The New York Times - 06.08.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2019 N A

El Paso and Dayton Shootings

After two mass shootings over
the weekend that killed 31 people
and wounded dozens more, pow-
erful Republicans, including the
president, blamed an old boogey-
man: video games.
“We must stop the glorification
of violence in our society,” Presi-
dent Trump said Monday in a
White House address on the
shootings. “This includes the
gruesome and grisly video games
that are now commonplace.”
Mr. Trump’s words echoed
those of Dan Patrick, the lieuten-
ant governor of Texas, and Kevin
McCarthy, the Republican House
minority leader. In an appearance
on “Fox & Friends” on Sunday
morning, Mr. Patrick implored the
federal government to “do some-
thing about the video game indus-
try.”
“We’ve watched from studies,
shown before, what it does to indi-
viduals, and you look at these pho-
tos of how it took place, you can
see the actions within video
games and others,” Mr. McCarthy
added on a different Fox show.
Armed with little and often un-
convincing evidence, politicians
have blamed violence on video
games for decades. Their rhetoric
quickly ramped up in the 1990s, af-
ter games like Wolfenstein 3D and
Doom popularized the genre of vi-
olent first-person shooting games.
Since then, video games have
been blamed for shootings at Col-
umbine High School in 1999 and at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School in 2018, and many others in
between.
Researchers have extensively
studied whether there is a causal
link between video games and vio-
lent behavior, and while there isn’t
quite a consensus, there is broad
agreement that no such link ex-
ists.
According to a policy statement
from the media psychology divi-
sion of the American Psychologi-
cal Association, “Scant evidence
has emerged that makes any
causal or correlational connection
between playing violent video
games and actually committing
violent activities.”
Chris Ferguson, a psychology
professor at Stetson University,

led the committee that developed

the policy statement. In an inter-

view Monday, he said the evi-

dence was clear that violent video

games are not a risk factor for se-

rious acts of aggression. Neither

are violent movies, nor other

forms of media.

“The data on bananas causing

suicide is about as conclusive,” Dr.

Ferguson said. “Literally. The

numbers work out about the

same.”

The Supreme Court has also re-

jected the idea. In 2011, striking

down a California law that banned

the sale of some violent video

games to children, the court sav-

aged the evidence California mus-

tered in support of its law.

“These studies have been re-

jected by every court to consider

them, and with good reason: They

do not prove that violent video

games causeminors to actag-

gressively,” Antonin Scalia wrote

in the majority opinion. He added:

“They show at best some correla-

tion between exposure to violent

entertainment and minuscule

real-world effects, such as chil-

dren’s feeling more aggressive or

making louder noises in the few

minutes after playing a violent

game than after playing a nonvio-

lent game.”

If video games did indeed cause

some mass shootings, one might

expect such events to be common

in Japan or South Korea. Both

countries spend more per capita

on video games than the United

States, according to Newzoo, and

have huge video game communi-

ties. Japan is home to video game

makers like Nintendo, Sega and

Sony, while South Korea has a

highly developed competitive vid-

eo gaming industry.

But Japan and South Korea —

both of which have very strict

laws limiting gun ownership —

have among the lowest rates of vi-

olent crime in the world, and mass

casualty events are quite rare.

Mr. Trump’s administration

studied the issue previously and

came to no significant conclusion

about connections between mass

shootings and violent video

games.

After last year’s shooting at

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High

School, the Trump administration

convened a federal commission on

school safety. The commission’s fi-

nal report played down the role of

guns in school shootings. Instead,

it called for improving mental

health services, training school

employees in firearm use and

rolling back rules developed dur-

ing the Obama administration

that were aimed at ensuring that

minority children weren’t unfairly

disciplined by schools.

The commission’s 180-page re-

port devotes a chapter to what it

calls “violent entertainment,” in-

cluding video games. After hear-

ing from a variety of researchers

and other experts, the commis-

sion recommended that state and

local educational agencies have

internet safety measures in place

and that the enforcers of volun-

tary ratings systems — such as

the Motion Picture Association of

America’s practice of assigning

ratings like PG-13 or R to movies

— review and improve their poli-

cies.

