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It's not hard to take a troubled, isolated young person, isolate them further, become their primary source of love and support, feed into grandiose fantasies ab
by tekromancr 11y ago
It's not hard to take a troubled, isolated young person, isolate them further, become their primary source of love and support, feed into grandiose fantasies about how killing is the right thing and turn them into a killer. It is literally how every military in the world operates. We have seen proven experimentally otherwise well adjusted (albeit white educated industrialized rich democratic college students mostly) will do horrible things if a person of authority simply tells them to. As far as I can tell from this account, that is more or less what happened here. A high-stakes version of the Milgrim experiment.
I think we need a new approach. I think in situations where it is applicable, authorities should attempt to positively intervene in a person's life when, for example, in this situation where they collect information about a highschool student who starts interacting with editors of extremist publications. That sort of things should shoot up red flags that someone needs help, rather than wait a few years and see if they can get them to try to kill people.