Another week, another shooting. This one at a Planned Parenthood clinic, leaving three dead. The shooter, as is so often the case, was a white guy – a European-American – who in this case muttered, “No more baby parts” as he was led away. The reports that Planned Parenthood sold aborted fetuses for cash, long proven to be false, may have pushed him over the edge but that may be beside the point.
He was in a murderous state of mind. And that state is remarkably common among people of European descent.
Where we often site “Islamic Extremists” as being particularly violent, history tells us that those of us who come from European stock are much worse. It’s time we confront this problem and stop assigning the characteristic “violent” to others.
From the recent Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis. The two were identified as a Disciples of Christ Pastor and a Presbyterian Minister. They get this.
We see it coming up all the time. Here in Minnesota, the killing of Jamar Clark by a European-American police officer has produced a continuous protest outside the Fourth Precinct in Minneapolis. It’s always been rather peaceful, at least until a group of White Supremacists showed up and started firing into the crowd.
How does this happen?
The history of Europeans has shown that nearly every “advancement” made came at a terribly violent price. In the 20th Century alone, 15 million Europeans were killed in WWI and another 45M in WWII – a terrible record unmatched by any culture anywhere. These brutal deaths came after centuries of nearly continuous war over petty politics, religion, and just about any other reason anyone can possibly imagine.
Nearly all of the weapons sold on the international arms market and circulating among violent groups are made in nations dominated by Europeans, too.
Mass killing for political aims was not invented by Europeans, but they sure perfected it – and relied on it.
This tendency towards violence as a way to advance a cause or to solve problems was very much a part of European culture long before the conquest of North America and the creation of the United States. This is the heritage of European-Americans which we perpetuate.
Exact figures depend on when you want to start the clock and what you want to count, but there is little doubt that the vast majority of “terror attacks” in the US, more than 90%, have come at the hands of non-Moslems. An awful lot were performed by “Los Macheteros”, the Puerto Rican separatist group – possibly because we already regard the island as another nation. Aside from them, however, terror comes from European Americans far more than anyone else.
We can’t place any exclusivity on the political left or right, either. The defining characteristic of terror in the US is that it’s done by European-Americans.
No one is proposing that we create a large database of European-Americans and track them. Proposals to limit their access to weapons are routinely shouted down as a violation of the Second Amendment – and that more weapons in the hands of European-Americans, not fewer, is a logical response to the problems we see.
None of this makes any sense on the face of it. The root problem is a very simple and straightforward one – Europeans in general come from a culture of violence. It is an integral part of history and current belief systems.
If non-Europeans have learned to use violence to advance their aims it may be that they came to the conclusion that this is all that Europeans understand.
Nelson Mandela made a lot more progress as a fighter for peace and order.
That’s not to say that terrorism, an act of violence designed to inflict terror on a population, actually works. By itself it’s an empty tactic that has never been shown to be effective at anything. No group has ever won independence or achieved any goal through terrorism alone – and there is considerable reason to believe that acts of terror hampered their cause. The African National Congress made much more progress after it took up non-violent protest, as have Irish nationalist groups. Civil rights in the US came when Martin Luther King demonstrated that peace and unity was the only way forward.
Yet acts of terror persist. They do so because they feel good and the rush of adrenaline gives supporters something to cheer. It’s a disease that starts with the idea that violence actually solves problems – a concept deeply embedded in the psyche of nearly everyone of European origin.
The world is a much more violent place because it is dominated by Europeans no matter how we look at it. We won’t see an end to violence until we confront this sickness at the heart of the prevailing culture.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 
the media want to blame muslims for everything!
Yes – they are the scapegoat of the times.
Eric,
Simply brilliant dissection of the issue. Sadly, many who would read it would be outraged and bristle with denial. Which brings us to the underlying mechanism of the truth you expose. White Europeans have always existed in the psychological state of denial. Their justification for their violence is always ascribed to higher motives and values.
I tried to write it in a way that is hard to deny – as blankly as possible. But, alas, the denial at the core of European culture is critical – we are the great moral compass of the world, right?
I think that it is extremely important to constantly juxtapose how white people think about their fellows and how they think about themselves. This article just nails it. We are not better. Islamic terrorism counts for only 7% of all terrorist acts in the last three decades. And we can’t even pretend that out of these 7%, all of the acts were actually committed based on the religious claims – sometimes, as with the Palestinian Intifade, it was more of a nationalist fervor and last resort for many who were not willing to sit idle while their land was taken by the Israeli settlers.
I don’t justify any violence (and I assume you neither). I just want every act to be called by its true name – be it madness or something else that produced a certain result. Our civilization is not civilized at all, it just became more sophisticated in terms of hiding the violence from our sights:
As a society, we have to ACCEPT that by eating a smoked chicken, we are ourselves committing violence, although we are not directly slitting its throat. The same goes when we as citizens support policies that lead to violence somewhere in the Middle East. And so on…
We are eating a smoked chicken – I like it! This is a world we made, by and large, it’s true. We harvest what we plant.
If life is so sacred to these people how can they take the lives of people at the Planned Parenthood clinic? It doesn’t compute.
Leslie
It doesn’t. The politics seems far less important to me than the constant need for people to use violence to get what they want.
Absolutely brilliant, as always. We are a violent people and we reap what we sow.
Indeed, we do!
Every day there is something that saddens me & its almost always something done by a white person. The police shootings, the PP shooting, the “mistakes” by drones all that stuff. We do rely on violence & look the other way when it goes wrong on us like what do you expect?
A good addition – we have been at war nearly continuously since 2001. And we do kill a lot of people “by mistake” – with very little sorrow for that loss.
Good blog. Violence is everywhere but keep in mind thats why people want to avoid bringing in refugees out of fear there will be more. May not seem rational but ppl are overloaded from the media.
I can see that, but to say that Moslems are “violent” is still very hypocritical.
Erik, this is a gutsy post. I don’t know if white people are inherently more violent or if it situational, but It’s very bad regardless.
Thank you, but it is something I believe very sincerely. I was going to write this in a sarcastic way but I am starting to think that sarcasm is a cancer that will metastasize to consume us all. So I said it straight up. We come from violent stock and have no business complaining about other people’s violence.
Reblogged this on KCJones.
We are not going to get rid of the mentally ill / stressed out people. There are only going to be more of them as our society pulls apart. I don’t think there is a meaningful solution that doesn’t involve reducing access to guns.
Absolutely. My main question is what laws we have in place that we can’t enforce due to stupid restrictions and what new laws do we need to make that as much a reality as possible?