Obviously he's the guy who tried to kill someone, so he isn't the victim in that case, but to some extent he is a victim, as is everyone who eventually drinks the coolaid of right-wing mass media propaganda.

Clearly the guy, while obviously struggling to be a decent human being, wasn't outright vile initially. I may be reading into it a bit much, but can you not see the story of someone who has been through hardships, that was eventually accepted by a group that took advantage of his desire for being part of something? Obviously he cannot shirk blame or fault for the path he ended up taking, but I could see things playing out quite a bit differently if there were reasonable people he could turn to for help and guidance.

Don't spin my words, I'm not saying anyone made him racist, or that the fact that his girlfriend was black had anything to do with how he turned out. He got divorced twice. His best friend died. One of his daughters is institutionalized. His girlfriend left him. That kind of stuff can cause someone to feel like they have no control over their own life, and unfortunately the right is very good at convincing people they have the solution for that.

I was raised republican, and made the switch to democrat in college, and then again to socialist a while after that. I've personally had to help people I know from losing their head and falling for the shit Fox News is shoveling in hard times, so maybe I'm just more likely to assume that there could have been conditions in which this guy didn't become a racist asshole who tries to kill a congresswoman. I believe very strongly that, if the left showed any semblance of compassion for the normal folks being targeted by the right, there'd be quite a few less people pulled into being extremists.