[ad_1]
Breaking News Emails
Receive last minute alerts and special reports. News and stories that matter, delivered the mornings of the week.
SUBSCRIBE
By Ben Collins and Andrew Blankstein
An anti-Semitic open letter published under the name of a man suspected of having opened fire on a synagogue near San Diego on Saturday remained posted on a far-right bulletin board a few hours before the attack.
San Diego police confirmed one dead and three injured Saturday in the Chabad of Poway shooting on the last day of Passover.
Several sources of law enforcement have confirmed to NBC News that the San Diego police had detained John T. Earnest after the shooting.
A user identifying himself as John Earnest posted a white nationalist open letter on the 8chan far right message board. He also used the user name "JohnTEarnest" to publish the letter on a document hosting site.
The link to the antisemitic note was put online shortly after 9:00 am on Saturday, and posted to 8chan, accompanied by a link to a Facebook page and stating "a live stream will begin shortly".
There is no active link to a livestream on his Facebook page. The publication also includes a link of songs that the poster had to play during the stream.
The 8chans post seems almost identical to the one that Brenton Tarrant left hours before opening fire on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. It even contains links to the same document filing sites, PasteBin and MediaFire, to host the open letter.
The format and tone of the attached note are similar to those of Tarrant, who killed 49 people last month. The shooter Robert Bowers of the Tarrant and Pittsburgh synagogue is cited as a source of direct inspiration in the letter, which is riddled with anti-Semitic tropes and a plea for white supremacy.
The letter states that the shooter began planning his attack shortly after the Tarrant attack. Like Tarrant's message, it follows a question and answer format.
The shooter says in the Q-and-A section to avoid political ideology, saying he does not support Donald Trump because of his support for Israel. The author also complains that the Conservatives are not violent enough to support their policy.
Shortly after the publication, 8 users welcomed the poster of the note. The first response encouraged the user to "get a high score". The letter repeatedly attributes to 8chan the radicalization of the writer.
Facebook has removed the linked profile by 8chan several hours after the shoot. Before the page was lowered, the white nationalists descended on the page, leaving messages to the shooter.
The shooting outside San Diego took place Saturday, six months after the day Robert Bowers, a white anti-Semitic nationalist who attended extremist forums, killed 11 people in a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
[ad_2]
Source link