What makes troubled and deeply disturbed teenage boys like Nikolas Cruz so enamored by Nazi symbols and prone to racial and gender hate?
As the Parkland shooter’s sentencing trial uncovers chilling details about his life, including a history of skinning lizards alive as a child, jurors on Tuesday got a further glance at his troubled mind. Cruz drew swastikas on the magazines found in the AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle he used in the massacre and on one of his boots, Broward County Sheriff’s Office investigators testified. He made online searches on how to buy Nazi flags, about Adolph Hitler’s birthday and posted comments using a racial slur. He also wrote that “women are less important than a dog,” the Associated Press reported.
Prosecutors aren’t making the case that the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was motivated by racial or gender animosity. They are trying to convince jurors Cruz was driven by antisocial personality disorder and not fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, as the defense contends. But the surfacing of white supremacy and misogyny in his trial aren’t surprising. Even if they didn’t drive Cruz to act, it’s further proof that hatred is very much alive and young men seem especially prone to subscribing to it.
