Deadly neo-Nazi attacks worsening under increased vitriol | Opinion
USA TODAY has previously reported that a major White supremacist group added hundreds of members across 49 states in the past two years.
The recent deadly attack at a San Diego mosque had all the trappings of a violent neo-Nazi ideology that has grown virulent in modern-day America.
A pair of troubled, gun-toting teenage boys. A lengthy “manifesto” spewing hatred and racist-fueled myths against minorities of all types. A trail of online radicalization and warning signs that reached the FBI and local police months beforehand. A Nazi insignia left at the crime scene. And a live streaming of the attack for some of the shooters’ followers to watch.
Shocking as it was, the attack – which killed three people on May 18 at the Islamic Center of San Diego, including a Muslim security guard whose heroism likely saved 140 children sent into lockdown at the center's school – was no isolated episode.
And as USA TODAY reported June 3, a major White supremacist group called Patriot Front has been adding hundreds of members across 49 states in the past two years.
Hate crimes are now so routine that they don't even get much attention
Hate crimes in America have been soaring for the past decade to record levels, according to FBI data, and the attacks carried out by avowed neo-Nazis are the tip of the spear, representing almost all of the deadliest hate crimes in that time ‒ from a gay night club in Colorado Springs, to a predominantly Black grocery store in Buffalo, New York, to the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh to a heavily Hispanic Walmart in El Paso, and many others.
The mosque attack wasn’t even the first major neo-Nazi assault on a religious institution in the seaside city of San Diego. A Jewish synagogue was attacked seven years ago, with one longtime congregant killed by 19-year-old John Earnest, an overachiever who studied classical piano and was studying nursing in college, but had become swept up by what he saw was the coming “destruction” of the White race by minorities.
“I only wish I killed more,” wrote Earnest, one of a new generation of neo-Nazis raised on hatred.
There’ve been a slew of neo-Nazi episodes around the country in recent months, but they’ve become so routine – political figures invoking Hitler or others getting arrested for acts of violence in his name – that many don’t even get much notice.
Just in April, a 23-year-old neo-Nazi in Michigan was sentenced to prison after he shot up some cars in his neighborhood, vandalizing one with anti-gay slurs. That led police to discover a cache of weapons and tactical military gear in his apartment and a written plan to commit “mass murder” against Jews and gays, along with a photo of him holding a copy of "Mein Kampf," and an Israeli flag with a Nazi swastika and the words “Death to You All” scribbled on it.
Free speech vs. hate speech
In the attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego, authorities said, 18-year-old Caleb Vasquez and 17-year-old Cain Clark left behind a 75-page manifesto titled “Sons of Tarrant” – an homage to Brenton Tarrant, the man who killed 51 Muslims in attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.
Their writings and the live streaming of the shooting are still floating around on the internet on sites like X, free to inspire other neo-Nazi wannabes with their vile, hateful myths, lies and violent attacks.
That’s part of the problem. Before Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X, social media sites like his had imposed some pretense of guardrails against hate speech. Now those safeguards have been all but abandoned in the name of “free speech” after Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook and Instagram, largely capitulated to President Donald Trump’s complaints about being thrown off social media for inciting violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has given neo-Nazis a place of special influence time and again in his two terms as president, from his support for a debunked myth about pet-eating Haitians in Ohio, to his praise of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Jan. 6 rioters, including hundreds of members of flag-waving white-supremacist groups, celebrated the mass pardons that Trump issued them after their convictions and, in May, a piece of the now-blocked $1.8 billion settlement that many expected to receive.
Trump, asked by a reporter about the San Diego attack, said, “It’s a terrible situation.” But his words rang hollow after years of bashing minorities in dehumanizing ways. Muslims have been a particularly scathing target of Trump and other Republicans in Congress, with him seizing on a fraud scandal in Minnesota to label the state’s 80,000 Somalis as “crooks,” “garbage” and other slurs rarely if ever heard from any sitting president.
The response has been predictable: Civil rights groups in Minnesota reported record numbers of attacks on mosques and Muslim targets, and that was before the fatal shooting in San Diego.
The air was heavy with grief in Baltimore in late May as Muslim leaders from around the country met for their annual conference. The leaders spoke of all the anti-Muslim rhetoric in Washington, giving a “green light” to the kind of violence carried out by the neo-Nazis in San Diego, and they called for a change in tone.
Sadly, there’s little reason in this political climate to think that will happen any time soon.
Eric Lichtblau is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the new book "American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate."