The Science of Hate by Matthew Williams

Author:Matthew Williams [Matthew Williams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571357086
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2021-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Understanding the ‘exceptional’ hate offender

Most forms of extreme violence evoke a sense of bewilderment, but serial murder engenders feelings of horror so intense that it reduces our willingness to contemplate motive. If we were to make sense of the killer’s motive in any way, we risk diminishing the evil in their act. Instead we are more comfortable thinking that those who go on a killing spree are ‘insane’ – beyond understanding.

Although a diagnosis of insanity is convenient as it allows us to explain away the offender’s acts, it can deny the victim’s loved ones the answers that they are looking for. A diagnosis of insanity can mask what may otherwise be at least partly understandable to the average person, dare we look. No matter how rare or unusual the circumstances that contribute to motive, by piecing them together we risk humanising the murderer. Their set of circumstances are part of the human experience, regardless of how horrific and singular they may seem.

Franklin clearly suffered multiple failures of containment, physical abuse, devastating injury and malnutrition, and began to show signs of personality disorder during adolescence. Copeland claimed he was ‘mentally tortured’ over his sexual orientation by his family, went through a humiliating examination of his genitals, and took his parents’ divorce badly. Although his experience pales in comparison to what Franklin endured, the effects of trauma are always relative to the individual’s capacity to cope, and Copeland’s threshold for stress may have been much lower.

Greg and Stan’s racist behaviours do not compare to the terrible crimes of Franklin and Copeland. Does this make the use of psychosocial criminology redundant in understanding their motives? We can see that Franklin and Copeland’s childhood traumas were not contained by their parents, leaving them in their raw and unmanageable forms. This may have inhibited their mental ability to deal with stressful situations with members of the outgroup. Later in life, the resentment caused by their trauma may have been deflected from the true cause, their parents, onto other less powerful objects, their minority victims. As with Greg and Stan, race hate may have become a container for their extreme feelings of loss.

If this analysis was sufficient in explaining the multiple murders committed by Franklin and Copeland, we would see many more hate-filled mass killings than we do. What about Frankin’s siblings who suffered similar childhood trauma, but did not turn out to be racist killers? And are we convinced that Copeland’s upbringing was in any way traumatising enough to account for his bombing raid? Maybe the additional information we need is located in the personalities of the two men.

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