The Ben Mulroney Show - The mindset behind a mass shooter/how videos can be weaponized for hate

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

- Oren Amitay/Psychologist - Cheryl Thompson/ Canada Research Chair in Black Expressive Culture & Creativity If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ Twitter: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ TikTok: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a paid advertisement for better help. These days, it feels like everywhere you turn, someone's got a new theory on how to improve your mental health. From ice baths to meditation apps, there's a lot of noise out there about what's supposed to make you feel better. But the truth is, finding what actually helps you isn't always that simple. When it comes to mental health, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. That's why speaking with someone who is trained to listen and to help,

someone who can meet you where you are and help you figure things out, can make such a difference. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. BetterHelp connects people with mental health professionals from around the world offering access to a huge range of experiences and expertise. They've worked with millions of people already, and with thousands of therapists available,

it is easy to find somebody who fits your needs. It's flexible, too. You can schedule a session with just a click, and you're free to change therapists whenever you need to until you find the right fit. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Mulruni today to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Mulruni. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've been following the news, like really following it, you know how exhausting it can be. Politics, conflict, uncertainty. It's a lot to carry. And for many men, there's this expectation to stay calm,

stay in control, and not talk about how it's affecting you. But the truth is, you're allowed to feel overwhelmed. You're allowed to say, I'm not okay right now. And trust me, I have been there. Whether it's the state of the world, stress at home, or just feeling like you've got to have it all together and have all the answers. You don't have to hold it in.

BetterHelp is here to help with the world's largest network of licensed therapists. They've already supported over 5 million people. You can connect with a therapist online from wherever you are. No wait list, no office visits. And if it's not the right fit, you can switch any time. It's time to put your mental health on the agenda. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Mulruni today to get 10%

off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Mulruni. Thursday, August 28th, and we here in Canada are waiting with bated breath, and these parents are waiting for debated breath for our kids to finally go off to school. And when you wake up yesterday or in the middle of the day and you hear the developing news that a shooter in Minnesota had opened fire into a mass where young children were celebrating the first mass of the year at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, striking at least 200 people, killing two in a shooting school. In a shooting school shooting that's being deemed incomprehensible, you try to make sense of it. Now, I am not

somebody who ever wants to import another country's issues into Canada, overlay them over hours and say, we have to make sense of this. We've got to fix this problem. We don't, it's not our problem. But there are larger forces at play and larger questions that need to be answered to satisfy a human need in all of us. Why did this happen? Who did this happen to? How can we make sure that people who might feel marginalized, angry, radicalized. How can we, how can we make sure that we bring them back into the fold and we make them feel like there is a place for them, right? And if they are far gone and if they can't be helped, where do we put them so they don't hurt anybody ever again? Let's listen to the chief of police, Brian O'Hara, for his recap of the

events. Earlier today, just before 8.30 a.m., our city experienced an unthinkable tragedy. Minneapolis police officers responded to a report of a shooting at a mass that was happening at the Annunciation Roman Catholic Church on the block behind me. In any of these tragedies where you hear of mass shootings and mass casualties, there are always stories that are always little subplots that stick with you and interviews that you can never shake and you can never forget. Here's one of them. This is the poise of this young boy describing what happened. He should be hysterical. He should be inconsolable. Listen to this young boy describe what happened inside that church. It was like right beside me. I was like two seats away from the stained glass windows.

So they were like, the shots were like right next to me. Scary. Yeah. You went under the pew after that happened? Yeah. Is that what everyone tried to do? I think I got like gunpowder on my neck. Yeah.

When you heard the shots, what went through your head? I was like, the first one I was like, what is that? I thought it was just something. Then when I heard it again, I just ran under the pew. And then I covered my head. My friend Victor, like, saved me, though, because he laid on top of me. But he got hit. Oh, Victor, you're a good man.

You're a good boy. Your parents should be proud. I hope you're okay. And that boy, so he got gunpowder on him. He should never know what gunpowder smells like or feels like. That's the world we live in, though. Well, it is. It's the world the Americans live in.

