The two young men who walked inside a San Diego mosque armed with assault rifles on Monday evening wore patches depicting the Black Sun — a neo-Nazi swastika — and had written symbols of white extremism in white correction fluid on their guns. They started shooting and killed three. Then they ran away in a BMW that he had stolen from his mother. While inside the car, 17-year-old Cain Clark shot his companion, Caleb Vasquez, before shooting himself in the head. We know much of this, in graphic detail, because, within a few hours, a video attack by Clark and Vasquez appears to have been posted on the Discord message board, then on a website called Watch People Die.
The tragedy at the Islamic Center of San Diego in many ways followed a very familiar script. With alarming regularity, a teenager opens fire with weapons bearing neo-Nazis or hateful references scrawled in white paint. The shooter usually wears equipment designed to promote speed: the idea that only the collapse of society can bring about an Aryan utopia. There may also be a manifesto coming from a familiar list of motives: anti-Semitism, grievances over perceived white genocide, fascination with former shooters (including Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at an African Methodist Episcopal church in South Carolina, and Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand).
Clark and Vasquez apparently put together such a manifesto; Theirs is 75 pages long and suggests that they were “motivated by the speed of the militia” to do their part to bring about the downfall of the society, says Katherine Keneally, director of the American Institute for Strategic Negotiations for analysis and prevention of threats. In addition to intense hatred of Islam, the couple expressed, in detail, hatred of Black people (described as “low IQ people” in the manifesto), women (who “tend to cause all the problems in the world”), and Jews (“The Universal Enemy” responsible for all the world’s wrongs). The words “THEY ARE JEWS” appear four times. (Both the video and the manifesto I found have not yet been verified as authentic but are being reviewed by law enforcement. Researchers I spoke with at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an anti-extremism institute, obtained the same document and live recording.)
Meanwhile, Clark and Vasquez, by recording their gruesome act, may have been trying to create a vibe for their digital communities on Discord, a chat service that has become popular with gamers and extremists. Researchers refer to this as “memetic radicalization,” according to for the International Network on Extremism and Technology, an academic program that researches how extremists use technology. Emphasizing extremism as a vibe online can also draw non-whites into white supremacy. In November, Muhammad Nazriel Fadhel Hidayat, a 17-year-old Indonesian student, allegedly detonated several bombs at his school in Jakarta, injuring nearly 100 people but causing no deaths. Authorities found assault rifles with neo-Nazi references scrawled on a white one and said the Columbine High School shooters, along with Roof and Tarrant, were among his influences.
Earlier this year, I asked Cody Zoschak, of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, how a student in Jakarta could become involved in a homophobic subculture. Zoschak suggested that the attacker did not embrace all neo-Nazi ideas, as they stemmed from the Third Reich, but instead “understood it as fanaticism” of the right wing.
This approach is popular in what researchers call “non-religious violence” circles, which include the “True Crime Society.” TCC (which is not related to the popular non-fiction genre) is an internet subculture that appreciates mass shootings, particularly Columbine. It is possible that Clark was involved with TCC. He listed “True Crime” among his “interests” in the alleged manifesto.
In the 1990s, many of the most radical white communities operated on the margins of society, in hard-to-reach areas such as East Texas and the Idaho panhandle. They might have rejected someone like Vasquez even if they agreed with the perversity contained in the manifesto. Vasquez admitted that older white people might dismiss him as “hot sauce” and, in the document, described himself as “half Northern Mexican.” But Vasquez also noted that he was of “70-85% European descent” from French and Spanish roots, suggesting that he felt he belonged to a society that viewed white people as superior.
However, with the rise of digital extremism, there is a low barrier to entry. Fans of fast-paced violence can assume any identity they want online. And if the killers are going to try to impress and inspire those fans, they just need to log into the right Discord server.
