbine: they remembered that other people had something that gave them hope and meaning and wanted to break something pretty: I know it doesn't sell contracts for freshman training or lets us blame the parents or Donald Trump, but that sort of person is real and they are out there: we don't have to seal them in concrete or anything, but let's not be *anodyne*
but all of these murderers' "manifestoes" are muddled and self-contradictory--Rodger wanted all 3.6B women on Earth in death camps but also *really* hated men (or at least hetero ones "taking up" the women), and admitted he was really too cowardly to go after his own family like he REALLY wanted; incredibly twisted sexuality was also central to Lépine, the Monster of Florence, Kaczynski, and even McVeigh; there's never any danger of "getting too deep" into these shits' heads because there's not all that much there
Zorra
(27,670 posts)The Plantation of Ulster (Irish: Plandáil Uladh; Ulster-Scots: Plantin o Ulstèr)[1] was the organised colonisation (plantation) of Ulster a province of Ireland by people from Great Britain during the reign of King James I. Most of the colonists came from Scotland and England. Small private plantation by wealthy landowners began in 1606,[2] while the official plantation began in 1609. An estimated half a million acres (2,000 km²) spanning counties Tyrconnell, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan, Coleraine and Armagh,[3] was confiscated from Gaelic chiefs, most of whom had fled Ireland in the 1607 Flight of the Earls. Most of counties Antrim and Down were privately colonised.[2] Colonising Ulster with loyal settlers was seen as a way to prevent further rebellion, as it had been the region most resistant to English control during the preceding century.
King James wanted the Plantation to be "a civilising enterprise" that would settle Protestants in Ulster,[4] a land that was mainly Gaelic-speaking and of the Catholic faith. The Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur Chichester, also saw the Plantation as a scheme to anglicise the Irish.[5][non-primary source needed]Accordingly, the colonists (or "British tenants" [6][7] were required to be English-speaking and Protestant.[8][9] Some of the undertakers and colonists however were Catholic and it has been suggested that a significant number of the Scots spoke Gaelic.[10][11][12] The Scottish colonists were mostly Presbyterian[6] and the English mostly members of the Church of England. The Plantation of Ulster was the biggest of the Plantations of Ireland.
snip---
Prior to its conquest in the Nine Years War of the 1590s, Ulster had been the most Gaelic part of Ireland, a province existing largely outside English control.[13] The area was underdeveloped by mainland European standards of the time, and it possessed few towns or villages.[14]
snip---
The Nine Years War of 1594-1603 provided the immediate background to the Plantation. A confederation of northern Gaelic Chieftains, led by Hugh O'Neill, resisted the imposition of English government in Ulster. Following an extremely costly series of campaigns by the English, including massacre and use of ruthless scorched earth tactics, the Nine Years War ended in 1603 with the surrender of Hugh O'Neill's and Hugh O'Donnell's forces at the Treaty of Mellifont.[20] The terms of surrender granted to the rebels were generous, with the principal condition that lands formerly contested by feudal right and Brehon law be held under English law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantation_of_Ulster
Iggo
(47,552 posts)Everything else is fluff.
LukeFL
(594 posts)History lessons you guys are ignoring the fact that this guy asked his victims if they were Christians. I know this website tend to be more pro Muslim But WE THE CHRISTIAN LEFT IS HERE and this completely devastate us.
LukeFL
(594 posts)By mistake as a reply to your comment. It was more directed at the others trying to teach us history about IRA as if we care and completely ignoring what's going on here
Iggo
(47,552 posts)malaise
(268,980 posts)Is he?
LostOne4Ever
(9,288 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)So he supported a group of radical Catholics and Protestants, by shooting Christians in America?
That makes no sense and has me wondering the veracity of early reporting.
JanMichael
(24,885 posts)without that it matters not.