There are aspects of this that can be brought here. Rit large, the epidemic of school shooting, it's not one that we have here. to that extent. The scale does not exist and therefore the parallel doesn't exist. But that doesn't mean we don't talk about this. That doesn't mean we don't try to find lessons that can be gleaned from it to make our imperfect country a little less imperfect. And the shooter, who the shooter is, why they chose to do what they did, what they've put out there for public consumption. These are all questions that I think we have to have to dig into. The shooter was a 23-year-old Robin Westman obviously died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound because they did not, because they're

cowards, right? You're a coward and you did not want to be held to account for what you did. The shooter graduated from that school, enunciation in 2017. Westman's mother worked at the school from 2016 until 2021. Five years ago, the shooter's name was changed from Robert to Robin because Westman identified as a female. That's according to the judge. The mom apparently signed the documents allowing for this legal transition. Westman was armed with a legally and recently purchased rifle, shotgun, and pistol. Authorities believe all three weapons were fired in Minnesota. A permit is needed to purchase firearms and also carry them in public.

This is the 44th shooting this year. We'll get back to all this in a minute, but let's keep going with some more of the details. But let's also just give it the context with the Canadian shooting, the last Canadian shooting. Thank you for bringing that up. the last confirmed shooting with fatalities in this country occurred on January 22nd, 2016 at the La Losh Community School in Saskatchewan where a 17-year-old gunman killed two teachers on school grounds

and two others at his home and injured several people. So it has been eight years since we've had a school shooting that involved fatalities in this country. And there have been a couple of shootings in Toronto at schools, but those have been after hours off-school. grounds.

That's not the same thing. Well, yeah, we've had, we've, and it was at the same school over the past few months. It was a Jewish school in a Jewish area of Toronto. And it was believed to have been a hate crime both times. And so completely different circumstances. But that doesn't mean

it just because it happened and we're going to shut down and say, oh, that's an American problem. And we're also not just going to say America's got a gun problem. They're addicted to guns. This is far more complex than that. And of course, the automatic reply of refrain rather of thoughts and prayers thoughts and prayers so many people rush to their social media to show how big their hearts are

in the moments after something like this they want to be the first to comment with something magnanimous like thoughts and prayers well you know who didn't want to have time for that the Minneapolis mayor jacob fry don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now these kids were literally praying it was the first week of school they were in a church these are kids that should be learning with their friends they should be playing on the playground they should be able to go to school or church in peace without the fear or risk of violence i subscribe to everything the mayor just said everything the mayor just said i'm thoughts and

prayers meaningless to me like what are we going to do about it and sometimes it's as simple as having this conversation. You, Mike, you've been to the site of a number of these school shootings when you're working in the news division. I covered Virginia Tech, that massive shooting where a man with mental health issues, undiagnosed, killed, I believe it was 26 people. Sandy Hook, where a man, a young man who was, had Asperger's killed 20 children who were six years old, which was nuts.

And at the time, I remember posting stuff online. and I would have people send me notes saying thoughts and prayers. I'm like, why are you sending that to me? It doesn't, they're just empty words and especially when you see these things so often. And I covered Sandy Hook six months after my daughter was born. So it was really rough in that respect.

Well, I'm glad you brought up Sandy Hook because the Shooter's manifesto, he wrote one. I hope no one gives me any crap between the he and the she. Most shooters are men. this person was a biological man and I don't think they should be afforded any respect so I hope nobody comes back at me and says oh you're dead naming this person

it's whatever I say it's just going to happen and you're going to deal with it and if you're triggered grab a helmet all right so the yeah so the manifesto was released obviously YouTube pulled the videos from the platform but X being I guess the in the new version of Twitter

where they don't censor, the sum of that stuff is still up. And this person in their, showed detailed plans of the church that she had drawn, where they, and they were gleeful about what they were going to do. And we learned more about this person. Phrases in the manifesto include psycho killer

that were written on the guns. Suck on this. And the anti-Semitic message that reads, 6 million wasn't enough. A lot of hatred for a lot of groups. And they wrote, I have a deep fascination with one man in particular. Adam Lanzah.