It made no specific recommen-

dation in regards to video games.

In some cases, the perpetrators

of mass shootings are quite clear

about their motivations. On Satur-

day, a 2,300-word manifesto ap-

peared online minutes before the

shooting in El Paso, Tex., in which

21 people were killed. The second

line of the hate-filled, anti-immi-

grant manifesto says the attack

“is a response to the Hispanic in-

vasion of Texas.”

Law enforcement officials were

investigating whether it was writ-

ten by the shooter. They were in-

terviewing the suspect, Patrick

Crusius, a 21-year-old white man

who lived about a 10-hour drive

from the Walmart where the

shooting took place.

Video games are, however,

mentioned in the manifesto.

“Don’t attack heavily guarded ar-

eas to fulfill your super soldier

COD fantasy,” it advised, referring

to the popular Call of Duty fran-

chise of games in which players

usually embody the roles of sol-

diers.

People who commit mass shoot-

ings sometimes identify as video

gamers, but James Ivory, who

studies media and video games at

Virginia Tech, advised awareness

of the base rate effect. Of course

some mass shooters will have

played violent video games, he

said — video games are ubiqui-

tous in society, especially among

men, who are much more likely to

commit mass shootings.

“It is very similar to saying the

perpetrator wears shoes,” Dr.

Ivory explained. “They do, but so

do their peers in the general popu-

lation.”

Researchers have some good

data on what causes people to

commit violent crime, but much

less data on what causes them to

commit mass shootings, in large

part because they happen rela-

tively infrequently.

There is no universally ac-

cepted definition for what consti-

tutes a mass shooting. For a long

time, the F.B.I. considered it to be

a single shooting in which four or

more people were killed. By that

definition, a handful occur in the

United States each year. Using a

definition with fewer victims, or

including those injured but not

killed, a few hundred occur each

year.

Either count pales in compari-

son to the one million other violent

crimes reported each year.

While cautioning that he was

hesitant to imply that most mass

shooters fit a specific profile, Dr.

Ferguson listed some commonal-

ities. They tend to have mental

health problems, sometimes undi-

agnosed, and a history of antiso-

cial behavior, have often come to

the attention of law enforcement

or other authorities and are what

criminologists call “injustice col-

lectors,” he said.

“The problem is, you could take

that profile and collect 500,

people that fit,” he said. “There are

a lot of angry jerks out there that

don’t go on to commit mass shoot-

ings.”

Violent video games are much

more likely to be trotted out as an

excuse, however, in certain situa-

tions. For a forthcoming study, Dr.

Ivory and his colleagues studied

6,814 news accounts of mass

shootings. They found that in cov-

erage of mass school shootings

specifically, video games were

more than eight times as likely to

be brought up when the shooter

was white than when the shooter

was black.

“We should think about when

we are more comfortable looking

for something else to blame,” he

said, adding, “I haven’t heard any

senators talk about video games

when an immigrant commits a

crime.”

Video Games Get Blame,

Despite Lack of Evidence

By KEVIN DRAPER

An ad at the E3 video game convention in Los Angeles in June. Politicians have tried for decades to tie video games to violence.

