White supremacist attackers are nothing new. But now they find each other online

Something new was revealed in the murder of Lori Gilbert Kaye, who was shot Saturday at the Congregation Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, near San Diego. Multiple others were also injured.

Yes, the alleged shooter, 19-year-old John Earnest, shared a common racism and anti-Semitism with the killers at the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque in March and at the Pittsburgh synagogue in October. But that is not new.

“Lone wolf” killers — those who act out their white supremacist convictions without any organizational connections to like-minded others — have been shooting, burning and killing since before James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. In the mid-1980s, William Pierce — the leader of the National Alliance, an organization of national socialists — published “Hunter,” a book extolling the virtues of these lone wolves. During the years and decades after that, various white supremacist leaders would promote lone wolves as the answer to their prayers. These individual killers would reemerge from time to time, promoting the idea of a race war in the United States, but otherwise failing to connect to each other.

Now that has changed.

On the internet, there is now a website called 8chan, which hosts a message board known as “/pol/” for “politically incorrect.” As of May 1, there were 13,215,757 posts on that board, covering a broad range of topics.

“But no matter what else is discussed, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, hatred of LGBT individuals and a desire to commit murder under the swastika are constant through lines” on 8chan, according to journalist Robert Evans. And unlike some other white supremacist internet boards, this one includes many anonymous exhortations to kill.

It was here that John Earnest found a home.

Earnest published on 8chan’s /pol/, where he had been an avid reader of white supremacist postings for the past year and a half. This board was also read and used by Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the shooter accused of murdering 50 and injuring another 50 in New Zealand. A manifesto believed to be Earnest’s specifically cited Tarrant before the attack.

Further, the white power symbol Tarrant allegedly left behind at the mosque was also painted on the ground at the site of the March 29 arson at the progressive Highlander Education and Research Center in New Market, Tennessee.

The Earnest manifesto also echoes Robert Bowers, the suspected killer of 11 Jews at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue. “Jews are the children of Satan,” Bowers allegedly wrote at the top of his account on the far-right social network Gab, citing John 8:44 as his source. Actually, according to the King James Bible, John 8:44 reads: “Ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye will do.” Earnest does something similar to Bowers, instead citing John “8:37 thru 8:45.”

Earnest is also accused of setting fire to a mosque in Escondido, California, in March. And he is just one of other accused lone wolf white supremacists who are now paying attention to each other. They draw inspiration from each other. Perhaps they are no longer single, isolated killers.

They are not yet an organization. And it is doubtful that the most astute law enforcement officer could determine which 8chan users are simply poseurs, and which are real potential killers.

Indeed, it appears that the local communities from which these violent individuals emerge have the best chance of identifying the racists, anti-Semites and bigots. The people around these emerging killers can and must take their views seriously, and continuously argue with them individually.

I am not talking about a grand education plan, although that is necessary. Civil society must not treat these potential murderers simply as losers and throw them to the side. We must treat them like they are carrying an infectious disease, and they must be cured.

And we must all depend on each other.

This story was originally published May 1, 2019 at 2:10 PM.