They wrote in their journal on May 23rd. Adam Lanzo was the Sandy Hook murderer. They went on to say, Sandy Hook was my favorite, I think, exposure of school shootings. Sandy Hook was my favorite. So we're gonna, we got lots more to get into.

that's sort of the, those are the facts as we know them. We'll get into more of it afterwards. We're going to get into the issue of the issue of this person's identity matters to this story. And that's why we're going to talk about it. We are not talking about it just because we're not talking about it because it's sensational. We're talking about it because it is germane to the conversation. And we're going to do so in the most responsible way we can. We'll take a deeper dive into this, the motivation.

Oran Amate is our next guest. And he's got a very interesting theory on the motivation of this shooter. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. We appreciate your time, especially when we have conversations like this. We are mourning the tragedy, the violence, and the social epidemic that is school shootings in the United States. The 44th shooting this year in the United States. The 44th school shooting. You take the summer out because there were no school shootings during the summer.

And they're getting right back to, sadly, something that is fairly unique to the United States. Now, the motivation of a shooter is always something that we, it's human nature. Why did somebody do what they did? How can we comprehend the incomprehensible? And so it's incumbent upon us to ask some difficult questions. And our next guest has a theory as to what could have motivated this person who lived a very specific set of circumstances. Some of them tragic, and some of them led, some of them possibly led this person to do what they did. So please welcome to the show, Dr. Oran Amity psychologist.

Doctor, thanks so much for being here. Thank you, Ben. All right. So, listen, we know that he, let's go with he. We know that he was raised in a very strict Catholic upbringing, which presents issues if you stray from the values of the church. and as somebody who said that they were transgender and took the legal steps to identify as a woman only to then reject, I think, the clothing of being a woman.

Like that, that can mess with you, right? But that doesn't necessarily lead everybody to want to kill. So where do you see, what do you see playing a role here? Well, the most important thing, and this is what people have to understand, which is even if these school shootings are thankfully relatively rare, and there's a bunch of factors that will push someone to that degree of either evil or hopelessness. But the fact is, the nihilism, the sense that life is meaningless, there's no purpose, what the hell am I doing, there's no future, there's no inherent value in my life, in existence, in other people's lives.

Someone who has that mindset, they are capable of doing virtually anything. And again, even if it's not a mass shooting, dropping out of society, you know, burning buildings and stuff like that. This is what we're seeing more and more of because more young people from a younger age are being exposed to the kind of themes that lead someone to, you know, to develop these nihilistic beliefs. Yeah, like we got some insights into this shooter that we don't get every single time because they posted images of their manifesto and their notebook. and you could the excitement was it was crackling with excitement when when he he showed us the layout of the church right you could hear it in the background so excited to kill as they said like it's very creepy stuff and that's that it would be creepy on its own it's it's even more disturbing to know that he went through with it but you know i can where does the nihilism come from i mean

how does one how does one reject uh all all of society's values where does that that come from? Well, sadly, we're seeing more and more. It's coming from the school system. When you have teachers telling you that basically, if you belong to this group, then you are the bad people. You're the oppressors. If you belong to this group, you have no hope. You're the marginalized, the oppressed. No matter how hard you try, you're never going to succeed. People hate you. They want to eradicate you. When you're being told that from a young age and you're being told, you know, the world's going to end, you know, climate disasters and so on, it's very easy for a young child to start developing this, you know,

the significant anxiety, and they're lacking a sense of grounding purpose, okay? And even the sense of family, the fact is, I mean, that's an archetype for so many years. Little children have had this narrative of, you know, I'm going to grow up, I'm going to get married, I'm going to have kids. And that's being crapped all over,

