As much as I have derided this woman for her serious character flaws, I cannot deride her for living at home at that age. The economy kinda stinks out there, and some of us decided to follow our dreams at school (last History of Technology major at the University of Florida) rather than the money (Professional Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes Winner college major).

That being said, this girl needs some SERIOUS help. And FAST.

Her parents may have been difficult to deal with, or even psychological abusers. It runs in families.

Living with your family when you’re twenty-seven is not always a sign of gross abnormality. My father, a multiple stroke patient, was a man of some hundred and eighty pounds who frequently fell on the floor, and there was no way that my mother, a diminutive woman with a serious spinal injury, could have coped. As someone a lot physically stronger than my sister, I was the one who went back home. My father lived two more years. My parents weren’t easy people, but I never put a hit on anyone. This young lady is clearly clinicly psychotic.

No one has also made fun of the fact that she appeared to claim that she is “animal rights attourney” either which if true simply proves that the bar exam needs to become much more difficult and law schools need to tighten up admission criteria.

How bizarre.

How bizarre.

Kudos on “wack-a-doodle”; totally agree on “Crazy With A Cause” – the most dangerous of all.

How do you figure?

Again, this is an issue I’ve followed for decades, and I’ve heard a lot more counterproductively violent rhetoric in the past five years than I heard in all the previous ones combined (even though the public, oddly enough, is much more sympathetic to animal rights arguments than it was 20 years ago). That doesn’t mean this rhetoric affected her, of course, but I’m not sure why you’d say it’s “much more likely” that it didn’t.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Camille Marino, but her mental illness is at least as striking as that of Ms. Lowell. And unfortunately, when “leaders” take that tone online, attention-seeking followers are sometimes tempted to take the ball and run with it (as a brief visit to Free Republic will demonstrate). Perhaps that’ll turn out to explain her Facebook post, for all I know.

Responding to a different commenter…if mental illness were a disqualification for being covered here, I don’t know how many subjects would be left. Is there such a thing as sane obsessive hatred? If that’s not “psychological illness,” what on earth is? (Cf. Jason Smith).

That’s what I do. In fact, I run a worldwide mercenary band entirely through the FaceBooks.

LOL

So, if you were motivated to solicit murder, you would do so by posting to your page on Facebook?

DZ

How is society to protect itself when people are allowed to reach tens of thousands through the internet with messages like “it is morally justifiable to kill ______”. How is it really different than inciting a mob to burn a house down?

It would be interesting to know what influence the writings of people line Best and Marino influenced Lowell. They wouldn’t be the first extremists to shy away from direct violence themselves but use hateful rhetoric to encourage other more vulnerable, impressionable or inadequate persons to do their dirty work for them.

I agree with those who find this article completely inappropriate and specious as an example of any kind of “hate” crime.

The value of this article – and the detailed documentation of the FBI sting – is to illustrate how frail the human condition is, and how the mentally ill among us cry out for help in ways both obvious and less so.

And as we know from recent history – eg the mass murder in Norway, we overlook those with extreme mental problems at our own peril.

They’re reporting on it, because the SPLC isn’t just about racism. It’s about all kinds of hate. Political, religious, nonsensical or insane, racism… Any type of hatred is what the SPLC fights. In THIS particular case, it’s a combination of anti-human racism (yes, I’ll call it that….) and a healthy dose of utter insanity. Plus, it also staves off those morons who claim, “SPLC ONLY REPORTS ON RIGHT-WING NUTS, THEY MUST BE LIBERALS!”

I love it when people throw around the word “liberal” as if it’s an insult.

But this doesn’t apply in this case. What she is accused of is asking for a murder (on Facebook) to be committed so that she could be blamed, arrested, and sent to prison, and she wanted this as a means to get out of her parent’s house.

In other words, her actions are so unlikely to have resulted in harm that it cannot be seen as a genuine threat. Nor is it reported that she had any connection with animal rights extremists. It is much more likely that she was influenced by mainstream, nonviolent animal rights beliefs and views.

This is not a case of radicalization of animals rights advocates. In fact the “cause” she is supposed to have supported is quite irrelevant. No terrorist organization could ever work this way. It’s entirely a psychiatric case.

I knew a group of wealthy women in Aspen in the early ’90′s. The mayor wanted to ban all sale of furs in the city. And these women had furs – but didn’t like to wear them. They were actually a little anti-fur. But to deny them the choice? To go that far? They started wearing their furs as a form of protest.

Or take the imans of the Muslim Brotherhood – after attacking and murdering tourists at the pyramids – they realized (in prison) that the Koran says they should bring people to Islam. And they realized these brutal acts, the killing of innocent people, was drawing attention to their cause – but it was pushing people away from Islam. They have since renounced violence. (Osama didn’t get that memo! )

Or the obnoxious protesters of the ’60′s who would say awful things like “LBJ – how many kids did kill today” – didn’t get a peace candidate elected, in fact it got us the opposite; Richard Nixon.

And then there are wack-a-doodles like this young woman. Crazy with a Cause – bad combination.

Wait wait wait. You’re telling me that you and Erica are the SAME PERSON? I need to clean of the wall because my mind has been BLOWN.

This case is not about domestic terrorism or animal rights or anything else. The person in this case is simply deranged, deluded or otherwise seriously mentally ill.

There’s some truth to this. In cases like these, the first thing people look at is the label, whether it’s “animal rights activist,” “white nationalist” or whatever. While I definitely see one of these ideologies as more inherently violent and hateful than the other, the fact remains that the vast majority of people in these movements do not and would not behave like Ms. Lowell. The bedrock similarities between violent extremists transcend all their ideological differences; they’re damaged people looking for an issue that gives them a license to kill (in “defense” of something or someone, of course.)

That said, when a movement’s rhetoric starts getting more extreme, it encourages these people to act out their fantasies. And given that this has demonstrably been happening in the animal rights movement — which I generally support, by the way — this case definitely is about domestic terrorism and animal rights.

In some weird way, I do have to applaud her for taking a bold stand in favor of gender equity – usually these cases involving losers getting caught in ill fated criminal plans still living at home long after they should have moved out involve men.

I guess when she is sitting in prison she can at least console herself with thinking “at least I didn’t belong to an antigovernment cell called The Covert Group”