the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Sep 1, 2025
It has happened again—a school shooting, this time in Minneapolis, which left two young children dead and 18 other people wounded, 15 of them also children.
The shooter, 23-year-old Robin Westman, left behind hundreds of pages of writings that showed she had been fascinated with mass shootings from an early age. She had been planning a shooting for years and made a deliberate effort to hide her plans—as well as the weapons and ammunition she was amassing—from others, including people close to her. After some thought, she settled on a target she knew about well: a mass held at her old Catholic elementary school.
All of this fits into a pattern common to people who have committed mass shootings. She also expressed racism against Black, Mexican and Jewish people. The acting U.S. Attorney in Minnesota, Joe Thompson, said Westman’s writings showed her mental state. Others, including police officials and parents of shooting victims, pointed to the mental health crisis in this country.
But right-wing commentators claimed the reason for the shooting was that Robin Westman seems to identify as transgender.
Matt Walsh, a right-wing podcaster, calls the shooting an act of “trans terrorism.” He was only one of many. Alabama’s lieutenant governor, Will Ainsworth, wrote, “The sooner everyone accepts that God made men, and God made women, and one can never become the other, the quicker we can lessen these events from happening.” Never mind that, of the hundreds of mass shootings in the U.S. in recent times, very few were committed by trans people. The vast majority of mass shooters in the U.S. are white men.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, being transgender is not considered a mental illness. Nor are transgender people connected to higher rates of violence. To sum up, in the words of John Pachankis, Yale professor and expert on the matter, “A school shooter who happens to be transgender has more in common with other school shooters than with other transgender people.”
Capitalism and the society that suffers under it create the problems of violence we encounter. Those who speak for the system model and promote violence, and then pretend to be dismayed by it.