Archive

Open-source intelligence analysts reported that Crooks didn’t appear to use mainstream social media channels such as Facebook or Instagram and had an almost negligible internet footprint, which is highly unusual for a 20-year-old. Instead, analysts said that Crooks corresponded with friends and associates on a Discord server that they were now trying to access.

Discord servers are restricted ring-fenced sections of the internet. They are often used by gaming groups and communities as secure chat rooms but are also used by fringe organisations to push their ideologies and discuss wild conspiracy theories and plots.

    • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1074 months ago

      He also played a violent new video game that has just recently been discovered, called “Fortnite,” and described himself as having “skibidi rizz” but not being a “sussy baka.” These slang terms are gang lingo used by only the most dangerous terrorists.

    • Aradina [She/They]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      74 months ago

      I’m 26 and my peers are mixed on using Facebook. Some still have it to message relatives, and that’s about it. I cannot imagine many 20 year olds using it.

  • buh [she/her]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    98
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    he was The One Never-Trump Republican democrats are always trying to convince

      • @tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        444 months ago

        If the same thing happened to Biden I’m almost certain mainstream Republicans would be saying things like “this is the people standing up against the woke mob, God Bless Them!”

  • Darth_Reagan [they/them, comrade/them]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    944 months ago

    Facebook or Instagram and had an almost negligible internet footprint, which is highly unusual for a 20-year-old. Instead, analysts said that Crooks corresponded with friends and associates on a Discord server that they were now trying to access.

    The kids aren’t using facebook, and a lot of them also aren’t using Instagram. A 20 year old man using primarily discord is the most normal thing.

  • @Justice@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    804 months ago

    The FBI says it has not yet identified a motive for the shooting

    I suggest checking the last ~6-12 months of his 4chan history. Key word searches to try: “Trump Zionist” “Kushner” “Fuentes”

    I suppose on the positive side, probably some of the clammiest, palest groypers in existence will be getting some door knocks in coming weeks and months.

    On the extremely negative side, if the guy is 100% confirmed a groyper and his motive is anything in the realm of “Trump supports Israel” or whatever… ain’t gonna be good for future anti-Zionist movements.

    Not that the future was ever bright considering how they’ve reacted to peaceful sit-ins. But yeah, anything groyper related and against Israel (for explicitly antisemitic reasons) will be lumped with anti-imperialism/anti-genocide related resistance to Israel. Very convenient packaging to barrel right past the unavoidable truth of the peaceful nature thus far of anti-Zionist moments. Yes it’s totally nonsensical, but if it aids Zionist narratives that both parties share, it’s too tempting.

    • @rainpizza@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      714 months ago

      Apparently the shooter said the following in his twitter bio before it got scrubbed: “on a mission from God (cross emoji) to end Epstien’s evil empire”

    • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]OP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      304 months ago

      I guess I’m out of the loop on this. It makes sense upon reading it however. So the theory is, based on your analysis, that because he was off mainstream social media, and associated with gun culture that he was likely on the neo-nazi pipeline.

      This pipeline involving an antisemitic anti-zionist framework, that believes support for Israel is support for white genocide in effect. Is this a widely held view among groypers?

      • @Justice@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        304 months ago

        To the last part, yes, basically. They hate Israel because (this is me summing up a lot of disconnected “ideologies” from them):

        -Israel is Jewish. -They hate Jews. -Zionist=Judaism.

        Some of them, although all this stuff is very disjointed, believe that Trump is like a “Jewish puppet” (they will sometimes substitute Zionist with the intention of meaning Jewish. They do not distinguish a difference. All Jews are Zionists loyal to Israel to them. Classic antisemitic stuff). His son in law, Jared Kushner, was in charge of a lot of foreign policy stuff in the Middle East including the treaty that was meant to full solidify the alliance and support from the surrounding Arab countries like Saudi Arabia with Israel. This was interrupted by partly 1) Trump losing re-election but mostly 2) recent Palestinian resistance starting on Oct 7 last year. The groypers see this as Kushner, who is Jewish, manipulating Trump or Trump working in cooperation with “the Jews”, however they want to frame it, to sell out America to the “the Jews” and “the Arabs.” They see America as a place that should be only white people, which apparently now includes Hispanic whites and not just anglo/germanic whites (crazy developments are emerging in Nazi ideology), and has no Jews, they belong in Israel, which the US should have no role in supporting (or killing the Jews outright, again, depending on the relative insanity), no black people, brown skinned Hispanic, Latino, no indigenous, no Asians… you get get gist. Typical Nazi stuff.

        But yeah the hangup with them specifically is Trump/US support of Israel and their deep racist hatred of Jews. It’s basically like if the racist republicans were fully ideologically consistent in their racism… you get a groyper who wants absolutely nothing to do with Jews or anything even associated with Judaism.

        Some of them do hesitantly, lightly support Trump btw. I believe Fuentes has been on record as supporting Trump as sort of a means to an end transitional figure. He said something like “we elect Trump twice and then we have no more elections” like he will form an actual empire, dissolve the republic, Rome style, and then the next person will be a “based anti-Jewish groyper.” Or whatever.

        Now I must go shower.

          • @Justice@lemmygrad.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            234 months ago

            I understand the comparison there, but I gotta reject it based on the implied (or direct?) comparison between groypers, who explicitly want to do genocide, to “bernie bros” and further left who want crazy things like free healthcare for all, improved material conditions for the poor, ending or least heavily drawing down US imperialism, etc.

