Nineteen minutes before the first 911 call alerted the authorities to a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, a hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto appeared online.
It spoke of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”. It detailed a plan to separate America into territories by race. It warned that white people were being replaced by foreigners.
The authorities were scrutinising the 2,300-word screed on Saturday and attempting to determine whether it was written by the same man who killed 20 people and injured more than two dozen others near the Mexican border.
Police officers were interviewing the suspect, Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old white man from Allen, Texas, a 10-hour drive to the Walmart.
The manifesto that may be linked to Crusius described an imminent attack and railed against immigrants, saying, “if we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable”.
From New Zealand to Pittsburgh to a synagogue in Poway, California, aggrieved white men over the last several months have turned to mass murder in service of hatred against immigrants, Jews and others they perceive as threats to the white race.
The unsigned manifesto, titled “The Inconvenient Truth”, draws direct inspiration from the mass murder at two mosques in New Zealand in March that left 51 people dead. In that attack, the alleged killer published a manifesto online promoting a white supremacist theory called “the great replacement”. The theory has been promoted by a French writer named Renaud Camus, and argues that elites in Europe have been working to replace white Europeans with immigrants from West Asia and North Africa.
Christchurch has become a rallying cry for extremists the world over. The manifesto potentially linked to the El Paso killings begins, “In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
The gunman who opened fire in April at a synagogue in Poway, California, near San Diego, posted an anti-Semitic diatribe on 8chan, the same online message board where the El Paso document surfaced.
The El Paso shooting, if the manifesto is linked to the gunman, potentially underscored the global spread of white supremacist ideology in the age of social media and at a time when immigration in America and elsewhere has become a divisive political topic.
Shortly after the mass shooting on Saturday, Crusius’ LinkedIn and Facebook accounts were shut down. A LinkedIn page that circulated online after the account was closed down appeared to be several years old, and Crusius seemed to be a lost young man.
He wrote on LinkedIn while in high school: “I’m not really motivated to do anything more than what’s necessary to get by. Working in general sucks, but I guess a career in Software Development suits me well. I spend about 8 hours every day on the computer so that counts toward technology experience I guess.”
The posting concluded: “Pretty much just gonna see what technology careers present themselves to me; go with the wind.”
If the manifesto is conclusively linked to Crusius, the federal authorities may treat Saturday’s attack as a hate crime or an incident of domestic terrorism. The words of the manifesto, in citing the “great replacement” theory, echo the slogan that was chanted during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017: “Jews will not replace us.”
The manifesto said the gunman planned to use an AK-47-style rifle, which has been frequently used in mass shootings. The four-page document said politicians of both parties were to blame for the US “rotting from the inside out”, and that “the heavy Hispanic population in Texas will make us a Democrat stronghold”.
The manifesto also railed against automation and embraced an argument familiar in anti-immigrant circles: that immigrants are taking jobs from “natives”.