Right here is the way it unfolded. Bellingcat researcher Aric Toler posted a long thread highlighting the assassin’s social media posts. They’re abhorrent, and seemingly obsessively so. A protracted listing of admiring posts that includes Nazi supporters and Nazi gown up, interspersed with extraordinarily disturbing far-right rants towards Jews, ladies, trans People and others. None of that’s something Musk and the web far proper—a lot much less Texas Republican lawmakers—give a shit about, in fact. Extra uncomfortable was that the terrorist was a fan of a number of of the identical far-right and hate accounts that Elon Musk himself retains selling.
The blue-check replies to that Ben Collins tweet are a storm of conservative racists and conspiracy cranks declaring that no no, it is a trick to discredit the correct; “It’s virtually prefer it was written to completely match the boogeyman,” is one consultant response.
The web proper seized on the information that the assassin felt “impressed” by anti-trans hate account Libs of TikTok and by influencer(?) Tim Pool, who is seemingly an enormous cheese within the Musk-backed proper. That was all it took for conservatism to launch a brand new conspiracy that the stupidest billionaire in historical past might latch on to.
Thoughts you, there’s actually no query as to the assassin’s ideologies. He wrote all of them out, repeatedly, advert nauseam. There is no such thing as a explicit shock in his figuring out of and approving of the “Libs of TikTok” Twitter account, whose writer is accountable for inspiring quite a few bomb and dying threats towards trans People and the medical doctors who help them. If the Allen, Texas, mass shooter is extra acquainted with the illiterati of the web proper than most individuals, then none of us can act very stunned. That’s, in fact, the conservative argument: The terrorist matches the profile of a far-right home terrorist too carefully. So carefully that, in keeping with Elon, it “will get weirder by the second.”
Musk has repeatedly come to the defense of Libs of TikTok after that account’s historical past of inspiring bomb and dying threats. His relationship with Tim Pool seems to be extra sycophantic than the rest; Pool himself came forward to burp a new theory that the homicide of eight People by an avowedly pro-Nazi violent accelerationist was “PSYOP”, all whereas suggesting that “it is multiculturalism” that is accountable for such violence.
Quickly sufficient, Musk himself was suggesting that the researchers had, someway, maybe made the story up.
He’s a really, very silly man. That is true of almost all conspiracy theorists, however he’s a particular case. In his protection, he continues to encompass himself with silly and deceptive folks and he appears very upset if these folks do not take note of him, so right here we’re.
As for the supposed discrepancies that counsel, to the far-right conspiracy cranks, that this different far-right conspiracy crank who so admired them was not actually certainly one of them, none of it’s almost as stunning as they’re pretending it to be. The Nazi-backing assassin posted a lot of his hate to a Russia-based social media web site, okay.ru. Given the content material of his posts, the Russian web site was doubtless chosen in an try to thwart social media guidelines that might have banned such content material almost anyplace else. The violent American far proper has frequently embraced and praised Russia. A member of the 4chan-ish violent proper gravitating to such a web site is not any much less plausible than it’s when these in the CPAC proper wing specific admiration for Russian kleptocrat Vladimir Putin’s viciousness towards LGBTQ Russians.
The primary supposed proof from the conspiracy crowd, in claiming that somebody who they do not suppose is white could not probably be a Nazi-backing white supremacist himself, is the killer’s race. This, too, is likely to be uncommon, however such associations are far from unprecedented.
The assassin himself seems to have gotten pleasure out of the standing.
The difficulty of race and racism within the Latino group is lengthy and convoluted; for the roughest of explanations, this thread by historian Kathleen Belew provides an outline, however specifically:
This form of racism is commonplace in, for instance, Mexico, the place “white” would possibly most correctly imply “can hint their ancestry again to Europe” and people who thus determine as “white” could be viciously discriminatory towards these with native ancestry. It’s because white is as bullshit-laden a time period amongst South and Central American racists as it’s in every single place else; by way of most of United States historical past, Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, japanese Europeans, Greeks, and different teams didn’t rely as white, and the “white” People who met them with hostility have been apoplectic on the thought that any of these disagreeable folks have been deserving of rights or is likely to be allowed to reside of their neighborhoods.
Every of these teams grew to become “white” solely over the ensuing a long time, and solely after that they had been round lengthy sufficient for his or her supposed cultural variations to have pale into the better American cultural lump, and for those who have been Catholic it took longer. And as every of these teams assimilated, turning into “white,” they latched on to the identical racist tropes to declare that each group newer than theirs wasn’t actually “white,” even when they themselves have been.
It is a recreation, not a science. It is a technique of oppression that twists nevertheless it must so as to shield the in-groups and punish the out-groups. There are numerous, numerous American white supremacists who’ve final names that might not have handed muster as “white” 50 or 100 years in the past. It does not cease them, and it isn’t going to cease Latino-surnamed racists from pitching in both.
So no, having a reputation like “Garcia” does not make an individual proof against far-right ideology, not for somebody who is way extra obsessive about anti-Black bigotry, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, anti-trans eliminationism, incel-premised vitriol towards ladies, Nazi fetishism, and the opposite linchpins of the far proper. This latest far-right terrorist latched onto all of it as premise for his violence whereas smugly acknowledging, on video, the discrepancy that now has Musk and different white nationalists vowing that he could not probably be certainly one of them.
If you happen to have been questioning the place Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Republican lawmakers are as one more mass homicide of their state makes nationwide information, the reply is that none of them give a single rattling.. They don’t care. They didn’t care after Uvalde, and they don’t care now. After this new mass homicide, a Texas Home committee has pushed forward a proposal to lift the minimal age to buy semi-automatic rifles with removable magazines to 21, up from 18, however there’s little expectation that the invoice can be rushed by way of the Home, Senate, and to Abbott’s desk within the scant time remaining within the present legislative session; the final day for it to cross the Home can be this Thursday. The transfer as an alternative seems to have been swiftly orchestrated in order that state Democrats couldn’t use a parliamentary transfer to power the proposal to the Home flooring, daring Republicans to vote towards it.
However the proposal does point out that Republicans can distinguish between semiautomatic rifles and different weapons in the event that they rattling properly need to, which is a distinction gun fetishists have insisted cannot probably be made. It seems that “semi-automatic rifle with removable journal” is an easy distinction in any case, and that AR-15-style weapons of the kind that eliminated all the face of 1 baby the newest assassin focused may very well be taken out of the fingers of a minimum of some potential future killers if the Republican Social gathering cared sufficient to even attempt. Do not maintain your breath.
As for Musk and his assortment of far-right extremists who clarify to mentally unstable aspirational killers in Texas and different states that immigrants, Black People, LGBTQ People, schoolteachers, medical doctors, college professors, scientists, Democrats, and others are enemies all allied in conspiratorial schemes to silence them, there’s even much less hope there. Musk blew $44 billion of his cash and his complete scaly popularity in an try to guard and promote such conspiracies; he doesn’t give a shit in regards to the ensuing violence. If he did, he would not be reinstating the beforehand banned accounts of violence-peddling white supremacists to start with.
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