So Why

was Cho Seung-Hui off his nut?

This is an extremely disturbed person, but it is clear, if one listens to his words, that conditions in society were playing on his mind. He felt many resentments. This doesn’t justify any of his insane acts, but the resentments have a real basis. He was mentally unbalanced, but that doesn’t mean there was no connection between social life and what he did. And now television analysts begin heaping abuse on his head, as a substitute for taking the problems seriously. “He was a coward,” and so on. This is almost a provocation, an incitement of others.

The resentments are real. Huge social divisions exist on a college campus. Snobbery and elitism exist. With Cho, the resentments were psychotically internalized and developed in a pathological manner. The society denies that social classes exists, it papers over social inequality. The contradictions emerge in a malignant fashion, they explode in this anti-social form.