In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
—George Orwell, All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
Sometimes, U.S. political violence and/or mass shootings are clearly motivated by a specific, partisan ideology. The murderer doesn’t seek wealth, power, or personal enrichment; he wants to destroy his political “enemies” by any means necessary. Which is why deterrence is so difficult: In the mind of a radicalized extremist, violent tactics are always justified because the “enemy” deserves it.
But sometimes the murderer is simply a wackaloon who’s trying to impress Jodie Foster.
Welcome to the new PR rules for U.S. political violence and mass shootings. We’ve had so many of ‘em that they’ve begun to follow a template:
- There’s a mass shooting or a political assassination
- The media decides how sympathetic the victim was (schools, minority groups, and liberal politicians/institutions are at the top of the sympathy list) and covers accordingly
- Once the accused murderer is identified, there’s a mad dash to connect him or her with either Red America or Blue America:
- If the murderer was a conservative, the most likely culprit was rightwing extremism and President Trump’s Nazi-inspired “dog whistles” that incited violence
- If the murderer were a liberal, the problem was gun control and a lack of mental healthcare
After Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the far left tried to compare the outpouring of grief and outrage to the muted, subdued response when 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter (allegedly) shot two Minnesota state senators, murdering Melissa Hortman and her husband.
Liberals demanded to know: Why all this love and adulation for Charlie, yet no national mourning for the Hortmans?
The answer is that the media couldn’t move beyond step #2: Connecting Vance Luther Boelter to Red or Blue America has proven impossible. When Boelter lived in Oklahoma, he was registered as a Republican; when he moved to Minnesota, he wrote that he had “no party preference.” Notably, he was a political appointee of a pair of Democratic governors, including former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.
Boelter also had promotional fliers for the “No Kings” anti-Trump protests and claimed he was murdering politicians under the direct orders of Gov. Tim Walz.
Was Boelter a crazy leftist? Or a crazy conservative?
Probably neither: He was just plain crazy.
Which is why, other than leveraging him as an anti-Kirk talking point, the mainstream media didn’t know what to do with him either. And so, he quickly became old news.
There were two more mass shootings over the weekend, both (allegedly) by combat veterans of the U.S. Marines: Nigel Edge, who earned a Purple Heart in Iraq, is accused of spraying bullets at a North Carolina restaurant. Three people died; eight were wounded.
According to the New York Post:
The motive has yet to be determined, police said.
But records show Edge has been behind several bizarre lawsuits filed in North Carolina this year — including one accusing a Southport church of trying to kill him.
The suit, filed in May, claimed the Generations Church was behind a “civil conspiracy” masterminded by the LGBTQ community and white supremacist pedophiles to kill Edge because he’s “a straight man.”
In January, Edge filed a similar suit against the Brunswick Medical Center, accusing it of being part of a conspiracy launched by “LGBTQ White Supremacists” who were allegedly out to get him because he survived their attack in Iraq. [emphasis added]
So we already know this shooting will be memory-holed and immediately forgotten: When your hate is directed at “LGBTQ White Supremacists,” you’ve baffled both sides.
Nobody knows what to do with you!
Pinsker’s Rule of PR #59: If the media can’t politicize a crime, they lose interest in talking about it.
The other mass shooting took place at a Michigan Latter-Day Saints church. This story will stay visible far longer than the North Carolina shooting because the suspect, an ex-Marine named Thomas Jacob Stanford, is easier to tie to MAGA, although the connection remains dubious.
His recent political views remain unclear, but he was seen wearing a camouflage Trump 2020 campaign shirt, emblazoned with the words Make Liberals Cry Again, in a picture posted on social media in 2019.
An image of Sanford’s home, taken on Google Street View in June, showed a Trump-Pence sign attached to his garden fence.
Others have noted that the Trump sign seemed to be strategically placed atop a stop sign, suggesting an anti-Trump motive.
Images of the suspect’s residence on Google Maps, dated June 2025, show a blue Trump poster hanging on his fence just above a red “stop” sign.
The Trump sign outside his home has fueled heated speculation about his politics. Some social media users have used the Trump placard to claim that he is a Republican, while those across the aisle see the placement of the poster—just above a “stop” sign—as an indication that he wanted to “stop Trump.”
Records show that Sanford has no recorded party affiliation, but Michigan has open primaries, so party registration is not required. [emphasis added]
Prediction: The mainstream media will keep this story going, hoping to tie Stanford to the MAGA movement. Their endgame is to deflect blame and/or guilt over left-wing political violence by reminding audiences that Republicans do it, too.
And they might be right.
I don’t know Stanford’s motives. Maybe he was mad at Mormons because he blamed them for Charlie Kirk’s murder. Maybe he doesn’t believe Mormons are “real” Christians.
There’s not enough information yet to definitively rule it out.
Just like there’s not enough information to know if he was a leftwing maniac who despised Christianity and hated Mormons for their “traditional” stance on gay rights and women’s roles in the church. ‘Cause that could be the motive, too.
Sometimes, the only honest answer is, “We need more data.”
No matter. The mainstream media realizes that leftwing violence is rising and the American people are scared, so they’re doing exactly what we’d expect ‘em to do:
Instead of calling it out and condemning it, they’re creating a narrative that paints all sides as equally guilty. And they’ll do this by elevating and promoting stories about rightwing violence, and downplaying stories about leftwing violence.
Whenever the next mass shooting happens, the media will determine its newsworthiness via the identity of the victims — and then the identity of the villain. If the victim is on the left and the villain is on the right, it’ll be promoted to the heavens.
If not, it’ll be memory-holed and forgotten. Sadly, these are the new PR rules for political violence and mass shootings.
Just as Orwell predicted.
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