Let's Talk About the Radicalization of Young White Males Online
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No sympathy for her:mjsmile::mjsmile::mjsmile:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/articl...e-yoga-shooter-incel-far-right-misogyny-video
Tallahassee Yoga Shooter Was A Far-Right Misogynist Who Railed Against Women And Minorities Online
Scott Beierle killed two women at a Florida yoga studio on Friday night. He had posted a series of misogynistic videos and songs online, and appeared to identify as an “involuntarily celibate." This is the second deadly attack by an “involuntarily celibate” in 2018.
David Mack
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Amber Jamieson
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Julia Reinstein
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on November 3, 2018, at 4:14 p.m. ET
Posted on November 3, 2018, at 3:27 p.m. ET
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Mark Wallheiser / Getty Images
The man who shot dead two women at a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida, on Friday before killing himself was a far-right extremist and self-proclaimed misogynist who railed against women, black people, and immigrants in a series of online videos and songs.
Scott Beierle, 40, was named by Tallahassee Police as the gunman who opened fire inside the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio, killing two and injuring four other women and a man.
Those killed were named as Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, 61, who worked at Florida State University's College of Medicine, and FSU student Maura Binkley, 21.
On a YouTube channel in 2014, Beierle filmed several videos of himself offering extremely racist and misogynistic opinions in which he called women “sluts” and “whores,” and lamented “the collective treachery” of girls he went to high school with.
“There are whores in — not only every city, not only every town, but every village,” he said, referring to women in interracial relationships, who he said had betrayed “their blood.”
Officer Damon Miller of the Tallahassee Police Department said he could not tell BuzzFeed News whether women were specifically targeted in the attack or whether these online posts were the subject of detectives’ inquiries.
“Everything that he has a connection to we're investigating right now," Miller said.
Police said they were still investigating a motive, but noted Beierle had previously been investigated for harassing women.
In one video called “Plight of the Adolescent Male,” he named Elliot Rodger, who killed six people and injured 14 and is often seen as a hero for so-called “incels,” or those who consider themselves “involuntarily celibate.”
“I’d like to send a message now to the adolescent males... that are in the position, the situation, the disposition of Elliot Rodger, of not getting any, no love, no nothing. This endless wasteland that breeds this longing and this frustration. That was me, certainly, as an adolescent,” he said.
This is the second deadly attack this year in which Rodger has been mentioned by the suspected assailant. A man who wrote anti-women references on his Facebook account allegedly killed 10 people in Toronto in April when he drove his van into a crowd. “The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” Alek Minassian wrote on Facebook prior to the attack in a post that also mentioned “the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”
Some in the incel community have previously raged against women wearing yoga pants.
YouTube
Another of Beierle’s 2014 videos was titled “The Rebirth of my Misogynism,” and featured him listing the names of women — from eighth grade until his time in the Army — who he said caused his “rebirth.” (A Pentagon spokesperson told BuzzFeed News Beierle served from 2008-2010).
In the video he said women were capable of “treachery” and “lying.” He spoke aggressively about women giving him their phone number even when they had a boyfriend and how angry it made him. He also mentioned a girl who cancelled dates on him. “I could have ripped her head off,” he said.
Unlike the YouTube videos, his songs on Soundcloud were all uploaded in the last few months. Shortly before Friday’s shooting, Beierle uploaded one song called “fukk ’Em All,” with the lyrics: “To hell with the boss that won’t get off my back / To hell with the girl I can’t get in the sack.”
Another song, called “Nobody’s Type,” featured him lamenting that women didn’t find him attractive. “I’m no athletic shark. I’m not a physical specimen. I don’t win the trophies and medals. Nobody stands in awe of me,” he sang.
In “American Wigger,” he sang that he would “blow off” the head of a women he referred to using the c-word. The song “Locked in my Basement” featured an extremely disturbing tale of Beierle holding a woman prisoner in his basement using chains so he could rape her.
Representatives for YouTube and Soundcloud didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Beierle’s political affiliations were not immediately clear, but he was highly critical of the Obama administration in his 2014 videos. In one video, he said that he resented having to subsidize as a taxpayer “the casual sex lives of slutty girls” through the Affordable Care Act’s contraception provisions. In the same video he also criticized “the invasion of Central American children” in the US that year and said the migrants seeking asylum should be deported on barges.
