El Paso shooting: 'Eco-fascist' gunman blamed migrants, corporations for destroying America's natural resources in hate-filled manifesto
The gunman who shot up a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, wrote in his online manifesto that immigrants were to blame for the environmental degradation of the United States and thereby proposed genocide as a means towards ecological sustainability.
The manifesto is riddled with diatribes against "race-mixing" and the “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” which the Huffington Post described as the "far-right extremists’ budding revival of eco-fascism."
The hate-filled four-page document is titled "The Inconvenient Truth", an allusion to Al Gore’s milestone climate change documentary, and was posted on website 8chan about half an hour before the shooting.
Authorities were "reasonably confident" that Patrick Crusius, the 21-year-old arrested in connection with the shooting that left at least 20 dead, is the author of the said manifesto.
The document, which we have chosen not to publish considering ethical concerns, rails against corporations for over-harvesting natural resources and thereby destroying the environment.
Crusius also blasts Americans for being unwilling to change their lifestyles for the sake of the environment, as well as the government for being unwilling to confront environmental issues head-on.
The document, therefore, argues that the United States needs lesser people consuming its resources.
“The environment is getting worse by the year,” the manifesto reads. “Most of y’all are just too stubborn to change your lifestyle. So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”
Furthermore, Crusius' document blatantly cites the 74-page manifesto posted online by Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old gunman charged with killing 51 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
Tarrant thrice described himself in his manifesto as an "eco-fascist" with a quest to fight off waves of migrants fleeing climate change-ravaged regions of the world.
Under a section titled "Green nationalism is the only true nationalism", Tarrant elaborated on his environmental stance.
"There is no Conservatism without Nature, there is no nationalism with environmentalism, the natural environment of our lands shaped us just as we shaped it," he wrote. "We were born from our lands and our own culture was molded by these lands. The protection and preservation of these lands is of the same importance as the protection and preservation of our own ideals and beliefs."
He concluded the section by saying, "There is no traditionalism without environmentalism."
Tarrant was described by Jordan Weissman, writing for Slate, as "an established, if somewhat obscure, brand of neo-Nazi".
Sarah Manavis, writing for the New Statesman, said eco-fascists like Tarrant "believe that living in the original regions a race is meant to have originated in and shunning multiculturalism is the only way to save the planet they prioritize above all else."