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Unrepentant and Radicalized Online: A Look at the Trial of Dylann Roof (SPLC)
December 19, 2016
Dylann Roof’s plan was simple. The 21-year-old wanted to start a race war, following the same demented path as infamous white supremacists before him.
He bought a .45 caliber Glock handgun with money his parents gave him for his 21st birthday and practiced shooting in his South Carolina backyard, taking selfies of himself with Confederate flags. Then, like an increasing number of extremists bent on racial violence, Roof decided to be a lone wolf.
He made a list of potential targets, ultimately picking one of the oldest, historically significant black churches in the South where he hoped to kill as many parishioners as possible. He took along 88 hollow-point bullets, symbolizing Heil Hitler, hoping his act would precipitate racial violence. He expected to encounter police, so he saved a few bullets for himself, intending to commit suicide like so many mass killers have done.
While his storyline may sound familiar to other premeditated acts of U.S. racial violence, there is one largely new component. He wasn’t radicalized by shaving his head bald and joining a neo-Nazi skinhead gang.He didn’t attend Ku Klux Klan rallies to soak up hatred around burning crosses. Nor did he attend Aryan Nations churches where the racist religion of Christian Identity is preached. Dylann Storm Roof learned to hate online.
...
He bought a .45 caliber Glock handgun with money his parents gave him for his 21st birthday and practiced shooting in his South Carolina backyard, taking selfies of himself with Confederate flags. Then, like an increasing number of extremists bent on racial violence, Roof decided to be a lone wolf.
He made a list of potential targets, ultimately picking one of the oldest, historically significant black churches in the South where he hoped to kill as many parishioners as possible. He took along 88 hollow-point bullets, symbolizing Heil Hitler, hoping his act would precipitate racial violence. He expected to encounter police, so he saved a few bullets for himself, intending to commit suicide like so many mass killers have done.
While his storyline may sound familiar to other premeditated acts of U.S. racial violence, there is one largely new component. He wasn’t radicalized by shaving his head bald and joining a neo-Nazi skinhead gang.He didn’t attend Ku Klux Klan rallies to soak up hatred around burning crosses. Nor did he attend Aryan Nations churches where the racist religion of Christian Identity is preached. Dylann Storm Roof learned to hate online.
...
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/12/19/unrepentant-and-radicalized-online-look-trial-dylann-roof