FBI Mistaken That "Lone Wolves" Racist Killers Act Alone; Proof Shows White Nationalists Are the Driving Force
By Clarence Walker
The threat of domestic racial hatred terrorism remains high in this country, particularly the danger posed by white power extremists who undoubtedly believe the white race are gradually being replaced by people of color and dark-skin foreigners. Where the problem lie is when FBI investigators and other law enforcement agencies believes that when a mass killer is motivated by hatred for another person's race, and, if the killer act alone, they're the lone wolf type, which means the person aren't connected or influenced by other hate groups. Rather than having direct connections to others the individual radicalize themselves which police calls these people the lone wolf.https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/248691.pdf
Wrong!
And the evidence proves it.
Besides other teachings gleaned from different extremists most white power groups have also followed the teachings of White Nationalist Louis Beam. Beam wrote the engaging essay "Leaderless Resistance" calling for those in the extremist movement to act alone or in smaller groups undetectable to law enforcement.
After the release of Beam's essay formulating his idea, both far-right extremists and law enforcement continually used the lone wolf term. For instance, in 1998, FBI initiated the "Operation Lone Wolf" to investigate a West Coast White Supremacist cell. Further, the 9/11 terrorist attacks convinced U.S. government to laser focus on the movements of the Islamic Militant lone wolves. Shortly afterwards, the term "lone wolf" grew into the mainstream media as a regular catch-phrase. These days the technology is the most powerful tool for anyone to communicate with "hundreds of thousands" and even more.
"The online environment serves terrorists in several valuable ways," said Daniel Byman, a professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at Brookings Institute. "It gives them very easy reach. Ideas kind of ricochet around the world very rapidly and people can form communities around the world."
According to FBI statistics, a hate crime happens almost every hour in America. On May 14, 2022, Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old while male drove to Tops Friendly Grocery Store in a predominately Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. In a bizarre twisted way, Gendron, armed with a high-powered assault rifle, manage to film himself shooting to death 11 Black citizens and two whites, including a retired police officer and a 86-year-old woman who arrived at the store after visiting her lifelong husband in a nearby nursing home.
In another act, more empathic than anything, Gendron apologize to a white gentleman for aiming the gun at him. The shootings in Buffalo and in El Paso, Texas, where Patrick Cruisus, a white male murdered 23 Mexicans at a Walmart were investigated as racially motivated violent extremism. What is important is that when FBI agents discuss the threats of domestic extremism motivated by racial hatred the agents refer to "lone actors", better described as stated the "lone wolves". Prior to the mass shootings in Buffalo, FBI DIrector Chris Wray made an announcement saying, "lone actors" is the greatest terrorist threat we face."
Therefore, it wasn't a big surprise after the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York State Senator James Sanders said," "Although this is probably a lone-wolf incident, this is not the first mass shooting we have seen, and sadly it will not be the last."
Following my own decades of research of several race-related attacks that left countless people dead the results is that extremists are generally part of a pack, not always lone wolves. The recurring myth of the lone wolf shooter remains highly controversial in media coverage after mass racially motivated shootings or diabolical acts of far-right extremist violence. Since the lone wolf myth distracts people from the actual motivation of extremist violence it prevents people from fully understanding the root cause of the evil crimes carried out by extremists.
"This is why such attacks have become difficult to prevent," said Seth Jones, senior vice president of CSIS(Center for Strategic and International Studies). "Unlike the 9/11 terrorist attack which was an actual plot by an organized group, the vast majority of attacks and plots that we see in the United States are happening by individuals, or a very small network of individuals that make a decision to use violence," Jones told ABC News.
Jones further explained that leaderless resistance tactics are designed to be difficult to track, allowing violent plots and motives to slip under the radar. "The problem is the plots are not orchestrated, planned, and then executed by the leaders of any of these organizations," he said. "They're essentially foot soldiers or individuals that have been reading their propaganda online or interacting with people in person. Jones said the lone wolf theory "ignores the captive audience of white supremacists who remain in the wake of such a tragedy. It's a much bigger issue than we're seeing just with these particular attacks," Jones concluded.
Rise of Hate Groups
The rise of hate groups and the increase in the statistics of hate crimes in the U.S. is no doubt an epidemic. For the last 20 years, hate groups in the U.S. increased by over 100%. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2019/year-hate-rage-against-change
Hate groups rose sharply during the middle of Barack Obama's second term and continued to rise when Donald Trump became president. Statistics also show hate crimes swelled over 200% in areas where Trump campaigned in 2016.
