It could be delusion instead of lying, mostly its illogical stated and implied arguments, combined with ignoring the actual evidence.
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The problem isn't so much with his premises (although the evidence for many of them, such as "he was a Republican" is weak) its with the logic from them and the definitions he uses.
His opinion or definition is that "Republican" equals "Right Wing Extremist". The obvious problem with that is that it only means so in his own private language, not by normal definitions in the real world.
Also the evidence that he was a Republican seems to be an online profile claiming to be a Republican. We don't know for certain that he wrote that profile, or that if he did that it was honest. That last point isn't really important, since if he was a Republican it doesn't mean much.
If you define Republican as "right wing extremist", then being a "right wing extremist" isn't very meaningful (or very extreme). It also isn't an explination for the shooting. Many millions of people are Republicans. An overwhelming majority of them aren't murderers, let alone mass/spree killers.
Of course if he really is a right wing extremist, that doesn't give him much of a connection with most Republicans or conservatives. It also doesn't settle the motivation for the murder. If someone with extreme political views commits murder, the murder isn't necessarily because of those extreme views.
He take unsupported leap after unsupported leap. (Some directly stated some just implied) to try to go from "there is an online profile in his name that claimed he was Republican" to the implied "views similar to current conservative Republicans inspired the killing". That requires stunning leaps of illogic to say the least. (Not to mention that even if it was true, people can get extreme and violent about good ideas, so the means that one person chooses say little to nothing about the ideas he supposedly supports according to SearchRe, or the means likely to be used by others who have those ideas.)
Beyond all of that SearchRe simply ignores the actual evidence (to be fair limited evidence but its pretty much all we have) of Harper-Mercer's motivation, where the shooter posts about how other shooters became famous, which really seems to be his main motivation whatever Harper-Mercer's political views.
SearchRe also largely ignores the fact that Harper-Mercer seems to hate Christians. Yes right wing extremists don't have to be or like Christians, but hatred of Christians is very much not an idea associated with the right wing extremism in the US, much less with normal conservatives and Republicans.
To sum up, he takes somewhat weak premises, apply non-standard definitions, put it all through huge leaps of illogic, and largely ignores the real evidence. |
