I don't think he makes the case that "many" are on the autism spectrum -- his article describes just one case. What resonated with me is the case that public violence has become so normalized that you don't need a violent nature to nurture violence yourself.
Obsession and lack of empathy are still required though, for now. As such, ASD people are probably more at risk from the "normalization" of deviant behaviour than others. But there are many ways to de-humanize other people, and ASD is just one of them (radicalization is another one).
To me, that's the real risk of today's media landscape. I don't mean just the Internet, even mainstream media does not back away from publishing the "manifestos" of these deviants. As such, the behaviour becomes more normalized and it's worrying that the threshold lowers with each publication.
This isn't just an American thing even. We've had the shootings in Norway, stabbing of an army sergeant in England, hostage taking at the Dutch public news channel. In each of those cases, the perpetrators got more news coverage than the victims, which disturbs me. That's also why I won't provide links or names for the above, I don't want to feel complicit.
> We've had the shootings in Norway, ... In each of those cases, the perpetrators got more news coverage than the victims
Only outside Norway. Here the focus was on NOT treating him as someone special and on providing for the victims and the future. I see Breivik's name far more often in English language media than in Norwegian.
Obsession and lack of empathy are still required though, for now. As such, ASD people are probably more at risk from the "normalization" of deviant behaviour than others. But there are many ways to de-humanize other people, and ASD is just one of them (radicalization is another one).
To me, that's the real risk of today's media landscape. I don't mean just the Internet, even mainstream media does not back away from publishing the "manifestos" of these deviants. As such, the behaviour becomes more normalized and it's worrying that the threshold lowers with each publication.
This isn't just an American thing even. We've had the shootings in Norway, stabbing of an army sergeant in England, hostage taking at the Dutch public news channel. In each of those cases, the perpetrators got more news coverage than the victims, which disturbs me. That's also why I won't provide links or names for the above, I don't want to feel complicit.