Libs of TikTok is not what Caused the Club Q Shooting
Of Broken Homes and the "Stochastic Terrorism" Lie
“Men sometimes make a point of honor not to be disabused; and they had rather fall into an hundred errors than confess one. But, after all, when neither our principles nor our dispositions, nor, perhaps, our talents, enable us to encounter delusion with delusion, we must use our best reason to those that ought to be reasonable creatures, and to take our chance for the event. We cannot act on these anomalies in the minds of men. I do not conceive that the persons who have contrived these things can be made much the better or the worse for anything which can be said to them. They are reason-proof.”
- Edmund Burke [“Letter to a Member of the National Assembly”]
[Note: throughout this piece I will be referring to the shooter Anderson Lee Alderich as “he” because I don’t believe “non-binary” is a thing, and refuse to butcher English in that fashion. Further, I use “gay” or “queer” in preference to their increasingly ridiculous acronyms.]
At around the midnight separating Saturday November 19th and Sunday November 20th there was a horrible shooting at the gay nightclub “Club Q” in Colorado Springs, committed by a young man called Anderson Lee Aldrich. Needless to say, this is a senseless tragedy and I have nothing but sympathy for the victims and their families. In these situations, it is always best to be respectful and circumspect while waiting for the facts to come out. Of course, our irresponsible and ghoulish class of liberal elites did nothing of the sort, and immediately declared evidence-free that it was a hate crime caused by figures such as Tucker Carlson and Libs of TikTok; they placed the blame through a new anti-free speech concept which they call “stochastic terrorism.” Their certainty that it was a “hate crime” being despite the fact that murders are generally committed by the “nearest and dearest” and similarly mass shootings are commonly committed by people within community of the victims or at least familiar with the location, such as how the recent Walmart shooter worked at Walmart. It was of course possible that the shooter could have been driven by anti-gay animus and inspired by conservative media, or could have been an Islamic terrorist, or any number of other things, but it is never appropriate to make cheap political points by speculating wildly about the cause of a deadly tragedy. Then, a few days after the shooting, the shooter’s lawyer claimed that his client was “non-binary.” After a number of stories referring to him as a “they” [for we are told we must respect whatever gender-concept a person claims at any given time] the story was unsurprisingly “memory-holed,” as it did not fit the official narrative of the violent hetero cis white man driven by speech-induced hatred. Of course, no one apologized for blaming random unrelated people for a mass murder. But for those still interested, something else came out: the shooter has an absolutely zany life and family background and it is quite obvious how he came to be damaged. This story is so ridiculous it should not be true, but history is a farce this time, and here we are.
It’s not my purpose here to go into the details of this crime, but out of respect I think it is important we remember the victims before continuing. Beyond the 17 who were injured and survived, those murdered were named Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump, Ashley Paugh, and Raymond Green Vance. May they all rest in peace away from this cruel world and the ghoulish men who tried to score cheap political points off of their deaths.
Right away, free of evidence, there was a rush by all of the usual suspects to attribute this to hatred of the queer community. Here are just some examples:
Some of the left-wing journalists who make up what I call “team sanity” did make valiant efforts to resist, though they were far outnumbered. I’ve only shown some of the leaders here, but all of left and liberal Twitter was furiously abuzz with certainty that this was caused by hateful rhetoric.
Michael Tracey was on fire in general:
It’s one thing to assume this was a hate crime, especially given our country’s history of racial violence and that we were all taught about the Civil Rights Era in school. Plenty of reasonable people would hear of a gay nightclub being shot up and assume that was the motive. However, political leaders are supposed to be both responsible and accountable [not that they generally are, especially ours.] The media is also supposed to make some effort to gather the facts before making unsubstantiated claims and applying blame; many did the exact opposite. For example, NBC’s Brandy Zaradozny said that Tucker Carlson and Libs of TikTok are part of a “Pipeline of Hatred” which led to this attack. Her colleague Ben Collins was particularly irresponsible:
And of course this Collins figure is meant to be a “misinformation reporter:”
The Southern Poverty Law Center also got in on it, with an article titled “Colorado Springs: Far-Right Influencers Made LGBTQ People Into Targets” where they basically blame all discourse regarding the excesses of woke activists as being directly to blame for these murders.
This all begs the question: how do they think it is justified to blame internet and media figures who at no point called for violence for mass violence? The answer is that they have a fancy new talking point called “stochastic terrorism.” I have to give them credit for bamboozling some of public with a word that wasn’t even in my large vocabulary [I don’t know about data science.] Google defines “stochastic” as “randomly determined; having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely.” So what, then, is “stochastic terrorism”? It essentially means that expressing “wrong” opinions to an audience can be blamed for any random act of violence they choose to blame on your speech. So then Libs of TikTok showcasing the worst excesses of lunatics on the internet can be blamed for any violence vaguely relevant to topics they share content about. It is a technical sounding cover to pretend there is some sort scientifically provable connection between things that have no relation. And of course, this only applies to the right, despite the fact that the liberal elite class constantly portrays the right as a threat to the country and public safety, including through this ludicrous “stochastic terrorism” designation. I promise if a gay rights activist were to bomb Fox News we would hear nothing about this concept.
