Yesterday, the Tennessee Star published 90 pages of the Covenant School shooter's diary, which contains entries from January 2023 through March 27, 2023, the day of the shooting.
Davis Hunt, founder and editor of Pamela Harris, will join Jill Savage and other panelists on “Blaze News Tonight” to discuss the leak.
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“What new details were there today that we didn't know before?” Jill asks.
“I don't know if there was anything revelatory,” Hunt said. “We already knew that she had some animosity toward the Steven Crowder leak and, of course, toward 'white Christians.'”
“I skimmed through it. I didn't read the whole thing. I tried to avoid it because I don't want to spend my waking hours delving into the mind of a psychopath, but what I did see confirmed what we already knew,” he continues.
But Blaze Media editor-in-chief Matthew Peterson isn't convinced avoiding the document is the best option.
“What you're saying is, when you look at this, it confirms everything you thought was true – that this was a man who was hostile towards Christianity, towards white people, and towards heterosexuals who were opposed to the transgender movement. Is that correct?” he asks.
“Yes, I think that's generally correct. … It was an act of violence directed at a specific group of people, it was not random. She did not go to a shopping mall or other public gathering place. She went to a private Christian school that she was familiar with,” Hunt explained, adding that the opinion is “somewhat controversial.”
“Is there any part of your experience that stands out in your mind? [the released document]?” asks Jill.
“There was a lot of very strange, sort of racial ideology packed into it that you might not have expected,” Hunt said.
“to be honest [Blaze] “We've had a long-standing policy of not highlighting or quoting these manifestos to our audiences,” Peterson said.
“But the environment has changed,” he acknowledges. “The most appalling part of this manifesto that I've ever heard is not the insane hatred towards her own community, but rather the lack of normal human emotion…. And so I think: What should be the policy towards the media today?”
Hunt explains that research from the Violence Project has shown that what school shooters have in common, besides “obvious psychological issues”, is that “they all had studied the behaviour of previous school shooters”.
“They're all so deeply influenced by each other,” he said, pointing to Columbine as “the central event that ignited this tragic movement.”
Ultimately, Hunt believes “minimal coverage” is probably the best approach.
“There's a natural curiosity about why people do things, and in a way it's kind of perversely fascinating to try to understand why this happens, what would drive someone to do something,” he explains, but believes Hale's motives are “self-evident” given who she targeted, so psychoanalysis is best kept to a minimum.
“Now, let's look at the other side of the coin,” Peterson counters. “The problem is [Hale’s journal] “Why was it delayed for so many years, a year and a half? The government was threatening to put this journalist in jail if he exposed it,” he said, probably because “one side would be blamed.”
Hale explains that these shooters are often “politicized” and “steeped in strange ideologies” – in his case, transgender and anti-white ideologies.
“In this case, the problem is that the government tried to hide one side of the story and promote a narrative about the other side,” he said, leading many to say, “Just make it public.”
To hear Hunt's response, watch the episode above.
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