CHRISTIAN PETERSEN/GETTY IMAGES

WASHINGTON — President
Trump’s re-election campaign has
harnessed Facebook advertising
to push the idea of an “invasion” at
the southern border, amplifying
the fear-inducing language about
immigrants that he has also
voiced at campaign rallies and on
Twitter.
Since January, Mr. Trump’s re-
election campaign has posted
more than 2,000 ads on Facebook
that include the word “invasion”
— part of a barrage of advertising
focused on immigration, a domi-
nant theme of his re-election mes-
saging. A review of Mr. Trump’s
tweets also found repeated refer-
ences to an “invasion,” while his
2016 campaign advertising heav-
ily featured dark warnings about
immigrants breaching America’s
borders.
Mr. Trump’s language on immi-
gration — particularly his use of
the word “invasion” — is under
scrutiny after the mass shooting
in El Paso on Saturday. The sus-
pect in that shooting, which left 22
people dead, appeared to be the
author of a manifesto declaring
that “this attack is a response to
the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Divisive and often false claims
about undocumented immigrants
have been a cornerstone of Mr.
Trump’s political strategy for
years, from the “build the wall”
chants at his 2016 campaign ral-
lies to his warnings about a mi-
grant caravan ahead of the 2018
midterm elections.
In his re-election campaign, Mr.
Trump has spent an estimated
$1.25 million on Facebook ads
about immigration since late
March, according to data from
Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Demo-
cratic communications firm that is
tracking the digital political ad-
vertising of presidential candi-
dates. Those ads represent a sig-
nificant portion of the roughly $5.
million that Mr. Trump has spent
on Facebook advertising during
that period.
Most of the “invasion” ads be-
gan running between January and
March, though a few dozen began
running in May. Many of the ads
began with a blunt message —
“We have an INVASION!” — and
went on to say, “It’s CRITICAL
that we STOP THE INVASION.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign, like
other advertisers, runs many dif-
ferent Facebook ads using text or
visuals that vary. Ads with the

word “invasion” make up a small

portion of the ads the Trump cam-

paign has run on Facebook this

year. (Facebook’s archive of politi-

cal ads, which dates back to May

2018, says it contains about

240,000 Trump ads.)

There is no evidence that Mr.

Trump’s Facebook ads directly in-

fluenced the author of the mani-

festo, who wrote that his views

“predate Trump” and posted the

document on 8chan, an online for-

um known as a haven for extre-

mists. But Mr. Trump, through his

speeches, tweets and campaign

ads, has elevated the idea of an

“invasion,” once a fringe view of-

ten espoused by white national-

ists, into the public discourse.

Some other Republican candi-

dates have echoed Mr. Trump’s

language in their own ads. “Let’s

call this what it is — an invasion of

our country,” read a recent Face-

book ad for Tommy Tuberville, a

former Auburn football coach who

is running for Senate in Alabama.

Other Republicans who have used

the word “invasion” in Facebook

ads include a candidate for gover-

nor in West Virginia and a candi-

date for Senate in North Carolina.

The cognitive linguist George

Lakoff said the word “invasion”

was a potent one for Mr. Trump to

use because of what it allowed him

to communicate. “If you’re invad-

ed, you’re invaded by an enemy,”

he said. “An invasion says that you

can be taken over inside your own

country and harmed, and that you

can be ruled by people from the

outside.”

Mr. Lakoff added: “When he’s

saying ‘invasion,’ he’s saying all of

those things. But they’re uncon-

scious. They’re automatic.

They’re built into the word ‘inva-

sion.’ ”

For the writer of the manifesto,

the concept of an “invasion” had

an additional, racist meaning: He

promoted a conspiracy theory

called “the great replacement,”

which claims that an effort is un-

derway to replace white people

with nonwhite people.

Democratic candidates for

president blamed Mr. Trump for

helping spread such views.

“White supremacy is not a mental

illness,” Senator Elizabeth War-

ren of Massachusetts said on

Monday. “We need to call it what it

is: Domestic terrorism. And we

need to call out Donald Trump for

amplifying these deadly ideolo-

gies.”

But the radio host Rush Lim-

baugh attacked Democrats and

the news media on Monday for

pointing the finger at conserva-

tives like him. “We’re sick and

tired every time this happens,

people that we believe in being

blamed for it,” he said. “We’re sick

of it. None of us pulled the trigger,

none of us want these things to

happen, and yet we turn on the

media and that’s what we hear.”

Stoking fear about immigrants

has been central to the Trump

campaign’s advertising strategy

since it first began airing political

commercials during the 2016 race.