Christopher Rufo was accused of this speech crime when he was alleged to have inspired the attack on Paul Pelosi by discussing Drag Queen Story Hour on Tucker. [As an aside, only parents who would teach their kids to be trans-tolerant would take their child to such a thing, and they are publicizing their belief it is causing a violent backlash and putting trans lives in danger, so why are they still doing it?] He explains in this piece for City Journal:
“Under the concept of “stochastic terrorism,” logic, evidence, and causality are irrelevant. Any incident of violence can be politicized and attributed to any ideological opponent, regardless of facts.
The scheme works like this: left-wing media, activists, and officials designate a subject of discourse, such as Drag Queen Story Hour, off-limits; they treat any reporting on that subject as an expression of “hate speech”; and finally, if an incident of violence emerges that is related, even tangentially, to that subject, they assign guilt to their political opponents and call for the suppression of speech. The statistical concept of “stochasticity,” which means “randomly determined,” functions as a catch-all: the activists don’t have to prove causality—they simply assert it with a sophisticated turn of phrase and a vague appeal to probability.”
This is a great system if you have an ideological belief in suppressing free speech and think disagreement is violence. It not great if you have any semblance of fairness or rationality.
Then, after lashing out at all the Emmanuel Goldsteins in society for days Aldrich took the wind out of their sails: his lawyer announced that Aldrich was non-binary and would go by they/them pronouns and be referred to as Mx. Aldrich in all court proceedings [what is with these people and the letter x?] Now assuming “it” is telling the truth, I just got “lucky” in my suspicion that the killer was a member of the targeted community, but I also didn’t go around making a bunch of assertions without evidence. While it is possible or even probable that this is some sort of advanced trolling, [and thus I was not correct] we have been told for years now we have to accept whatever gender identity anyone happens to claim at that moment because no one would ever do it to manipulate people. Of course, non-binariness is essentially just something the narcissistic and mentally ill do to troll society and make people provide ludicrous accommodations, so it doesn’t really matter whether or not he is telling the “truth.” This hasn’t stopped some of the “woke” from hypocritically saying in this specific instance the person is lying. Still, the media trying to “respect” and “accomodate” an alleged mass murderer by using “they” pronouns was quite the scene.
No one really knows what to make about this as the ridiculousness within our society is yet again intersecting in surprising ways. It's worth noting that none of the dead are transgender and the killer allegedly is, which makes their initial narrative especially off point [though presumably out of 27 total people killed or injured in a gay club at least one was some sort of trans.] Anyway, for the most part the story went quiet after the non-binary revelation was discussed, though of course I have seen no apologies or promises to do better in the future or anything of that nature.
The person responsible for these deaths is obviously Anderson Aldrich and not anyone else, least of all right-wing media figures we have no reason to believe the 22 year old had any affinity for. However, we do know that this individual had a very troubled background, almost beyond belief.
Aldrich changed his last name from Brink just before his 16th birthday. The court filing described the justification as follows:
“to protect himself and his future from any connections to birth father (sic) and his criminal history. Father has had no contact with (Aldrich) for several years.”
His mother’s last name is Voepel, as is her father’s, and he is not one of the grandparents who petitioned for name change. It is unclear where the name Aldrich came from, though if it wasn’t pulled from thin air presumably it is the name of one of his parents’ stepfathers. However one of his grandmothers is named Pam Pullen, so the name issue is murky. [Also newspapers using “they/them” makes understanding some of these stories egregious, you know they say “they” to mean “he” and you assume they are referring to some third party.]
Aldrich’s father, Aaron Brink, is such a ridiculous person it’s hard to believe any of this is real:
Brink is a felon with multiple convictions who is also a meth-addicted MMA fighter-turned-pornstar and reality television participant. Oh, and he is a Mormon, of all things. He goes by the porn name Dick Delaware. IMDB gives his biography as follows:
“From 1989-92 he was in and out of juvenile hall eight times for different issues. It was after serving a prison stretch that he began a new path that would prove more his calling. At age 24--the time when he was finally released--he reunited with an old high school friend Tito Ortiz. With Ortiz's encouragement Brink began his pursuit of an MMA career. It began in 1998 and over the next five years he fought 24 times.
In 2003 he adopted the stage name of Dick Delaware, which he would use to begin his venture into the adult-film industry. He met a porn producer at a party, who encouraged him to give the porn field a try. Brink admits that once he got into the porn business he got into drugs. Although he overcame an initial problem with crystal methamphetamine, he fell prey to other drugs. He appeared on the A&E reality show Intervention (2005) after his wife e-mailed the show with his back-story and problems. Since that time Delaware has made a considerable return to both professions that were almost lost to him after his drug problems arose.”
