‘I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The effort by the Left to blame right-wing extremism as the cause of Saturday’s Walmart shooting in El Paso, Texas, is quickly dissipating as details unfold about the Dayton, Ohio, shooting that followed shortly after.
The site Heavy.com reported that the Ohio gunman was an avowed leftist who offered his presidential endorsement to Sen. Elizabeth Warren and tweeted “I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.”
His Twitter page has since been removed, but on it, the gunman—who murdered nine people, including his own sister, and injured at least 27 others in a popular Dayton nightspot—also included his preferred gender pronouns, expressed a devotion to Satan and liked tweets related to the El Paso shooting.
His biographical profile on Twitter contained the following: “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back.”
Although his religious views seem to have been confused—he referred to himself both as a Satanist and as an atheist (one who believes in/worships no higher power)—the shooter’s passion for progressive politics was more certain.
Even when it came to centrist Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who became a liberal darling after his death last year, the shooter’s animosity prompted him to tweet “F*ck John McCain.” And prior to the 2018 midterm election he wrote, “Vote blue for gods sake.”
In response to a tweet suggesting that Warren and Sen. Kamala Harris could be co-presidents, he wrote, “Nahh, but only cuz Harris is a cop—Warren I’d happily vote for.”
Chillingly, some of his tweets seemed to weigh in on previous gun-violence episodes, including the 2017 school shooting in Parkland, Florida—after which he wrote, presumably in response to a pro-gun-rights statement from Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio: “@robportman hey rob. How much did they pay you to look the other way? 17 kids are dead. If not now, when?”
Media reports on Monday continued to say that the killer’s motive was unclear, but the revelations about his leftist political views may have helped them rule out one possibility: racism.
Although six of the victims were black, the Dayton Daily News said that, contrary to preliminary reports, “at this time there isn’t any evidence that race played a role in the shooting.”
The assailant himself, despite wearing body armor and a mask, was successfully neutralized by police after 30 seconds, leaving only his online footprint to piece together answers.
Meanwhile, the El Paso shooter was taken alive into custody even though his own manifesto declared capture to be a fate “far worse than dying.”
That killer expressed his solidarity with an earlier assailant in Christchurch, New Zealand, saying he shared the same anti-immigrant positions outlined in the earlier shooter’s manifesto and was hoping to kill as many Mexicans as possible.
While most in the media interpreted his statements to mean he was a supporter of President Donald Trump, the reality seemed to be more complicated.
Among the ideas he espoused were environmentalism and support for a universal basic income—although he pinned his advocacy for both issues on the negative impacts of immigrants.
“[T]he Republican Party is also terrible,” he wrote in his manifesto. “Many factions within the Republican Party are pro-corporation. Pro-
corporation = pro-immigration.”
The El Paso killer also made a point of saying that his views pre-dated Trump, and he preemptively dismissed the idea that the president’s rhetoric was to blame.
“I putting this here because some people will blame the President or certain presidential candidates for the attack. This is not the case,” he wrote.
“I know that the media will probably call me a white supremacist anyway and blame Trump’s rhetoric,” he said. “The media is infamous for fake news. Their reaction to this attack will likely just confirm that.”