whether it's social media or in school. Well, you know, I'm not, I think this person is a monster, but I think this monster is human, and therefore it's incumbent upon us to try to, understand them because to simply say someone is a monster makes them something other than human and therefore we can sort of poo-poo it away and say oh they are the exception no no they started out just like all of us but if you are somebody who is wrestling with your own um identity your own um sexuality your own how the world sees you and how you see yourself and you're doing

so within what i'm sure was a very difficult environment of a strict catholic upbringing and and doing so in a school where, I mean, take religion out of school. Schools can be, can, you got to run the gauntlet every day. It can be a really tough social environment for even the healthiest kids. You put all of that together. Now, a lot of kids, you end up in a hole, right? And a lot of kids have to work very hard to pull themselves out of that hole. And it seems like this person made the decision that the most effective way through their problem

was to keep digging that hole. And I take your point, though. I think for years now, I made the point on a previous show today that if we are going to have a conversation about the trans community, then the only place I want to take it is this belief that

any words questioning where we are as a society is deemed transphobic, is deemed violence against that group. You are deemed to be an enemy, you are deemed to be hostile, and that can breed in a young person, a sense that there are enemies everywhere. And people who are not openly hostile, not even remotely hostile to you, are your enemy and they are actively working against you. And I think

I don't know enough yet, but I would posit that as a theory as to one of the contributing factors of why this person chose violence. Well, yes, and that aligns with what I was saying a few minutes ago. And on top of that, the fact that he went after children, when people go after children, in many cases, these are people who felt that they've been so wrong by society. So they have to get back at the most beautiful, innocent symbols of society, of the future, of hope, children, they feel so hurt that they say, my hurt has to be paid back in spades. I've got to triple the damage that's being done to me. I'm going to destroy society. And there's a grandiosity in that. Okay, I want to leave the most impactful, horrific legacy ever.

And that's narcissistic and grandiose. There are people who are going to try to weaponize this person's trans identity. There are people who are going to try to take advantage of this moment to have a conversation about guns and about violence in America. I don't know that either one of those are useful right now. But I do think what do you say to people who are going to be critical of any attempt to bring the trans question into this conversation? We can't politicize it in that way. We have to say, look, this is, you know, this person was, you know, they did what they did. Not all trans people are like this, right?

And so we have to look at the individual person, not as the whole group, but we also do have to look at the messaging. And that's what I'm more concerned about that. I mean, I work with the many trans people. And so many of them feel, as I said earlier, that everybody is against them. That fosters a sense of paranoia. And it's, again, if you think everybody's against me, everybody hates me. Even if no one's done anything wrong, just that feeling feels, makes you feel so wrong. And you're building up this resentment.

And as I said, this paranoia, this fear, this anxiety. And when you're so imbued with that, again, you need to release it somehow. And once again, if you think society is wronged you, you need payback and we're going to see more and more of this again it may not be to this degree but we are seeing a lot of people whether they're trans or part of any marginalized group feeling it's my duty i need to fight back because i'm fighting back against evil that's what they're being told yeah well thank you very much doctor i appreciate it not we're putting nihilism on the board uh as something to consider as well but we appreciate your time today thank you very much

thank you as always been yeah it's uh we we've talked about this before that that there's this where language has been weaponized. But I've always looked at it as weaponized against the people who are, you know, asking questions. I didn't ever view it yet. I didn't view it as like, what's the impact going to be on the community itself? What's going to happen to a young, impressionable person with mental health issues? I mean, look, you don't write $6 million is not enough on an AR-15 or whatever weapon it is

because you're of sound mind. So this person is dealing with underlying mental health issues. And they've been fed a steady diet from a certain type of person in their community. that there are enemies everywhere. And words, the simple act of asking a question is to question your very existence. You hear that enough? You may want to start taking action.

You may view yourself on a war footing. I'm not saying that's the answer. I'm putting it out there as a theory and I think it's a responsible theory to put out there. So this conversation will evolve as the facts on the ground are presented to us. And I thank Dr. Oran Amatee for that. Much more to come on The Ben Mulrini Show.

The Conjuring Last Rites on September 5th. I come down here with you in your house. Array! Array! Array! Array! Array! rights, only in the theater September 5th.

