Last week, a 29-year-old man opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas, Texas. One detained migrant was killed and two others were injured. The shooter died of a self-inflicted wound.

DHS quickly concluded that this was "an attack on ICE law enforcement," and the Acting U.S. Attorney for the region noted the "tragic irony" that migrants were harmed rather than ICE agents. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called out "the far-left," and said that comparing ICE to the "Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences."

For an Administration that has consistently dehumanized, demonized, and lied about non-citizens, the idea of blaming far-left rhetoric for the Dallas attack is richly hypocritical. So too is the "irony" that migrants were harmed instead of ICE agents, which assumes that the murderer was somehow trying to help immigrants. Despite all this, I think it's worth exploring whether anti-ICE rhetoric is contributing to increased violence and whether there might be more effective ways to talk about the government's aggressive approach to immigration enforcement.

Let's begin with the shooter's possible motivation. Apparently, he left notes indicating that he hoped to "give ICE agents a real terror, to think, 'Is there a sniper... on that roof.'" While this points to a political motive, people who knew him described him as an unreliable "weirdo" who was not political, and whose online activity mostly involved "marijuana, cars, video gaming, and South Park." He had no known connections to any political groups and apparently acted alone. So what to make of this?

In a 2015 article, Thresholds of Violence, Malcolm Gladwell likens school shootings to a slow moving riot. In a riot, Mr. Gladwell posits, people participate according to their "thresholds." People with a very low threshold will throw a rock through a window with little or no provocation. Those with a slightly higher threshold would only riot if they see other people doing so. And people with a high threshold would never participate in a riot, but if everyone around them is raging and pillaging, they might snatch a toaster from a looted store. Put another way, a riot is a social phenomena, where individuals join in according to their threshold.

Mr. Gladwell found that school shootings had a similar sociological element. One shooting led to the next, which led to the next. School s******* were following the same psychological pattern as rioters. They were participating in a group phenomenon, where it became socially acceptable within the group--and even conferred prestige--to engage in a school shooting.

My thought is that political violence has become the new school shooting, and is subject to similar psychological factors. The Dallas ICE shooter does not appear to be someone steeped in radical ideology. There is no evidence that he was involved with an anti-government group or that he had any opinion at all about immigrants. He seems more similar to the people who murdered Charlie Kirk and wounded President Trump in Pennsylvania--disaffected, angry young men with few prospects and easy access to guns.

Rather than a political motivation, this type of violence seems utterly nihilistic. It is violence for the sake of violence. And for the sake of notoriety. It is different from the violence perpetrated by Al Qaida or ISIS, or even from left wing terror groups like the Weathermen or the Baader-Meinhof Gang, all of which harmed people in order to achieve clear political goals (at least in their own minds).

Of course, I do not know the Dallas shooter's real motivation, and neither does anyone else. Could he have been motivated by anti-ICE rhetoric? I suppose. Did he just want attention? Maybe. Or maybe he was motivated by what ICE is actually doing. Watching masked and armed agents terrorizing helpless men, women, and children can be infuriating.

The information vacuum did not stop the Trump Administration from blaming "the radical left," which basically means anyone who challenges their agenda. This is obviously hypocritical and anti-democratic. It's also--sadly--expected. But is there any truth to it? Are immigrant advocates somehow encouraging violence by opposing ICE and reporting on the terrible suffering caused by this Agency? Should we be doing something differently?

On my social media, it's common to see messages from lawyers and advocates comparing ICE agents to the Gestapo or to fascists, stating that they are kidnapping people, or simply declaring, "**** ICE!" It is not surprising to me that people who witness the terror caused by ICE's immigration crackdown have strong feelings about what we are seeing.

Some of these statements ("**** ICE!") may be cathartic for the speakers. Indeed, a recent study found that using profanity was a kind-of "self-defense mechanism" that helped reduce "stress, anxiety, and depression." So our salty language may just be blowing off steam.

Other statements, about the Gestapo or kidnapping, may be exaggerations, but we are constrained by the words and historical analogies available to us. Masked, unidentified, and armed men targeting people based on their appearance, grabbing them off the street or from courthouses, and then quickly relocating them to remote and inaccessible detention facilities seems like behavior we would expect from fascists. It seems like kidnapping. We are labeling what we observe using the language that we have.

While I am skeptical that the Dallas shooting and similar acts of violence were motivated by "left wing" rhetoric, I also think we advocates can do better. The line between reporting events and inflaming tensions is very fine, but it is a line nonetheless. Statements like "**** ICE" may be ok within our own group, to release tension or express (very legitimate) anger. But made openly, such pronouncements further debase public debate and are unlikely to bring others to our side. Comparing ICE agents to Nazis and kidnappers may also have its place, but there are real distinctions between what ICE is doing and what the Gestapo did. Our advocacy will be more powerful if we describe specific examples rather than rely on derogatory labels, especially when they are not entirely accurate.

Again, it is a fine line. But I think our cause benefits when we are civil and respectful, even when the other side is not. And while I think it is extremely important to call out the government's harmful conduct, we must try to do that in a way that does not further divide and inflame our country.

Originally posted on the Asylumist: www.Asylumist.com