Thomas Matthew Crooks: Registered Republican and gun lover who shot Trump
www.telegraph.co.uk
The FBI says it has not yet identified a motive for the shooting

Archive

Open-source intelligence analysts reported that Crooks didn’t appear to use mainstream social media channels such as Facebook or Instagram and had an almost negligible internet footprint, which is highly unusual for a 20-year-old. Instead, analysts said that Crooks corresponded with friends and associates on a Discord server that they were now trying to access.

Discord servers are restricted ring-fenced sections of the internet. They are often used by gaming groups and communities as secure chat rooms but are also used by fringe organisations to push their ideologies and discuss wild conspiracy theories and plots.

  • JusticeEnglish
    80·
    2 months ago

    The FBI says it has not yet identified a motive for the shooting

    I suggest checking the last ~6-12 months of his 4chan history. Key word searches to try: “Trump Zionist” “Kushner” “Fuentes”

    I suppose on the positive side, probably some of the clammiest, palest groypers in existence will be getting some door knocks in coming weeks and months.

    On the extremely negative side, if the guy is 100% confirmed a groyper and his motive is anything in the realm of “Trump supports Israel” or whatever… ain’t gonna be good for future anti-Zionist movements.

    Not that the future was ever bright considering how they’ve reacted to peaceful sit-ins. But yeah, anything groyper related and against Israel (for explicitly antisemitic reasons) will be lumped with anti-imperialism/anti-genocide related resistance to Israel. Very convenient packaging to barrel right past the unavoidable truth of the peaceful nature thus far of anti-Zionist moments. Yes it’s totally nonsensical, but if it aids Zionist narratives that both parties share, it’s too tempting.

    • rainpizzaEnglish
      71·
      2 months ago

      Apparently the shooter said the following in his twitter bio before it got scrubbed: “on a mission from God (cross emoji) to end Epstien’s evil empire”

    • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      30·
      2 months ago

      I guess I’m out of the loop on this. It makes sense upon reading it however. So the theory is, based on your analysis, that because he was off mainstream social media, and associated with gun culture that he was likely on the neo-nazi pipeline.

      This pipeline involving an antisemitic anti-zionist framework, that believes support for Israel is support for white genocide in effect. Is this a widely held view among groypers?

      • JusticeEnglish
        30·
        2 months ago

        To the last part, yes, basically. They hate Israel because (this is me summing up a lot of disconnected “ideologies” from them):

        -Israel is Jewish. -They hate Jews. -Zionist=Judaism.

        Some of them, although all this stuff is very disjointed, believe that Trump is like a “Jewish puppet” (they will sometimes substitute Zionist with the intention of meaning Jewish. They do not distinguish a difference. All Jews are Zionists loyal to Israel to them. Classic antisemitic stuff). His son in law, Jared Kushner, was in charge of a lot of foreign policy stuff in the Middle East including the treaty that was meant to full solidify the alliance and support from the surrounding Arab countries like Saudi Arabia with Israel. This was interrupted by partly 1) Trump losing re-election but mostly 2) recent Palestinian resistance starting on Oct 7 last year. The groypers see this as Kushner, who is Jewish, manipulating Trump or Trump working in cooperation with “the Jews”, however they want to frame it, to sell out America to the “the Jews” and “the Arabs.” They see America as a place that should be only white people, which apparently now includes Hispanic whites and not just anglo/germanic whites (crazy developments are emerging in Nazi ideology), and has no Jews, they belong in Israel, which the US should have no role in supporting (or killing the Jews outright, again, depending on the relative insanity), no black people, brown skinned Hispanic, Latino, no indigenous, no Asians… you get get gist. Typical Nazi stuff.

        But yeah the hangup with them specifically is Trump/US support of Israel and their deep racist hatred of Jews. It’s basically like if the racist republicans were fully ideologically consistent in their racism… you get a groyper who wants absolutely nothing to do with Jews or anything even associated with Judaism.

        Some of them do hesitantly, lightly support Trump btw. I believe Fuentes has been on record as supporting Trump as sort of a means to an end transitional figure. He said something like “we elect Trump twice and then we have no more elections” like he will form an actual empire, dissolve the republic, Rome style, and then the next person will be a “based anti-Jewish groyper.” Or whatever.

        Now I must go shower.

          • JusticeEnglish
            23·
            2 months ago

            I understand the comparison there, but I gotta reject it based on the implied (or direct?) comparison between groypers, who explicitly want to do genocide, to “bernie bros” and further left who want crazy things like free healthcare for all, improved material conditions for the poor, ending or least heavily drawing down US imperialism, etc.

            And with groypers, they are so comically “evil” in their espoused beliefs that it is pretty easy to just go “oh, no. No no no. Fuck that entire group.” And yeah yeah everyone is a product of their environment and material conditions, including those losers, but so were the Nazis. So I can simultaneously lament the fact they are lost to darkness, while also knowing their existence is a threat to the lives of a lot of people I care about and probably me too as a “traitor”

            I just don’t like making these comparisons because you end up with like “so Stalin was like Hitler, but with a different ideology?” Ok. Maybe. But what were their ideologies? One was pure evil and one was good.

            I’m not saying that was your intent, but that’s why I don’t accept those comparisons. “Somethings are good and somethings are bad” logic applies.