Guns Used to Commit Racial Violence
Many domestic terrorists like Buffalo mass killer Payton Gendron and the Walmart killer Patrick Crusius possess the same racial ideology as other white nationalists. Between 2012 and 2021, almost three in four murders classified as domestic terrorism were committed by right-wing extremists whom the majority were white nationalists.https://www.adl.org/resources/report/murder-and-extremism-united-states-2021?
In 2020, 55% of perpetrators of hate crimes were white, 21% were Black, and 16% were of unknown ethnicity. On another note, sixty-two percent of hate crimes involved race/ethnicity, while nearly 25% related to sexual orientation/gender identity, and 13% related to religion.
White supremacists regularly use fear of their status and being replaced in this country by non-whites as justification for violence against people of minority status. Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron not only engrave the "N"-word and-- "Here's Your Reparations" on his rifle, but he also wrote the number 14 on the weapon of mass destruction. Why did Gendron have the Number 14 on his weapon? Well here's why: the number 14 is often used to symbolize a white supremacist slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." Those words relates to their replacement theory, which symbolize the ideological assumption that white people will someday sooner than later become extinct and lose economic and political power.
Louis Beam & The Leaderless Resistance
Southern Poverty Law Center previously reported how Louis Beam, a notorious White Supremacist, mentored domestic terrorists, popularized the concept of Leaderless Resistance, and helped guide the White Supremacist movement into technology age. Beam wrote the widely circulated essay highlighting the leaderless resistance. "Leaderless resistance has had a much more catastrophic impact in clouding public understanding of white power as a social movement," Historian Professor and Author Kathleen Belew testified before Congress in a 2019 hearing about certain discreet tactics that have allowed extremism to remain mostly in the shadows. "This movement connected neo-Nazis, Klansmen, Skinheads, radical tax protesters, militia members, and others," Belew told Congresshttps://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/louis-beam.
Written in Beam's essay he called for far-right extremists to act individually or in small groups that couldn't be traced up a chain of command. According to Timothy McVeigh's lawyer, McVeigh was one of those influenced by Beam's call to act.
False Lone Wolf: Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh
Far-right extremists, for most part, have always networked and identify with the causes of larger racist groups. Long before the social media age we had Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was falsely depicted as the lone wolf madman who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995, killing 168 people, 19 of whom were children, and injured more than 680 victims. Contrary to being labeled a lone wolf mass killer, McVeigh, in fact, was part of a pack. He had accomplices and was connected across the far-right extremist movement. And, so was, Gendron and Crusius, who had been labeled in the worldwide media as lone wolves.
The media and law enforcement were wrong again.
Both Gendron and Crusius were active on far-right extremist social media channels and they posted manifestos before attacking their targets. Gendron's manifesto discussed how he became radicalized on the dark web and that he inspired to attack after watching videos of Brenton Tarrant's 2019 massacre of 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Evidence showed that large portions of Gendron's manifesto was copied 'word for word' from Tarrant's manifesto that was titled "The Great Replacement." The fear of white replacement, perceived of white decline, motivated Walmart killer Patrick Cruisus. Cruisus's manifesto gave much praise to Tarrant, which indicated his attack was "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas." Dylan Roof is another described as a lone wolf white supremacist killer who murdered nine Black people in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015. Roof's influence came deeply from within the wells of evil white supremacist. Roof confessed he committed the murders to ignite a race war.
Rutgers University Professor Alexander Hinton who wrote the book, "It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the U.S., Hinton wrote an article about the lone wolf theory in mass racial shootings that was published online in The Conversation,in which, he said:
"The tenacity of the lone wolf myth has several sources. It’s convenient – evocative and powerful enough to draw and keep people’s attention. By using this term, which individualizes extremism, law enforcement officials may also depoliticize their work. Instead of focusing on movements like white nationalism that have sympathizers in the various levels of government, from sheriffs to senators, they focus on individuals." Criticizing FBI Chris Wray stance on the lone wolf theory, Hinton said Wray 's mistaken idea continue to inform research, law enforcement and the popular imagination.
Hinton added: "The lone wolf extremist myth diverts from what should be the focus of deterrence efforts: understanding how far-right extremists network, organize and, as the Jan. 6 insurrection showed, build coalitions across diverse groups, especially through the use of social media. Such understanding provides a basis for developing long-term strategies to prevent extremists like Gendron and Crusius from carrying out more violent attacks."
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