By Cynthia Miller-Idriss | Foreign AffairsUSA: America’s Epidemic of Hate – Cynthia Miller-Idriss | Foreign Affairs

The murder of seven parade attendees on July 4 in Highland Park, Illinois, was horrifying — and all too predictable. Over the past decade, there have been scores of mass killings across the United States. In 2012, a shooter murdered seven Sikh worshipers in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. In 2015, an assailant massacred nine Black people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. An attacker killed 23 Walmart shoppers in 2019 in El Paso, Texas. And on May 24 of this year, a shooter killed 21 people in Uvalde, Texas.

These episodes have no single formula, but recent assailants typically share a similar set of toxic traits: A history of murderous fantasies, violent nihilism, self-harm, or suicidal ideation; withdrawal from friends and family; and streaks of cruelty expressed through the torture or killing of animals, the stalking or harassing of women, or threats of rape and other physical harm. Investigators are still learning about the Highland Park assailant and his motive, but they know that the 21-year-old alleged shooter had threatened to kill his family and commit suicide. Similarly, the man charged with murdering ten Black Americans in June 2022 at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, had threatened to commit a murder-suicide and had written about stabbing and beheading a cat.            Continue reading →