At Grey Goose, we believe that pleasure is a necessity. That's why we craft the world's number one premium vodka in France, using only three of the finest natural ingredients, French winter wheat, water from Jean-Sac and yeast. With Grey Goose, we invite you to live in the moment and make time wait. Sip responsibly. Welcome back to the best of the best of the best. Ben Mulroney's show. Thank you so much for spending time with us. We've been talking about

the Minnesota shooting and the sort of one of the things that we gleaned during our conversation in the previous segment is that words matter, context matters. And taking one's time to understand a situation is important. So that flows very nicely into this next conversation. If without any additional knowledge, a lot of people a few days ago, a couple of weeks ago, started seeing a video popping up on their social media feed. And the video was a group of young people. They look to all be of Southeast Asian extraction. And it's clearly a hip-hop video where you've got one gentleman rapping in English.

You've got another gentleman with a turban wrapping in Punjabi. And he's wearing a home as Canada jacket. And then at one point in the video, the gentleman who wraps in Punjabi starts beating up some white people. and so that's the video right and then you get the reactions to the video are things like you should see all the videos of Canadian rappers who mass immigrated to India when they're beating up Indians

let me go back and get it for you be right back and another one says Indian music video promoting violently assaulting whites while wearing a patch that says Canada is home for them this is a prime example of why we need to send them all back to their actual home country. Remigration now. And it goes on and it goes on. And if that's all you, if that's all you know with no context, then it's, then these, these reactions are what they are. But if I tell you that the video is seven years old, if I tell you, and it reminds you,

seven years ago, we're living in a different Canada. If I tell you that what the guy is, the, the, The Punjabi rapper passed away just a few years ago, three years ago. And if I tell you that what the guy's actually rapping about, why don't ask Joy, what's the guy rapping about? So it's a Punjabi rap. And at the end, so the context, it's a music video, right? It has a story to it. Yeah.

So the story is basically he's driving his car and he sees three people teasing a girl, Eve teasing a girl. So he stops his car, he gets out, and then saves the girl and then beats up the guy. So just to put out the context, if it was any guy, be in his own community, he would have done the same thing. Yes. And thank you for that because, look, honestly, I didn't know it was seven years old.

And my reaction as somebody who's witnessed what I think is a failure in our immigration system, my first reaction wasn't a good one. And we were so happy to be able to pivot, thank you, Joy, for giving us the context, giving us the information. We decided we were going to turn this into, heck, this is a public service announcement, right?

And so on that note, we want to have a larger conversation with our next guest and I do appreciate that she put up with my very long preamble please welcome Cheryl Thompson Canada research chair in black expressive culture and creativity thank you so much for being here we understand it's a little loud on your side but we're going to make it work yes sorry so sorry about that no not at all not at all so I hope I hope what I said off the top

made sense and but I think it's important to look at it from from both sides in that if people saw this if the people who commented this way saw this video seven years ago I think they just were to probably moved on with their life but given the fact that we are not living in the world of seven years ago

this is kind of part for the course in the Canada we live in today yeah and it's also really bizarre when people start talking about immigration as if South Asian people just came here yeah it's like it's really bizarre people of South Asian descent

have probably been in Canada since the turn of the 20th century and on mass since the 1970s. Like, I went to school with people from India. Well, yes. A hundred percent. The scale at which they've come in over the past few years has been, it's, I mean, it's literally off the charts. I mean, and there are, yeah. At the same time, it's reasonable to say that a lot of these people, so-called coming in,

are temporary foreign workers, our students, are people who are reunited. family. So the conversation should be more nuanced on what is the immigration, not just the idea of the immigrant. Oh, 100%. I think these comments are devoid of nuance and devoid of curiosity to hear about this. What they actually saw in the video is the exact opposite of what the video is saying. What they think they saw is not what they saw.

