The 18-year-old who was charged in the Saturday shooting deaths of ten people in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket revealed in his diary that his radical beliefs originally developed in communities on 4chan and Reddit.
Before the shooting, which occurred in a predominately black neighborhood, Payton Gendron published a 106-page manifesto online describing himself as a “white supremacist” and “anti-semite.” Gendron said explicitly in his diary that he developed his beliefs from 4chan and Reddit after the start of the pandemic.
“My current beliefs started when I first started to use 4chan a few months after covid started. Many of which I got from 4chan’s /pol/ page and links found in /nsg/ and threads like that,” he wrote in a diary entry labeled Jan. 30, referring to 4chan discussion forums.
Gendron also credited Reddit with forming his beliefs and listed several Reddit forums in which he frequently posted.
“Of course, many of my beliefs come from reddit too. Many subreddits I joined have been banned but they show up on r/AgainstHateSubreddits all the time,” he wrote Jan. 30. “One’s that are still around include r/greentext, r/4chan, r/PoliticalCompassMemes, r/SocialJusticeInAction, r/LoveForLandlords, and r/AntiHateCommunites, of which I am actually in their discord.”
Numerous media organizations attempted to link Gendron with the Republican Party and prominent conservatives like Tucker Carlson for inspiring Gendron while largely overlooking the shooter’s own words, in which he blamed online forums including Reddit and 4chan while condemning the Republican Party.
NBC News’ Ben Collins said Carlson is someone “directly trying to preach” to extremists like the Buffalo shooter, while a Rolling Stone commentary piece said the shooter was a “mainstream Republican,” and a Washington Post piece linked his ideology to Carlson and two other Republicans. A New York Times article also blamed Carlson for promoting “replacement theory,” the idea that elites are replacing white Americans with immigrants to gain political power, which was referenced by Gendron in his diary.
“It makes no sense how democrats and republicans see themselves so differently from each other yet they have 95% of the same views,” Gendron wrote Feb. 19. “Ascend into eco fascism my brothers.”
“Same things applies with democrats vs republicans. Both are controlled by Jews,” he wrote March 7.
Gendron shared what appear to be the results of a quiz which showed what his political views are.
“I don’t think this is that inaccurate to my political beliefs. I tend to have quite a mix between conservative and progressive values though,” he wrote.
“I tend to be progressive when it comes to development of science but conservative when it comes to culture,” he wrote in another post.
Gendron said he had used a Reddit page about mass killers to plan out his attack in a March 31 post.
“Look at what people did before tou, [sic] I’m trying to find info on other mass shooters and see what they did and what to improve on. r/masskillers is very helpful,” he wrote. “Imagine if I went in on March 15 not knowing my gun wasn’t properly lubed and I had a failure to feed on every shot I took, that would be quite embarrassing.”
This is an excerpt from the Daily Caller.
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