As always happens with these tragedies, speculation abounds as to what prompted the Minneapolis shooter to gun down parishioners at a Catholic church attending service, intentionally targeting children.
Was it the transgenderism?
The most obvious and often-cited culprit for the shooting is the madness induced by transgender ideology, the shooter having “transitioned” in adolescence.
In fact, the shooter expressed regret at having been transitioned and expressed a desire to de-transition, only refraining from doing so because he didn’t want to draw undue attention ahead of the carefully planned attack.
Via The New York Post (emphasis added):
Transgender mass shooter Robin Westman confessed that he “was tired of being trans” and wished he “never brain-washed” himself in a manifesto posted online before he slaughtered two children and wounded 18 more at a Minneapolis church.
In a twisted handwritten journal he shared on YouTube before the massacre — much of which is encrypted in a homespun code of Russian Cyrillic script and English words — Westman groaned about his long hair and his decision to transition.
“I only keep [the long hair] because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans. I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself,” he wrote..
“I can’t cut my hair now as it would be an embarrassing defeat, and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack.”
Related: 'Am I Gay' Web Searches up 1300% in U.S.
As with this and all the possible contributing factors to the shooting, the question must be asked: Is this a chicken or the egg dilemma? Did the transgenderism cause mental illness, or did the mental illness cause the transgenderism, and how does one go about unraveling that ball of yarn?
Was it the psychotropic drugs he was likely on?
The shooter, being already clearly within the medical system purview as a transgender, was almost assuredly on psychotropic drugs. Mass shooters at large almost always are, which the pharmaceutical industry-funded media goes to great lengths to paper over.
After all, with billions of dollars of ad revenue on the line, why would they cover that angle when they can just blame guns and use that as the pretext to call for gun control?
Was it antisemitism?
The shooter inscribed multiple antisemitic slogans on the guns he used in a video uploaded before the shooting, such as “six million wasn’t enough.”
Was it anti-Christianity?
In addition to the shooter selecting his mother’s Catholic church as the scene of the crime, he placed the likeness of Jesus on a shooting target, which he proudly displayed for the camera in his pre-shooting monologue, if that’s what you want to call it.
Was it Islamophobia?
“Remove kebab” was scribbled on one of the weapons, a popular anti-Muslim catchphrase in 4Chan internet subculture.
Or… was it the nihilism?
Along with all of the above messages, the shooter also inscribed on his guns and wrote in his journal, what I believe to be the ultimate truth, perhaps the most terrifying possibility of all: “there is no message.”
Here’s my Occam’s razor take:
The transgenderism and all of the other –isms, rather than being the true motivations for the shooting, were merely symptoms of the disease, which is violent nihilism.
If you watch the full video that the shooter uploaded of his arsenal with various writings on it, what becomes clear is that he had no real ideology.
He expressed no specific grievances at length.
He espoused no real ideological objectives of what he hoped the shooting might accomplish.
He had no vision beyond death — for himself and his victims.
This is an 11 minute video posted by the school shooter today in Minneapolis. It was posted 2 hours ago on a YouTube channel named Robin W.
— itzmagicman 🌎 (@itzmagicman) August 27, 2025
In it he shows a manifesto and an arsenal of guns #robinwestman #robinwestmanvideo #robinmwestman #Minneapolis pic.twitter.com/k1bnvf0tRu
He was nihilistic and violent.
And, because the online circles he swam in glorified mass shooters, he wanted attention.
So he threw every controversial thing he could at the wall, knowing it would get him more of it.
This is an 11 minute video posted by the school shooter today in Minneapolis. It was posted 2 hours ago on a YouTube channel named Robin W.
— itzmagicman 🌎 (@itzmagicman) August 27, 2025
In it he shows a manifesto and an arsenal of guns #robinwestman #robinwestmanvideo #robinmwestman #Minneapolis pic.twitter.com/k1bnvf0tRu
I say this with no lack of patriotism, because there are things about America that are truly great and non-existent outside of the states: there is a deep spiritual rot of a sort, particularly among younger generations, that simply does not exist elsewhere in the world, particularly outside of the West. Regular mass shootings at schools are not a thing anywhere else — and it’s not because of the guns.
Related: Converted Pagan Headhunters and the Shining City on a Hill
Hard to describe, this rot pervades everything and casts a long shadow.
You can feel it in the streets, in so many social interactions, in the pop culture, and it’s one of the reasons I left nine years ago.
“I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness.”
—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
See: God Is Dead
