This person was mentally ill. Whatever beliefs he had were not grounded in reality. Arguing about it is stupid.
If you read his manifesto in its entirety, you might rethink the “mental illness” diagnosis. It was not written by a crazy person. It was written by an enraged narcissist. No hint of delusion.
Would you also suggest that the apologists for the Third Reich who justified why the Final Solution had to be carried out were “mentally ill?” Doubt it. No one denies their agency. They were the authors and the perpetrators. We are more apt to correctly call them evil.
The Nazis hated Jews; this kid hated blonde girls and the guys who got to date them. The manifesto lays out, in perfectly cogent prose, why he hated them and what he was going to do to exact revenge. And he did it. Not on the scale he imagined, but he wasn’t delusional.
He was evil, not mentally ill.
“This person was mentally ill. Whatever beliefs he had were not grounded in reality. Arguing about it is stupid.”
And he acting on the evil inside of him. Doesn’t matter what party he supported; what his parents did, etc.