The Tallahassee shooting comes after a spate of deadly violence from the far-right in the past two weeks. On Oct. 27, a far-right extremist shouting anti-Semitic phrases opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11. That came just three days after a man shot dead two black people in Louisville, Kentucky, in an attack authorities have described as a hate crime.
In a punk song he made called “Don’t Shame,” Beierle sang of walking into a girl’s locker room and going on “ass-grabbing rampage of underage girls.” He also spoke about grabbing women in the song “Handful of Bare Ass.” The Tallahassee Democrat newspaper reported he had been arrested in 2012 and 2016 for grabbing women’s buttocks without their consent. Prosecutors eventually dropped charges in both cases, according to the newspaper.
“I have no shame, but this is to blame. I would do anything. I just don’t care. I have no fear of any consequences,” he sang.
“I am pro-death," the song continued. "The more that die the merrier."
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
What happen
FBI now classifies far-right Proud Boys as 'extremist group', documents say
theguardian.com
FBI now classifies far-right Proud Boys as 'extremist group', documents say
Jason Wilson
8-10 minutes
The FBI now classifies the far-right Proud Boys as an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism”, according to a document produced by Washington state law enforcement.
The FBI’s 2018 designation of the self-confessed “western chauvinist group” as extremist has not been previously made public.
The Proud Boys was founded by the Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes. McInnes has insisted that his group is not white nationalist or “alt-right” but the Proud Boys have a history of misogyny and glorifying violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists them as a hate group.
The document also says: “The FBI has warned local law enforcement agencies that the Proud Boys are actively recruiting in the Pacific north-west”, and: “Proud Boys members have contributed to the recent escalation of violence at political rallies held on college campuses, and in cities like Charlottesville, Virginia, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.”
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The report, and the FBI’s warning to south-west Washington police agencies about the Proud Boys’ role in escalating violence at these events came in August, two months before the group was involved in an infamous weekend of street violence in New York City and Portland, and not long after they participated in street violence in downtown Portland on 30 June.
The document, provided to the Guardian by the government transparency non-profit Property of the People, was part of an internal affairs investigation into a probationary deputy in the Clark county sheriff’s department.
The former clark county deputy, Erin Willey, was fired last July after a photo of her wearing a “Proud Boys Girls” sweatshirt was published by the Vancouver, Washington newspaper the Columbian. The Proud Boys Girls is the female auxiliary of the men-only group founded by McInnes in 2016.
The author of the document, headquarters commander Michael McCabe, is in charge of internal affairs, training, background investigation and courthouse security in the Clark county sheriff’s department.
After confirming the authenticity of the document, he told the Guardian in a telephone interview that the FBI’s classification of the Proud Boys as an extremist group was revealed to him in “a briefing we were given by the FBI” on 2 August, at Clark county’s west precinct.
The briefing included agency heads from local law enforcement, and in it the FBI said that they “have been warning [local law enforcement] for a while” about the Proud Boys, “not just in Washington but around the nation”.
The briefing including the Proud Boys was delivered by an FBI analyst, according to information forwarded to the Guardian by McCabe.
It touched on topics including “How the FBI tracks hate/extremist groups”, “Brief history of these groups in the Pacific NW”, “A description of currently active groups with a focus on the Portland/Vancouver area”, and “Current trends or concerns over law enforcement officers/employees involvement with these groups”.
The document says that Willey was an active Proud Boys Girls member between November 2016 and October 2017, and in February 2017 she “actively participated in the manufacturing, advertising and selling of Proud Boys Girls’ merchandise on a website”.
The document concludes that membership in the Proud Boys may constitute a violation of the Clark county sheriff’s department oath to support and protect the laws of the United States, since Proud Boys “members have been documented as having called for the closure of all prisons, the issuing of firearms to everyone, the legalization of all drugs, the deportation of all illegal immigrants and the shutdown of the government”.
Another concern expressed in the document produced by McCabe – which was handed to the sheriff, Chuck E Atkins, so he could make a decision on Willey’s future in the department – was the possibility that the deputy’s membership in the group would constitute a so-called “Brady violation”.