            And with groypers, they are so comically “evil” in their espoused beliefs that it is pretty easy to just go “oh, no. No no no. Fuck that entire group.” And yeah yeah everyone is a product of their environment and material conditions, including those losers, but so were the Nazis. So I can simultaneously lament the fact they are lost to darkness, while also knowing their existence is a threat to the lives of a lot of people I care about and probably me too as a “traitor”

            I just don’t like making these comparisons because you end up with like “so Stalin was like Hitler, but with a different ideology?” Ok. Maybe. But what were their ideologies? One was pure evil and one was good.

            I’m not saying that was your intent, but that’s why I don’t accept those comparisons. “Somethings are good and somethings are bad” logic applies.

            • TheDoctor [they/them]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              64 months ago

              I was just thinking of a groyper posting “Trump was the compromise” and wasn’t sure how to get the idea across

  • SoyViking [he/him]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    804 months ago

    First it was the nefarious CCP using TikTok to indoctrinate the naive youth into not liking genocide.

    Now it’s the dangerous shady Discord servers allowing extremists (from both sides) to plot against Our Democracy™.

    I would not be surprised to see some sort of police state crackdown on Discord and other non-public parts of the internet resulting from this.

    • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]OP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      864 months ago

      Discord will have his data served up on a platter in no time. I don’t see anything changing because they already cooperate with the state heavily.

    • BoxedFenders [any, comrade/them]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      47
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      Isn’t 4chan basically supervised by Feds at this point? The NSA already have access to Facebook and Google so it goes without saying that Discord is next. They want to ban TikTok because they can’t gain that level of access to their user data.

      Why don’t zoomers rediscover Usenet and IRC? Can’t rely on corporate platforms at all.

      • Big_Bob [any]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        474 months ago

        I’m pretty sure I remember moot himself saying that he cooperated with law enforcement when they demanded IP adresses every time some 4channer broke the law.

        It was from a court transcript somewhere, but you’re absolutely correct in assuming 4chan is heavily monitored and participated in by law enforcers, government officials and far right recruiters.

    • @FishLake@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      314 months ago

      I was thinking the same thing. It’s kind of the next logical step for platforms that have locked their users onto their sites. What good is a walled garden internet if you can’t link 100% of your users to real world consumers. Hello TSA internet.

  • @healthkick@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    784 months ago

    Rabidly pro-Ukraine?

    Wanted to kickstart helterskelter?

    Trump was too left for his tastes?

    Trump was too right for this Romneyite?

    Gamer just wanted to get a Wikipedia page?

  • SnAgCu [he/him, any]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    734 months ago

    the “Chinese shooter” revealed to be…

    white guy in demolition ranch merch internet-delenda-est

    cool, thanks for that NYPost

    • barrbaric [he/him]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      604 months ago

      “Redditors and Twitter users” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, y’know?

    • AcidSmiley [she/her]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      52
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      That’s just how you say “hack journalists who googled ‘Thomas Matthew Crooks Facebook’ for five minutes” when you’ve watched too much Mr. Robot.

  • Awoo [she/her]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    694 months ago

    I’m revising my guess at motivations to being more like a school shooter but against a cool target.

    • Speaker [e/em/eir]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      134 months ago

      It’s 100% gonna be Epstein/Save the Children/QAnon. There was a story (apparently fake, but only pinocchio-evil-types say so) going around a few weeks ago about Trump being reinvestigated for Epstein behavior. I think it was only Pinocchio’d a few days ago, so I could definitely see the deboonking not having filtered into the Q space before this heroic moron bought a ticket to the cool zone.

    • moonlake [he/him]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      54 months ago

      This is my take as well. If this were at all politically motivated, we would be reading his manifesto right now. Or at least his unhinged posts on 4chan/facebook. The fact that there are none of those things leads me to believe that this is just a guy who wanted to be epic. The target was irrelevant, if it was Genocide Joe on that stage he would have still taken the shot.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    684 months ago

    It’s super cool how the US is so depoliticized that this guy is just some random 20 year old groyper who yelled “hold my beer” and thnere’s no revolutionary cells or organized falandrists or anything.

  • Torenico [he/him]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    684 months ago

    Discord servers are restricted ring-fenced sections of the internet. They are often used by gaming groups and communities as secure chat rooms but are also used by fringe organisations to push their ideologies and discuss wild conspiracy theories and plots.

    Fuck, they know about our discord where we push for a Protracted People’s War in the United SStates of AmeriKKKa.

  • FloridaBoi [he/him]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    684 months ago

    Crook’s father told CNN he was trying to find out “what the hell” was going on but that he would talk to law enforcement before speaking about his son.

    Mr Carriker reposted the photo of members of the US security forces standing over Crooks’ dead body, wearing the grey Demolition Ranch t-shirt.

    What the hell?” he wrote underneath the photo.

    illuminati

  • Infamousblt [any]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    664 months ago

    On one side I am totally unsurprised, but on the other side I was hoping this was going to be the worlds first instance of a lib with a spine. I don’t know why I got my hopes up

  • @That_Devil_Girl@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    614 months ago

    The Republican party is full of, and run by, crazies. Trying to find a coherent motive for this assassination attempt might not be possible.