The Pathogen of Hate

“I have no idea how he could have gotten caught up in this. I blame it on Covid,” speculated Sandra Komoroff, referring to her cousin Payton Gendron’s slaughter of 10 people earlier this year at a supermarket in an African-American neighborhood of Buffalo. At first blush, invoking Covid-19 as a factor in Gendron’s rampage seems like yet another attempt to explain away white supremacist violence with exculpatory claims of “mental illness”—especially when he wrote in his manifesto that he was targeting African Americans. He also claims mental competence: “I was never diagnosed with a mental disability or disorder, and I believe to be [sic] perfectly sane.” To contend that Covid-19 transformed Gendron into a killer seems absurd, not to mention offensive to his victims, their families, and their communities. Should we be so quick, however, to dismiss the link?

After Uvalde, after Highland Park, after every mass shooting, gun-rights advocates trot out