The campaign’s first ad of that

election focused on “radical Is-

lamic terrorism” in the wake of the

mass shooting in San Bernardino,

Calif., with footage of people

seemingly flooding across a bor-

der. (The footage was from Moroc-

co, not the United States.) Mr.

Trump also proposed a “total and

complete shutdown of Muslims

entering the United States” after

the attack.

Scenes evoking illegal immigra-

tion became common during the

2016 effort, and Mr. Trump

painted a picture of an America

overwhelmed by immigrants.

“We don’t have a country right

now,” he said in footage shown in

one ad. “We have people pouring

in, they’re pouring in, and they’re

doing tremendous damage.”

The use of alarmist language

and imagery about immigrants

has a history in the modern Re-

publican Party that dates back to

the divisive political battles over

illegal immigration in the 1990s.

One of the most infamous depic-

tions of migrants as a threat came

from a 1994 ad from Gov. Pete Wil-

son of California that showed a

group of people rushing through a

border crossing. “They keep com-

ing,” the announcer said.

Since then, images of shadowy

figures climbing fences or prowl-

ing around in the dark have been a

staple of Republican campaign

ads, often used by candidates

whose districts and states are far

from any border. In 2014, for ex-

ample, Senator Pat Roberts of

Kansas ran an ad that was typical

of the Republican messaging at

the time, warning of “a border cri-

sis” that was “taking jobs away

from Kansans.”

Mr. Trump’s takeover of the

party gave those kinds of mes-

sages a higher platform and a

larger mouthpiece as conserva-

tive media outlets like Fox News

amplified his words.

He seized on the “invasion” im-

agery again in the run-up to the

2018 midterm elections, when he

claimed without evidence that a

caravan of migrants making its

way north toward the border had

been infiltrated by “criminals and

unknown Middle Easterners.”

The president and fellow Re-

publicans warned of waves of vio-

lence, drugs and crime that

awaited the country if it were led

by Democrats, who were por-

trayed as supporting policies that

would weaken national security.

That effort did not have the de-

sired effect, as Republicans lost

control of the House.

Customs and Border Protection

recorded more than 144,000 ar-

rests at the southwestern border

in May, the highest monthly total

in 13 years. Arrests declined by 28

percent in June and were ex-

pected to continue to fall through

July, according to officials in the

Department of Homeland Securi-

ty.

The estimated $1.25 million that

the Trump campaign has spent on

immigration ads on Facebook

since late March is a significant

sum when compared with the

amount of money the Democratic

presidential candidates are

spending on Facebook ads. (The

spending figures include both

Facebook and Instagram.)

Over the same period, no Dem-

ocratic candidate spent more than

$2.1 million on Facebook ads, ac-

cording to Bully Pulpit; only Sena-

tor Kirsten Gillibrand of New York

and former Vice President Joseph

R. Biden Jr. topped $2 million

through Saturday.

Mr. Trump’s spending on immi-

gration ads exceeded the entirety

of what one of the best-funded

Democrats — Senator Kamala

Harris of California — spent on

Facebook during that period.

How Trump Campaign Used Facebook Ads to Amplify ‘Invasion’ Claim

In his re-election campaign, President Trump has spent an esti-

mated $1.25 million on Facebook ads about immigration since

late March, out of about $5.6 million he spent during the period.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

April 2019 May June July Aug.

$150 thousand

100

50

Week ending Aug. 3: $157,

Jan. 2019 Feb. March April May June July Aug.

Sun.

Mon.

Tue.

Wed.

Thu.

Fri.

Sat.

Trump campaign spending on Facebook ads about immigration

Days that the Trump campaign started running a Facebook ad using

the word “invasion”

Sources: Online Political Ads Transparency Project at

the New York University Tandon School of Engineering,

Bully Pulpit Interactive JUGAL K. PATEL/THE NEW YORK TIMES

By THOMAS KAPLAN

Reporting was contributed by Nick
Corasaniti in New Jersey, and
Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Jeremy
W. Peters in Washington.