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In 2022, before Veltman was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder, Maclean鈥檚 magazine sent me to London and nearby Strathroy, where Veltman had been raised, to report on the terrible crime.

I arrived in the area prepared to write about the incident as an example of far-right terrorism, which it was, but ended up writing a different kind of story: the story of a young man descending into a private hell as a result of mental illness, drug abuse and family dysfunction.

Of course, the ideology that animated him matters, because it gave his tortured mind focus, and it mattered to an extended family that can never recover, and a community that was left to grapple with horror, pain and fear. It matters to law enforcement, which must understand the movements that work to radicalize young men to their cause, and it matters to a justice system that reserves special designations for hate crimes and terrorism.

But on its own, ideology is not enough to understand Veltman.

There was severe mental illness in his family that seemed to manifest in Veltman, too. One of his friends told me that Veltman, who was raised in a strict Christian family, had, in a moment of remorse for lustful acts, tried to castrate himself.

It is true that he saw himself as a warrior against the Great Replacement, had gone down terrible online rabbit holes full of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, but as I went to the places he had gone, talked about him, thought about him, it came to seem to me that if we want to understand why he did he what he did聽鈥� not its impact, but its impetus聽鈥� we must look beyond ideology. The phenomenon 鈥� the young mass killer who shoots up a school, mows down a family or commits murder in a place of worship 鈥� is consistent, no matter whether the killer is motivated by white supremacy, incel hatred, leftist extremism or Islamism.

Veltman wrote a manifesto, wanted us to think about his hateful ideology, see him as a warrior for his cause. We should see him first and foremost as a loser who threw his life away and destroyed a lovely family.聽

I came to a similar conclusion in 2014, when I covered the story of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who killed Corporal Nathan Cirillo as he stood guard in front of the war memorial in Ottawa. Like Veltman, Zehaf-Bibeau came from a dysfunctional family, was mentally ill and had abused drugs. He went on his killing spree motivated by Islamism, not white supremacy, but he and Veltman were otherwise a lot alike, and if circumstances had been different, they each might have seized on a different ideology.

In both cases, I spent time with people who loved the victims, whose lives are forever scarred by what has happened. Too often such suffering is ground up and used to make partisan points, to further inflame people. Responsible leaders, like Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, try to dial down the emotion, the sense of threat, after incidents like this. Irresponsible leaders, like Donald Trump, try to ratchet it up, which will lead to more violence.

Tragically, there is always a certain number of troubled young men with severe personal problems, a hole inside themselves full of pain that they think they can fill if they act like heroes and kill for a cause greater than themselves. Struggling at school, unable to connect romantically, more isolated than earlier generations, they get black-pilled, as the Incels say, end up hopeless and hateful. They聽find meaning and community in online chat rooms where they egg each other on with irony as dark as the heart of a black hole.

That is the problem. Whether they are inspired by Anders Behring Breivik or ISIS is secondary to the horror of the phenomenon 鈥� ideologically motivated killings are increasing. Most of them are motivated by poisonous far right ideology, but if we centre the ideology of the killers, we are treating them like soldiers, which is what they want.

But in the days since聽Kirk聽was shot to death, social media has been full of activists arguing about scraps of disputed evidence about the killer, often in the teasing, sarcastic tone favoured by those seeking to humiliate and disparage ideological opponents on the internet. It鈥檚 sickening, watching the murder of聽Kirk聽become the latest outrage to be seized on by point-scoring culture warriors.

Consider Trump adviser Kari Lake, who seized on the fact that聽Kirk鈥檚 killer attended university for a semester in 2021, to argue that parents should not let their children be educated lest they be radicalized.

The attention-seeking denunciations of聽Kirk聽from left-wing online culture warriors are unhelpful and in bad taste, but they are not as dangerous as what we are seeing from the American right, who are openly inciting civil war over his corpse. This is a dangerous moment, because, as American writer Rache Kleinfeld recently , when the violence seems to be coming from both sides there is a risk that more people 鈥� including those who are less deranged 鈥� will come to feel they must act violently to defend their values and communities.聽

That seems to be what Trump wants. He is using this moment to assert his dominance. At Kirk’s Arizona memorial service Sunday, Trump declared Kirk a martyr and said “I hate my opponent.” Trump鈥檚 man on the FCC has forced Jimmy Kimmel off the air. Trump has promised to declare Antifa 鈥� a leaderless, unstructured movement 鈥� as a terrorist organization. He seems to be itching to use the power of the state to finally put his enemies in their place.

This is very similar to the techniques used by mid-twentieth century Fascists in Europe.

In a way, it will not matter what we eventually learn about the motivation of聽Kirk鈥檚 killer, because Trump will tell his supporters that he was a leftist, and they will believe him, and be happy when Trump uses violence against their supposed enemies.

Hannah Arendt described this phenomenon in her 1951 book “The Origins of Totalitarianism.”

鈥淭his feeling of security, resulting from the organized violence with which the elite formations protect the party members from the outside world, is as important to the integrity of the fictitious world of the organization as the fear of its terror.鈥�

It is hard to know how far Trump will go, if there is anyone left in his government, the courts, the security services or the military who will stop him from behaving like a dictator and provoking a civil war with the might of the state behind him.

Canadians can do little to help, and must focus on preserving that spirit of solidarity across partisan lines that is characteristic of our country throughout history. America was born in war and mob violence. Canada was founded by people who rejected that.

I was in the House of Commons last Monday when Lethbridge MP Rachel Thomas, a Conservative, rose to speak, seriously and movingly, about聽Kirk鈥檚 murder.

鈥淭rue progress comes from persuasion, not intimidation,鈥� she said. 鈥淎s we grapple with our personal response to this, may we be honourable in our actions, may we fiercely defend the right of our opponents to speak freely, and may we join our hearts with聽Charlie’s family, his wife Erika and his two young children.鈥�

I was happy to see all MPs, including Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney, rise to applaud her words.

Some on the Canadian left have criticized this, as if extending sympathy to聽Kirk鈥檚 widow and orphans is wrong, as if we should not extend a feeling of solidarity and sympathy to conservative Canadians to whom聽Kirk聽was meaningful. It was not the moment to condemn his hateful words.

If we want to avoid the contagion of political violence, we should listen to Thomas and be glad that our representatives can come together to agree that nobody should be shot for what they say.

The Americans are not so lucky.

And we should be glad that in 1977, Pierre Trudeau鈥檚 government brought in a requirement that anyone who wants to purchase a firearm must first undergo a background check and acquire a licence.

Nathaniel Veltman destroyed one lovely family with a truck in 2021. If he had been able to get an AR-15 he would have destroyed many more.