The Brady doctrine requires prosecutors to disclose any potentially exculpatory evidence to defenses in the discovery phase of criminal trials.
Membership in the Proud Boys, the document says, may constitute “evidence that a deputy is biased or has some motive to lie” which could constitute a prosecutorial risk.
According to the report, Willey was placed on administrative leave after the Columbian contacted the sheriff’s department on 2 July. She was fired on 17 July, before the report was completed, and just before the Columbian published its story.
The report also states Willey’s belief that the photo of her in a Proud Boys sweatshirt was given to the Columbian by her former boyfriend, and “active Proud Boy member”, Graham Jorgensen.
Jorgensen has been a regular participant in rallies organized by the Clark county-based Patriot Prayer group, whose events have included Proud Boys, and which have frequently culminated in violence.
Other law enforcement agencies have discovered Proud Boys in their midst and responded in a similar manner. A month after Willey was fired, Brian Green, a patrol deputy in Louisiana, was also let go after social media posts revealed his allegiance to the group.
Willey and Jorgensen could not be reached for comment.
In Clark county, Proud Boys have been integral to the Patriot Prayer movement, which organizes rightwing street marches and rallies in Portland, Seattle, Vancouver and other cities in the Pacific north-west.
Asked about the apparent high level of Proud Boy activity and rightwing organizing in Clark county, McCabe said: “I think both as an agency and me, personally, we worry about that.
“Anybody who has watched the news recently can see that the United States appears divided. Any time you are dealing with groups who are espousing hate, it’s certainly a concern for law enforcement,” he added.
McCabe pointed to a joint statement by Atkins and the Clark county prosecuting attorney Tony Golik in the wake of reporting on Willey’s firing.
In that statement, the men said in part: “We reject hate, bigotry, harassment, violence or the inciting of violence, and all actions intended to harm or intimidate others.”
The FBI did not directly address the designation or the briefing in response to specific email questions, but did say that while “the FBI does not and will not police ideology”, the agency “regularly assesses intelligence regarding possible threats and works closely to share that information with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners”.
A deluge of 'red-pilled' rage: Young white men are being radicalized online and acting out violently
Three weeks ago, less than a mile from my home in Seattle, a young man named Buckey Wolfe I had seen from time to time at Proud Boys gatherings in Seattle got into an argument with his brother. He had come to believe this brother was a “lizard person,” à la the crackpot David Icke conspiracy theory. So Buckey took a four-foot sword and stabbed his brother in the head with it, killing him instantly.
It’s reminiscent of another Northwest case I’ve been covering for the past couple of years: Lane Davis, aka “Seattle4Truth,” a onetime researcher for Yiannopoulos and key Gamergate figure who, one afternoon at the home he shared with his parents in rural Samish Island, got into a horrendous argument with his father. The row, which involved Lane’s accusations that his parents were participants in the supposed global pedophilia ring around which the Pizzagate conspiracy theories revolve, culminated with Lane pulling out a large kitchen knife and stabbing his father to death.
Davis eventually pleaded guilty to murder and is now serving a 17-year prison sentence. His mental health was never in question—though the wild-eyed, angry behavior he exhibited the night of his father’s death was anything but normal.
These are not the only cases. Indeed, the list is already long, and it just keeps growing. A sampling:
- In December 2018, a self-described misogynist named Scott Paul Beierle, 40, who devoted hours to online rants against feminists, and whom women considered “really creepy,” went to a Tallahassee, Florida, yoga studio with a gun and opened fire, killing two women and wounding five more. He then killed himself.
- A Tacoma, Washington, man named Jeremy Shaw, along with his wife Lorena, who had become enamored of far-right “sovereign citizen” theories and neo-Nazism (he named his company Aryan Enterprises) plotted the murder of a man who owned a property in a rural wooded section of Renton. After bludgeoning the man to death, the couple attempted to take possession of his home. They also sold off his Star Trek memorabilia.
- In November 2018, a 15-year-old boy named Gregory Ramos who spent most of his time online in video games and chat rooms strangled his mother, Gail Cleavenger, 46, to death following an argument over his bad grades. Ramos was a devoted alt-righter with a “Kekistan” flag as the chief decoration on his Facebook page.
