An assailant killed two children and wounded 18 other children and adults at a Catholic church in Minnesota. The FBI described the attack as motivated by "hate-filled ideology." Online materials associated with the shooter portray handwritten journals written phonetically in English using Cyrillic letters, a letter to family and friends, and videos displaying an array of weapons including a rifle, shotgun, handgun, revolver, multiple magazines, a smoke bomb and tactical gear. The shooter reportedly carved "There is no message" on a handgun slide. The profile corresponds with a trend of young perpetrators driven by misanthropy, reverence for mass killers and a desire for notoriety.
But online materials presumed to belong to the shooter paint a more complex picture, say several extremism analysts. Instead, they say the emerging profile appears to align with a growing trend of school shootings committed by young people who harbor a misanthropic view of the world, who revere perpetrators of mass violence and who seek notoriety within communities that share that obsession.
Cooter and other analysts have been combing through videos that were uploaded around the time of the attack to a YouTube account believed to belong to Robin Westman, the 23-year old shooter. One showcases handwritten journals, totalling over 200 pages. It is phonetically in English, but written in Cyrillic letters. Another video shows a letter addressed to family and friends, in English, and then turns to an array of weapons laid out on a flat surface.
"I think the most important thing is what the shooter wrote on the slide of that handgun: 'There is no message,'" said Cody Zoschak, a senior manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. "There's an inherently nonideological indication." A toxic stew of extremist influences In his social media post, FBI director Kash Patel said the agency found in Westman's writings and other materials "anti-Catholic, anti-religious references," "hatred and violence toward Jewish people" and "an explicit call for violence against President Trump."
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