The Republicans' paramilitary wing reemerges in Jacksonville [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://www.editorialboard.com/the-republicans-paramilitary-wing-reemerges-in-jacksonville/

A 21-year-old white supremacist whose name I won’t use walked into a Dollar Store in Jacksonville, Florida, over the weekend. He shot three Black people to pieces because they were Black, according to Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters. He shot himself to death before police arrived. He left behind a cache of writings explaining his “ideology of hate,” Waters said.

He was armed with a semiautomatic rifle (AR-15) and a semiautomatic pistol (Glock). He had bought them legally, though he’d been involved in a “domestic violence incident” in 2016 and had been “involuntarily committed for a 72-hour mental health examination the following year,” the AP reported. Most of the reporting I have seen used the term “racially motivated” to describe the shooting. The AP was the exception.

Racism was the cause.

Before starting, the shooter “texted his father and told him to break into his room and check his computer,” the Associated Press reported. “There, the father found a suicide note, a will and racist writings from his son. The family notified authorities, but by then the shooting had already begun, the sheriff said. Officials say there were writings to his family, federal law enforcement and at least one media outlet. At least one of the guns had swastikas painted on it. Sheriff Waters said that the shooter made clear in his writings that he hated Black people.”

He appears to have acted alone, but only in the sense that no one else, according to authorities, was involved in shooting three Black people to pieces at a Dollar Store in Jacksonville over the weekend. Otherwise, he wasn’t alone. “Lone wolves,” as they are called, are never truly independent. They are part of complex and informal social networks of like-minded “patriots” who believe that nonwhite people are actively disowning “law-abiding citizens” of their American birthright.

*snip*