The chilling rise of copycat mass shooters: El Paso gunman was inspired by white supremacist Christchurch mosque attacker
The 21-year-old suspect of the El Paso mass shooting, Patrick Crusius, who opened fire in a crowded Walmart, killing 20 people on Saturday in Texas was seemingly inspired by the deadly Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand last year, which claimed 51 lives. Crusius sympathized with the Christchurch shooter, 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant's racist manifesto, as Tarrant particularly targeted Muslims praying in mosques.
"In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto," Crusius wrote in his manifesto posted on 8chan, the same website used by Tarrant to release his manifesto. Similarly, an anti-semitic 19-year-old, who opened fire in a synagogue in Poway, San Diego, on April 27, killing a woman and injuring several others, cited the Christchurch manifesto as his inspiration for killing Jews: "He showed me that it could be done."
John Timothy Earnest also posted a manifesto in a similar fashion on 8chan. Websites like 8chan, an unmoderated and anonymous messageboard, are largely frequented by the far-right and have become the gold standard to disseminate the message of hate and supremacy of the white race.
Sites like 4chan and 8chan are seemingly cultivating the strain of the young, white gunmen with automatic weapons seeking out crowded places to "avenge" their race. The website also floats the conspiracy theory of the "great replacement" – a term used by multiple white supremacist gunmen over the past year in their manifestoes.
The shooters see themselves as fighting a holy war against the "infestation" as they are afraid their race is replaced by "invaders" in a genocidal manner, where "foreigners" with high birth rate are replacing white people.
Just days before the El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, shooting, President Donald Trump wrote some controversial tweets seen in bad taste about four Congresswomen of color, known as "the Squad" in Washington, as he asked them to "go back" to their "crime-infested" countries and fix them. He made the statement despite all four of the Congresswomen being American citizens.
"White Supremacist Terrorism has a long history, but in the last few years, tends to involve young, white males brandishing an automatic or semi-automatic weapon with hundreds of rounds of ammunition. The goal is to then kill as many people in a targeted area--usually a city center, or shopping area--as possible," Glen M.E. Duerr, Ph.D. Associate Professor of International Studies from Cedarville University, Ohio, told MEA Worldwide. "The copycat element to this form of terrorism is particularly scary, 1) because these individuals attempt to lionize previous terrorist attacks, and 2) because they increasingly broadcast their attacks on social media."
Duerr also shed light on the manifestoes of the white supremacist terrorists which are often rambling but have one distinct resonating point in them — the racial element. "The group of individuals responsible for these heinous crimes is diverse in the sense that their manifestoes are often rambling, criss-crossing the political spectrum, which makes it difficult to pinpoint to the political left or political right. Often, these terrorists are simply driven by extreme views, often with a racial element, but sometimes supportive of some groups but not others (for example, the Christchurch terrorist sought to kill Muslims, but not other immigrants). This makes categorization difficult, although I think that White Supremacist Terrorist fits best because there is a desire to elevate the status of white people within their various countries--whether the United States, the United Kingdom, or New Zealand, as recent examples."
In the wake of the El Paso attack, Cloudflare, which provides a variety of internet services including protection against common cyberattacks, released a statement saying it would not support 8chan, leading to sporadic outages on the notorious website. The CEO of Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, said he was not providing his services to the anonymous internet forum because of its "lawlessness" that had caused "multiple tragic deaths."
Cloudflare dropping its services does appear as a positive move to restrict such chat forums, essentially curbing the apparent rise of White Supremacist terrorists. However, Duerr says that ultimately, shutting of one such site will not solve the problem in its entirety as users would flock to another similar site or "simply try to use other social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter covertly."
"Of course, solving extremist violence is an almost impossible task, but close monitoring of sites like 8chan and better coordination through Interpol and/or an expansion of intelligence-sharing groups like Five Eyes are two ideas that could help prevent future attacks," she said.
"Moreover, a good police presence in major cities is always important. For example, the recent shooting in the Oregon District of Dayton, Ohio, was stopped within 30 seconds because the Dayton Police Department acted swiftly to neutralize the shooter; unfortunately, nine people were killed within 30 seconds, but Dayton PD minimized the casualty list," she added.