He describes himself as “fascist”, “racist” and “anti-Semitic”: Payton Gendron, 18, accused of killing 10 black people in Buffalo, New York on Saturday, radicalized himself on networks about white supremacy. and the “great substitution” theory, which are far-right ideologies advancing in the United States.
“This person came with the goal of killing as many black people as possible,” New York City mayor Byron Brown said on Sunday.
A desire the suspect, who was arrested at the scene, detailed in a 180-page manifesto, wrote here: “I am simply a white man who wants to protect and serve my community, my people, my culture, and my race.”
The young man appears in a police photograph with hair almost shoulder-length, frowning eyebrows and a bit of a beard.
His deadly act was meticulously crafted: the day before he discovered the Tops supermarket where the shooting took place, and his manifesto describes his attack, equipped from head to toe as a soldier, plus minute by minute with a camera for broadcast. Live action on the Twitch virtual platform.
Payton Gendron, who is on trial for “designer murder”, pleaded not guilty at the first hearing this weekend and is expected to return to court on May 19. He could face a life sentence.
On the barrel of the assault rifle he bought legally, there was an offensive, racist and taboo word for blacks in America and the number “14”, a reference to the slogan of white supremacist groups.
Inspired by another murder
Payton Gendron was born in 2003 and grew up in a small, largely rural, almost exclusively white town in New York State, less than a three-hour drive from the supermarket in Buffalo. He says he chose this location for the attack because it was in the neighborhood with “the highest proportion” of African Americans in the area.
It was a joke, he said, but the police were alarmed by this threat and sent him to a mental institution, where he was released a few days later and without being traced.
In his manifesto, he says he was “extremely bored” by the quarantine against covid in May 2020 and turned to 4Chan, a forum used by the far-right. It was there that he found his inspiration: Brenton Tarrant, the author of a true massacre that killed 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019. He also wrote a manifesto.
“I read and found out that I generally agree with him,” said the young man. He also copied and pasted large passages of text into his manifest, according to AFP.
federal government priority
At the center of their concerns is the so-called “great substitution” theory, popularized by the French writer Renaud Camus.
“I’ve finally woken up,” the prisoner wrote. He was condemned by the non-white population as “I will never agree to relocate again”.
Despite being immersed in this conspiracy thesis of neo-Nazi origin, he makes sandwiches in a cafeteria and attends short courses at a small university, but leaves them.
According to former colleagues interviewed by The New York Times, he arrived at school shortly after the sanitary restrictions due to the pandemic ended, wearing a suit similar to those used in emergencies that pose a bacteriological or chemical risk. youth years.
In his manifesto, conspiracy theories predominantly refer to blacks and Jews. Pseudo-scientific letters are changing, as are memes, many of which are inspired by anti-Semitism. Its text is also a call for “inevitable” radicalization to confront “an attempted genocide”, he wrote.
In September 2021, the FBI chief cited nearly 2,700 investigations into domestic acts of terrorism, almost double that of a year and a half ago. The FBI and the US Department of Justice have assigned special teams for this issue.
Major actions included right-wing extremists to a black church in Charleston (9 killed in 2015), a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida (49 killed in 2016), a synagogue in Pittsburgh (11 people in 2018). killed), a Latino-frequented supermarket in El Paso, Texas (23 people died in 2019).
source: Noticias