White Nationalists Expressed Solidarity With El Paso Gunman and Mocked the Victims

Several prominent white nationalists have praised the actions of a gunman who killed 20 people in El Paso after he allegedly posted an online manifesto describing the attack as a response to the "Hispanic invasion of Texas," according to reports.

Patrick Crusius, 21, of Allen, Texas, is accused of traveling hundreds of miles to the town on the U.S.-Mexico border in order to carry out the attack at a Walmart store which also left more than two dozen people injured.

It was later revealed that the suspect appeared to have posted a manifesto on the infamous message board website 8Chan just prior to allegedly committing the massacre.

"We have to attribute that manifesto directly to him," El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said during a press conference, reported the Associated Press. "And so we're going down that road."

8Chan has since gone offline after Cloudflare, an web infrastructure and security company, announced it is pulling support for the site which has "repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate."

The writer of the manifesto detailed how he intended to carry out the attack in order to defend the U.S. from "cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion" as well as discussing "The Great Replacement"—a racist conspiracy theory that claims white people are being systematically replaced in Western countries.

The theory was also discussed in the manifesto attributed to Brenton Tarrant, the Australian accused of killing 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, which he also allegedly posted to 8Chan. The manifesto believed to have been written by Crusius shows support for the Christchurch shooter in its opening line.

As noted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a number of far-right figureheads have praised the actions of the alleged El Paso gunman as well as his reason for doing so.

Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, a prominent writer for the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer who previously called for the slaughter of Jewish children, described how the shooting was justified because the U.S. needs to be shown that "violence against nonwhites is desirable or at least not something worth opposing anyways."

In the comments section beneath an article on The Daily Stormer about the manifesto, Auernheimer added: "There's no way to remove a hundred million people without a massive element of violence."

Kevin MacDonald, an academic described by the Anti-Defamation League an "anti-Semitic tenured professor" who has "explicitly aligned himself with the white supremacist movement," also said he agreed with the suspect's manifesto.

"Agree with the shooter that the Dems see immigration as a path to permanent power and that pro-business elements in the GOP are cooperating," MacDonald tweeted in reference to other lines in the manifesto. "This won't be last bit of violence from people concerned about the Great Replacement. Political elites are playing a very dangerous game."

Sven Laden, who describes himself as a former white nationalist on his Twitter profile despite saying he is one in his tweets, also predicted similar attacks could occur if social media sites continue to remove those who express far-right views from their platforms.

"As WN find themselves increasingly censored and attacked by society at large, young men will feel the need to take action," he tweeted. "The choice is clear, either let us speak and spread our message, or expect an increasingly violent reaction by those who feel like they don't have a voice."

The SPLC also notes that people have also been mocking the victims of the El Paso attacks on messaging apps such as Telegram. One user in particular, who has the pseudonym "Pure Hate," wrote "Clean up in aisle 4!" as a caption to a video believed to have been taken from the scene of the shooting showing one of the dead victims. In a separate post, Pure Hate added: "Hey Bean N*****s case you didn't hear it the first time. Trump said, 'you have to go back. You have to go back."

A former Neo-Nazi turned anti-racism and anti-extremism activist said he believes white nationalist mass shootings will get worse as the far-right will attempt to "outdo each other" in terms of the number of killings.

"I think that manifestos have been very similar since 2009 when James von Brunn walked into the D.C. Holocaust Museum and left a manifesto," Christian Picciolini told CNN. "They all reference the same conspiracy theories…something called 'The Great Replacement' which is this theory that whites are being outbred in America and will be replaced. What's similar about these things is now that they're trying to outdo each other, I think the death toll is going to get bigger and bigger."