Yeah. Yes, exactly. When I watched the video, I was like, okay, am I interpreting this wrong? It seems like that girl was being harassed or there was something happening. and they were trying to be macho and manly and as a lot of hip hop culture is and protect her because she doesn't read to me the focus should be on the woman

she doesn't react yeah yeah she doesn't say oh my gosh what's happening she's just standing there like oh okay this happened and thank you kind of thing so I just wondered why why that video like why is it being plucked so randomly because well and that's a good that that's the question right and again I'll go I'll go back to like Look, I've said many times on this show, and I think a lot of sober-minded people feel the same way,

that one of the few things in this country that everybody could agree on for years and decades and generations, whether you're conservative or NDP or liberal, that this country was built through a system of responsible immigration, that we brought people who wanted to buy into this country, and we brought in the best, and over the past 10 years, that immigration system has broken. and has been broken, rather. It wasn't broken by accident. It was broken by people. And because of that,

so we always talk about the negative impacts of it on X, Y, and Z. But I've never looked at it from, well, what is that doing to people's perception of each other, right? And I think this is an example of a negative, of one of the negative impacts of that broken system because we're looking at each other with apprehension now. We are looking at each other as other. We're looking at each other as the other,

as opposed to you came here because you came here because you, You just like me believe that this country could be better with you here. So let's build it together. That's not what people are seeing in these things anymore. No, and I think they're also attaching like a geographic space to it. Like they're taking over this part of the city kind of thing. Like there's a frenzy. Like you need to be worried about Malton because they shout out Malton too.

Yeah. It's like, no, you don't. Yeah. Like Malton is fine. Yeah. But what I know to be true of history, is that any time there's mass changes, people start going back to some fictive past

that they want to return to it. And a lot of times it's not a real past. It's a fictitious past. It never really actually existed. But there's also everything old is new again and the weaponization of hip hop culture. I mean, it's always a, this is a video of a guy acting heroically. And yet it's, they're beating the drum of sort of,

I don't know if it's like the, what you'd call it is it the irresponsibility or the inherent violence of hip hop culture i don't know um what i also saw was you know the the guy who's acting heroically i know what it looks like not to be able to actually throw a punch this guy did not know how to throw a punch and so he's there's no way he is a violent person i know that he was trying to project he doesn't know how throw a punch just like i don't know how to throw a punch but it's yet again hip hop is being weaponized no but i to be fair if you go back to the 2010s especially in the Toronto hip scene, there were a lot of these videos of like people just taking up space, just like in that

video, like a lot of people just out. Yeah. And I remember there were a lot of videos too of like from the prisons, right? They were doing videos in prisons and like putting, there was just a lot of that like really bad bad man kind of image. Yeah. That is just an image. Like I wish people would understand that hip hop is an art.

Yeah. It is not reality. Yeah. That is just an image that they're projecting. Whether we could debate the image. Yeah. Right? You could say, I don't like that.

I wish it wasn't like that, but it's not real. Yeah. It just isn't. And I think that's the problem that we're having. The era that we're in, real and fake, it's just really getting hard to discern that. Yeah. And that's, and I think, and I'm glad we're going to end on this. I don't have a lot of time left.

But yeah, the fact that we are talking today about a seven-year-old video where nobody, most of the people are taking issue with it, don't understand the lion's share of the words in it. therefore they don't understand the context and they are jumping to these sad conclusions is it's a condemnation of who we are and where we are as a as a society but I want to thank you for being here to help add a little bit of clarity and a little bit of responsibility to this conversation and I hope that I hope that you find a little bit of peace in that office of yours in the next in the next little while. Yeah, don't get me started. Thank you so much.

Thank you. I appreciate it. They come from Survivor. They come from Big Brother. They know what they're doing. These vets wrote the playbook, and they have all had to earn their stripes. How did you win Survivor? Manipulating people. Same thing I'm going to do here. And now new threats will enter the game. Hungry to forge a new list. legacy. Once we train on, it's going to be hard to contain.

This really, truly, is the most even matchup that I've seen in a long time. The challenge, vets, and new threats. All new Wednesday on Slice and stream on Stack TV.