On Tuesday last, when the first news of the YouTube shooter hit the interwebs, I suspected a domestic issue or (maybe) an Islamist nutcase.  But I have to admit, I didn’t see this one coming.  Excerpt:

After hours of false reports on the shooting at YouTube’s headquarters earlier today, the truth has finally come out. A 38-year-old vegan activist (seriously) named Nasim Aghdam has been identified as the shooter by authorities.

And:

After reviewing Aghdam’s personal website, it became clear that she was a YouTuber, angry over losing ad revenue and viewership on the platform due to YouTube’s updated policies on monetization in February. She made several posts and videos ranting about being censored by YouTube, and believed her car had been vandalized by so-called “anti-vegan radicals.” Her father, Ismail Aghdam, had contacted San Diego authorities after posts he viewed as “disturbing” led him to believe she might act out on her anger toward YouTube in response to what she believed was a targeted campaign of censorship by the video-sharing site.

So, a left-wing vegan nutcase.  That’s interesting although, with the benefit of hindsight, not completely unexpected.

Back in the late 1990s, when I was researching and writing Misplaced Compassion, one of the things that quickly became apparent was the totalitarian streak among animal rights/vegan activists.  It wasn’t enough that they advocated for their ethically bankrupt viewpoint; they advocated enforcing it by law, a goal which was so far out of their reach as to be laughable – but now, perhaps, we see what a few of them may be capable of.

Yes, I know, most animal rights/vegan loons are harmless.  Most Muslims are peaceful, too.  But totalitarian impulses are what lead people to these sorts of actions.  The vegan YouTube shooter, who obviously places a higher value on the lives of cows than the lives of people, is just the latest example.