As I noted in passing last week, the striking thing about the life of Shamsud-Din Jabbar is how much it reads like the boilerplate biography of any random Jan. 6 defendant or MAGA-inspired criminal. The 42-year-old who allegedly murdered 15 people at the New Year's festivities in New Orleans appeared, on paper, to be relatively successful in his career: 8 years in the Army, a degree from Georgia State, and a $125,000 a year job for an accounting firm. But his personal life was a mess. He was thrice divorced in 10 years, and at least two of the divorces were acrimonious and required repeat court interference. His divorce lawyer even fired him. His financial mismanagement meant his healthy salary didn't go far enough, and he had to be forced to make back payments on child support.
Like so many men facing personal troubles, Jabbar didn't get the help he needed. Instead, he turned to radicalizing voices online, which led him to believe that he needed to double down on toxic masculinity. It's a story we hear over and over, from so-called incels who commit mass shootings to Donald Trump fans who attack government buildings to terrorists imbibing ISIS propaganda. Rather than taking responsibility for their personal failures and striving to do better, men of all stripes turn to the internet where they're greeted by a sea of influencers, ready to tell them that it's other people — women, people of different races or religions, the "woke mob" — that is to blame. In some cases, as happened here, they go far enough down the rabbit hole that they talk themselves into violence.
Rather than taking responsibility for their personal failures and striving to do better, men of all stripes turn to the internet where they're greeted by a sea of influencers, ready to tell them that it's other people — women, people of different races or religions, the "woke mob" — that is to blame.
Thankfully, no one but the bomber was badly hurt in the Las Vegas suicide bombing that happened the same night as the Bourbon St. attack, but the parallels between Jabbar and Matthew Livelsberger aren't hard to spot. Like Jabbar, Livelsberger was a troubled man who picked a highly symbolic location, blowing up a Cybertruck in front of a Trump hotel. Both men had checkered romantic histories, and Livelsberger appears to have told multiple people he feared he suffered from PTSD. Like Jabbar, Livelsberger seems to have acted on a belief that he was going out like a hero, standing up for his far-right ideology and using his death to call on fellow MAGA believers to commit acts of terrorism.
"Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary," he wrote in his final manifesto. He declared the U.S. is "terminally ill and headed toward collapse," complained that people don't believe "[m]asculinity is good and men must be leaders" and made tired Twitter jokes calling Vice President Kamala Harris a "DEI candidate" and President Joe Biden "Weekend at Bernie's." He concluded, "Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans!"
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Livelsberger defensively insisted the bombing "was not a terrorist attack." This sentiment is belied not just by the violence of the act itself and his calls for MAGA men to use violence because "a hard reset must occur for our country."
Friday, the Washington Post published an in-depth report on the role self-radicalization plays in ISIS violence. In many cases, reporters Souad Mekhennet and Joby Warrick write, "the perpetrators appear to have been driven less by ideology or politics than by rage over personal failings." They largely follow the story of Beran Aliji, the 19-year-old Austrian whose plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert was thankfully thwarted by authorities. The contours of his story are familiar to anyone who knows examples like Elliot Rodger, the UCSB incel killer, or Jacob Chansley, the infamous "QAnon Shaman" at the Jan. 6 riot. Aliji was a lost soul with few friends and serious mental health issues. Instead of getting help for his issues, Aliji turned to online sources that promoted toxic masculinity. He embraced overt misogyny and developed an obsession with guns and knives, telling police he posed for photos with weapons because he "wanted to be cool and brag about it."
Aliji's brand of toxic masculinity was radical Islamic propaganda, which eventually led him to ISIS, which he saw "as a means of gaining an identity and purpose." There are many flavors of this pitch aimed at lost men worldwide. In the U.S., groups like the Proud Boys offer a similar tactic: Join them, and you'll be transformed from a nobody to a warrior fighting for the supposedly noble MAGA cause. Online incel communities are less positive in their marketing but push a similar message, that the world is a fallen place and only this group of men see the truth of it. Christian nationalist churches, such as the one attended by Trump's Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegeseth, pump out huge amounts of online content valorizing male violence and female oppression. A lot of people fall into these radical communities after imbibing months or even years of "softer" versions of the same "feminism is bad, toxic masculinity is good" messaging from influencers like Jordan Peterson, Matt Walsh, or Ben Shapiro.
Whether it's radical Islam or MAGA vitriol, the appeal is obvious. They allow the troubled man to blame others, especially women and "woke" culture, rather than look to themselves. They offer a false promise that their ideologies will transform followers from losers to heroes. What they actually sell them is more of the same poison that led to their problems in the first place: toxic masculinity. They're encouraged to be domineering toward women and bombastic in their rigid worldviews, both of which alienate them further from people in their lives. But they often respond by digging even deeper into the radicalizing materials, and all too often, they act out violently. In some cases, as with Aliji or the would-be Pizzagate shooter, they're stopped before anyone gets hurt. All too often, they're not.
Right now, most media focus on men and online radicalization focuses on the "demand" side of the equation, looking at the psychological factors that drive men to seek out these influences. That's important, but sources I spoke with last year for an in-depth report on radicalization also felt attention must be paid to the "supply" side. American University professor Brian Hughes explained that pre-internet, it was relatively rare "to encounter extremist propaganda or an extremist recruiter." With the internet, however, "you can't avoid radicalizing material. Propaganda is everywhere."
More will likely be learned about Jabbar, but what we already know suggests he's part of this larger trend. Bruce Riedel, a counterterrorism expert, told the Washington Post that Jabbar is "a classic case" of someone who "finds now a cause to justify his life and his rage" in the radical Islamic ideology he found online. After an initial investigation into whether Jabbar had accomplices, federal authorities have determined he acted alone and was "inspired" by ISIS propaganda.
Similarly, while Livelsberger hinted at his intent to friends and an ex-girlfriend, he ultimately seemed self-directed. Like Jabbar, he appears to have been lost and felt that this final act of violence would give him meaning. His letter suggests he believes he'll be a hero to men who share his radical political views. Both men were caught up in the sick logic of toxic masculinity, where being "good" is about being dominant and hateful. It's a worldview that reimagines ugly behavior as noble, and it's not a surprise it so often ends in violence.
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