- A teenager from Santa Fe, Texas, named Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, entered his high school on May 18, 2018, and opened fire with a variety of guns on his fellow students, killing 10 people and wounding 13. It emerged shortly afterwards that he favored neo-Nazi imagery in his social media posts, along with white-power music bands.
- In Parkland, Florida, a 17-year-old named Nikolas Cruz entered his school on Feb. 14, 2018, and opened fire with an AR-15, killing 17 people and wounding another 17. Cruz also devoted hours to online chat rooms, where he was known to obsess about race, guns, and violence, and frequently espoused racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBT sentiments.
- In December 2017, a Virginia teen caught up in white nationalism online entered the home of his girlfriend in suburban Washington, D.C., killed both of her parents, then shot himself, though not fatally. The parents had tried to keep the teens apart because of his racist beliefs. The boy currently awaits trial in Virginia.
What all these cases have in common is not just that the perpetrators are white, and male, and relatively young, and not just that they all are fueled by far-right ideology. The thread among them that may be the most significant is that every one of these young white men has been radicalized online.
They call it “red-pilling,” as though they are the Neos of The Matrix in their own lives and they’re awakening to the reality of a world run by nefarious conspiracies. It’s a conceit with a toxic double bind: Once you believe you see this new reality, then reality itself becomes unmoored.
These theories all tell the same larger narrative: that the world is secretly run by a nefarious cabal of globalists (who just happen to be Jewish), and that they employ an endless catalog of dirty tricks and "false flags" to ensure the world doesn’t know about its manipulations, the whole point of which ultimately is the enslavement of mankind. Each day’s news events can thus be interpreted through the up-is-down prism this worldview imposes, ensuring that every national tragedy or mass shooting is soon enmeshed in a web of theories about its real purpose.
The radical Right itself has little compunction about identifying its target demographic for red-pilling. Andrew Anglin, publisher and founder of the neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer, asserted last year, "My site is mainly designed to target children." At the annual white-nationalist American Renaissance conference in Tennessee in April 2018, longtime supremacists bragged about their demographic support: "American Renaissance attendees are now younger and more evenly divided among the sexes than in the past," one speaker noted, before gushing over the white-nationalist college campus group Identity Evropa.
When authorities, both in the U.S. and abroad, have talked about online radicalization in the recent past, most of us have tended to think of it in terms of radical Islamists from groups such as the Islamic State, who have been known to leverage the technology to their advantage, particularly social media. A study by terrorism expert J.M. Berger published in 2016 found that white nationalists were far outstripping their Islamist counterparts, however: "On Twitter, ISIS’s preferred social platform, American white nationalist movements have seen their followers grow by more than 600 percent since 2012. Today, they outperform ISIS in nearly every social metric, from follower counts to tweets per day."
“Online radicalization seems to be speeding up, with young men, particularly white men, diving into extremist ideologies quicker and quicker," Berger said, adding that "the result seems to be more violence, as these examples indicate. It is a serious problem and we don’t seem to have any real solutions for it. These cases also show that an era of violence brought on by the internet is indeed upon us, with no end in sight.”
The radicalization process itself often begins with seemingly benign activity, such as spending hours in chat rooms or playing computer games, and these activities provide a kind of cover for the process as it accelerates.
Think of the young men in MAGA hats who surrounded and harassed a Native American man in Washington, D.C., recently. Much of the uproar that followed was undergirded by a general recognition that what many of us saw was a cluster of young radicalized white men—the nascent stages of the process. And the right-wing blowback over that furor, in which liberals were derided as trying to attack innocent young white men, was immense.
Regardless of the political orientation of this radicalization, what we also know is that the red-pilling process has a singularly unhinging effect. In cases of men such as Buckey Wolfe, it’s difficult to unspool the interaction of the conspiracism with pre-existing mental illness. In cases such as those of Lane Davis and Gregory Ramos, the line is much clearer. The conspiracy theories themselves have a powerful effect of socially and politically isolating the people who fall down their rabbit holes, and their content often fuels a hyperirrational anger that eventually expresses itself in violence.
What’s also clear is that it is happening right in front of our eyes. And for some reason, no one wants to talk about it.
Great thread.