I read somewhere else that he said something like “A producer saw me with some girls at a party” so presumably he was already the type to fornicate in the open, even before the porn and meth. Clearly the intervention didn’t take, because he then appeared on Divorce Court with his then-wife [also a pornstar] complaining about him stealing her money to buy meth. I can understand why the producers thought these people would make for great reality television.
An intrepid local news reporter managed to track down Aaron Brink at his residence, where he appeared to have hardly looked into his son’s crime and clearly still has a raging drug addiction. It is one of the more ridiculous interviews I’ve ever seen:
This guy reminds me of someone I’ve known and I can’t place my finger on it, but definitely just some sort of old drug addict who would ramble about nonsense. Among other things this meth addicted pornstar tells us he is a conservative Republican Mormon who “Doesn’t do gay.” This is almost as questionable as the son being non-binary in terms of self-identifying as something that doesn’t fit. He proceeds to tell us he taught his son to use violence because it is effective, and seems as if he would have been more bothered if his son was gay than that he is a mass murderer. He probably has no clear conception of what being non-binary means, but hwo does? He also said his ex-wife told him his son had died by suicide years before, and after his son, alive of course, contacted him six months ago they had an antagonistic phonecall. One shudders to think of what sort of woman lies about her son killing himself for any reason. Brink also mentioned the MAGA grandfather, who he says should be the next President [one wonders, him having been separated from the guy’s daughter for over 20 years, why he would be in contact or have followed Voepel’s career.]
This moves us on to the MAGA grandfather himself. Randy Voepel is a California Assemblyman and former mayor who lost his seat in the primaries in this year’s elections. He is described as having “dominated local politics for years” before joining the State Assembly. He praised the January 6th riots saying, “This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny” then proceeded to say this silly comment was somehow taken “out of context” and that he opposes extremism on both sides. It is unclear what possible other context that statement could have. People were quick to point to Aldrich’s grandfather’s political views as evidence that Aldrich was a right-wing extremist, though an aide to Voepel said he hadn’t spoken to his grandson for years, and the basic experience of living in our society will tell you that a grandparent’s political views are not a reliable indicator of a grandchild’s political views. Sure, some people greatly admire and learn from a grandparent and have their political views shaped that way, but a whole lot more tend to think their grandparents are elderly and have ridiculous political views and don’t understand how the modern world works. It seems most likely that Voepel has nothing to do with any views his grandson may have or the shooting.
His daughter, the shooter’s mother, Laura Voepel has three outstanding arrest warrants in California and an arson charge in Texas. It is strange that even at the level of State Assemblyman his daughter technically being a fugitive did not cause political problems. Her California criminal history is as follows,
“Records show that Voepel was arrested in 2008 for false reporting, in 2010 for speeding and failure to appear, and in 2011 for driving under the influence. In 2008, she was arrested in Riverside for public intoxication and failure to appear, but that case was closed.”
Given his father’s history of domestic violence both towards his mother and being taught the value of violence by his father, both of his parents being addicts, and growing up with an unstable single mother or sometimes with grandparents, it should be no surprise Aldrich has some serious problems- including alleged opiate addiction. And it’s not that there weren’t signs he was dangerous. He actually got into a police standoff in 2021 after threatening to bomb his mother’s apartment. The landlord at the time has released footage:
He was arrested on five felonies, but the charges were dropped for unknown reasons. For some reason the police did not bother to use Colorado’s Red Flag laws following this situation. Now, I personally oppose Red Flag laws as an un-Constitutional violation of rights, but one wonders how they weren’t implemented following this police standoff caused by him threatening to bomb his mother’s apartment, essentially the reddest flag imaginable that someone might be a future threat to public safety. The guns used in the massacre were purchased legally- our gun control debates are pretty pointless when this is how the laws are “applied.” It was not hard to figure out that Aldrich was unstable.
Perhaps Aldrich was driven by some sort of hatred toward the gays- a friend did say he used slurs. He may well be lying about being non-binary, though I would posit they are all dishonest or delusional and he is probably both. He has nothing to gain from it and this is way too extreme for a troll move, but who knows how the twisted mind of a mass shooter works. What is obvious is that he was from a horrible background and profoundly damaged by his childhood. It is unethical, dishonest, and dangerous for the liberal cabal to make evidence-free accusations that this was caused by right-wing media questioning the most extreme aspects of gender ideology, such as child mutilation, puberty blockers, and bizarre child exploitation. I don’t even think people like Tucker Carlson and Libs of Tiktok are popular with Aldrich’s generation, but even if it does come out he liked them, at no point did they call for violence and, the “stochastic terrorism” lie notwithstanding, cannot be blamed for this. It is disgusting that so many “mainstream figures” tried to do so, and we know they will never apologize; we also know they will make the same “mistake” next time.
Thus is the story of Anderson Lee Aldrich, who murdered five humans, and also of the political and media hacks who sought to exploit the tragedy. While I mourn the dead, I have to admit, damn, do I look forward to when they make a TV show out of this guy’s life story, because this truth is stranger than fiction.
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