Inside the evil: the sickness that motivates mass shooters
What do the Las Vegas massacre, the Charleston church shooting and last weekend’s Islamist stabbing of two Frenchwomen have in common? The murderers’ sense of inadequate recognition, and the primal lure of the ecstasy of killing.
Acts of deadly terror are in fashion, the default position for a wide range of frustrated egotists. From lone-wolf Islamists enabled by faith, through punk racists, to a high-stakes gambler who craved casino perks — slum-dweller, misfit or property owner — these terrorists shared a sense that their societies wouldn’t give them their due.
Too much has been made of the measure of wealth amassed by Stephen Paddock, the calculating demon of Las Vegas. You can be a high roller at the gaming table and still be the guy the cocktail waitresses loathe. While we may learn that the killer was mad about gambling debts or another trigger issue, years of watching mass-casualty attacks convinces me that his ego and need for recognition just couldn’t be satisfied by the casino VIP benefits he embraced. He needed a starring role in a vengeful drama.
Paddock spent decades moving from one job to another, never quite fitting in, until he found a way to profit from real estate. Even then, he made few friends and seemed remote and rootless to neighbors. The old folks were right: Money can’t buy happiness.
As with Dylann Roof, who entered a black church and went on a racist rampage, or with any of the Islamist lone wolves who drove vehicles into crowds or simply attacked with knives, I believe that Paddock felt slighted by the world around him, unjustly marginalized — a condition doubtless aggravated by our corrupting sense of entitlement. His lack of a motivating ideology reveals the angry ego at the core of so much terrorism.
The 19th-century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel noted that all human beings crave recognition. But our ancestors were content with less than we are; they weren’t tantalized by reports of celebrity lifestyles. In our have-it-all, you’re-entitled culture, millions feel alienated and left behind.
Fortunately, only a microscopic number succumb to the impulse to murder others as acts of self-affirmation, of self-actualization. For that, thank civilization, which is endlessly at war against our instincts. We’ve been “re-educated” to believe that killing is unnatural — but consider how little it takes to turn “civilized” human beings into a deadly mass that celebrates a foe’s extermination.
The “Iliad,” a founding document of our civilization, is a lengthy celebration of the ecstasy of thrusting spears into the bellies or backs of one’s opponents. The most striking images in that gory epic luridly describe the act of killing — and the victor’s delight. And our other basic texts, from the “Nordic Sagas” to “Beowulf,” are anything but peace-loving.
If we cannot admit to ourselves that, at a primal level, killing is an ecstatic joy for at least some humans, that taking the lives of others is the ultimate empowerment, we’ll never understand why a 64-year-old man sneaked an arsenal into a hotel and methodically slaughtered 59 human beings, leaving over 500 others injured. Killing other human beings is as close as we get to being gods.
And once the killing starts, it turns into rapture. Mass murderers don’t stop of their own volition. They keep killing until they themselves are gunned down or disabled, or until they run out of ammunition or face capture and take their own lives. For those exultant moments of slaughter, the killer is the master of us all.
Certainly, there are religious terrorists for whom faith eclipses ego, the true believers. Others may have a sense of self-sacrifice for a political goal, however misguided. But if we truly wish to understand the lone wolves, from the Mandalay Bay Hotel to the Marseilles train station, we will not succeed as long as we cling to politically correct drivel about humanity’s inherent pacifism.
For years, I’ve warned lecture audiences that the purpose of military discipline isn’t to get young men to kill — that’s easy. The purpose is to get them to stop killing when ordered to do so. In his room on the 32nd floor of that Vegas hotel, Stephen Paddock was enjoying the thrill of his life.
All of these lone wolves have a message for us: “I’m somebody. And now I’m going to show you who I am.”
Ralph Peters is Fox News’ strategic analyst and the author of the recent book, “Judgment at Appomattox.”