Hanau attack gunman railed against ethnic minorities online

[True Blue Drew]

Source: Reuters

Thu 20 Feb 2020 12.23 EST

The gunman who killed nine people in the town of Hanau out of apparent hatred of minorities and turned his weapon on his own mother and then himself has been identified in German media as Tobias Rathjen, aged 43.

Born in 1977 in the Hessian town of 100,000 east of Frankfurt, Rathjen attended a local school before training as a bank clerk in Frankfurt. He took a degree in business management at the University of Bayreuth, which he completed in the spring of 2007.

There is currently no indication that Rathjen was acting as part of a wider organised network. The interior ministry of Hesse state said on Thursday that the gunman had not been on the radar of police or intelligence agencies for holding rightwing extremist views.

On what seems to have been his personal website, taken offline in the hours since the attack, Rathjen had uploaded a 24-page text in which he tells his life story, claiming that his thoughts and actions have been controlled by mind-readers working for an unnamed “intelligence agency”.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/20/hanau-gunman-tobias-rathjen-railed-against-ethnic-minorities-online

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This one hits the trifecta: Racism, Guns, Paranoia. Trump is probably sad he can't pardon the guy.

[IronLionZion]

1. Time to start profiling people who rail against ethnic minorities online

you know, for security. It's the same argument they use for racially profiling brown people.

[moondust]

2. "part of pattern" flowing from US

Hanau attack part of pattern of white supremacist violence flowing from US

Experts in global extremism say gunman’s comments on his website paralleled several recent conspiracies popular with American far-right
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“What we have occurring now is white supremacy integrated on a global scale,”...
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The internet has helped “nationalist” extremists connect across borders and find common cause, advancing “the idea that if you act on and commit violence in one country, it’s for the good of the white race globally,”
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/21/hanau-attack-part-of-pattern-of-white-supremacist-violence-flowing-from-us

Maybe the Internet needs its own police force.

Many victims were Turkish immigrants. Turks have been living and working in Germany for ages and are Germany's largest ethnic minority. I personally remember them working in Berlin as early as 1974. And suddenly this 43-year-old asshole decides he can't live with that?