Questionable narratives and nihilistic-accelerationism
Be careful what you believe from an administration bent on political dominance.
A quick post on the Dallas ICE shooter ahead of some more detailed analysis tomorrow at Public Notice. As always, if you support this journalism — and I hope you do, because we’re in for some pretty rough times ahead — please consider a paid subscription or a contribution to the Doom Coffee Fund to support my work. - jg
Here are some things that the FBI wants you to know about the Dallas shooter:
He wrote “ANTI-ICE” on unspent shell casings found at the scene
Agents found a handwritten note from the shooter that read, “Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror, to think, ‘is there a sniper with AP rounds on that roof?”
His actions were a “definite attack on law enforcement.”
He “showered” the ICE facility with a bolt-action rifle.
His actions were the result of “far-left” rhetoric and he was a “far-left radical.”
In order, these facts and allegations have been handed out by FBI Director Kash Patel, acting ICE director Todd Lyons, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and Vice President JD Vance. All of this has led the Trump administration, congressional Republicans, and their allies in the right-wing media to conclude that the Dallas shooter was a radical leftist — one of many who, in recent weeks, has carried out a campaign of terror across the country that needs to be stopped.
But it’s important to keep in mind that this is the evidence that the Trump administration has chosen to release, and this is the narrative that it has chosen to lay out. These anecdotes do not necessarily represent the closest obtainable version of the truth.
This administration has shown over and over again that it cannot be trusted when it comes to facts that don’t comport with whatever narrative it’s attempting to convince Americans is true.
That’s exactly why Americans should be skeptical of the very neat and convenient story that the FBI and various Trump administration officials are telling about the attack on an ICE facility in Dallas on Wednesday.
The shooter’s friends have said he wasn’t a committed leftist — and in fact he leaned libertarian. (One former associate told NBC News that the shooter did express frustration over fear-mongering about migrant caravans.) The shooter’s vehicle contained a reference to nuclear fallout conspiracies that are shared by both the right and the left. And he was deep into the online world of ironic, edgelord memes and behavior that allude to a nihilistic mindset that doesn’t fit neatly into traditional right- or left-wing political ideology.
The Dallas shooter could very well have been what I’ll call a nihilistic-accelerationist, an emerging category of American killer that is based in the irony-laced culture of gamers and shitposting sites like 4chan.
These are lonely, extremely online men who are, essentially, killing for the lulz. When they write or carve on their bullets or weapons something like “ANTI-ICE,” like the Dallas shooter did or, “Hey fascist, Catch!,” like Charlie Kirk’s killer did, they’re essentially signaling to their online communities that they are a fellow member of this ironic in-crowd of shitposters.
Now, they’ve gone from shitposting online to shitposting in real life. In their wake, the messages on their weapons and ammunition are left to be parsed by law enforcement agencies who appear to be reaching over-simplified conclusions about the political motivations of the shooters.
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While it’s entirely possible that the Dallas shooter had taken a hard left turn, the Trump administration can’t be trusted to make this determination alone. After initially making some very concrete claims that the shooter was a left-wing radical, Patel, Noem and FBI officials in Dallas have been much more careful with their choice of words over the last 24 hours.
At a Thursday afternoon press conference, FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph Rothrock was asked whether any of the bullets fired by the shooter were also inscribed with messages like the unspent casing Patel posted on X. Rothrock declined to answer, saying that information was part of an ongoing investigation. Mind you, Patel himself had posted the photo of the “ANTI-ICE” shell casing on X the previous day — evidence that is very much part of the same ongoing investigation.
On Thursday, Patel also posted information about the handwritten note from the shooter that allegedly read, in part, that he hoped his attack would give ICE agents “real terror.” Again, evidence in an ongoing investigation.
Even some of the technical claims about the shooting from administration officials raise questions. Noem said that the ICE facility was “showered” with bullets, but the shooter was using a bolt-action rifle that only fires one bullet at a time before having to reload into the chamber, typically from a five-round magazine. (One video from the shooting shows between three and five shots being fired.) When pressed on how many rounds were fired in the incident at the Thursday afternoon presser, Rothrock declined to say.
Whether the Dallas shooter, Kirk’s killer, and the shooter in Minneapolis who killed children at a Catholic church were actually committed left-wingers is important, because the Trump administration is using these events to rationalize a sweeping crackdown of left-wing groups. (In Minneapolis, the shooter was trans, which has been pointed to by Republicans as an open-and-shut case of left-wing extremism. But the shooter had conflicting messages written on the firearm they used: “kill Donald Trump” and “6 million wasn’t enough,” a reference to the Holocaust.)
On Thursday evening, Trump signed an executive order directing the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Treasury and State to “investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
This executive order, plus another that designates Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization,” will surely be abused by the Trump administration to crack down on the rights of left-wing groups, suppress dissent, and attempt to silence those who stand in opposition to the White House and the federal agencies it controls.
All of this will be done under the narrative that recent acts of violence like Dallas, the Kirk killing, and Minneapolis were inherently left-wing in nature, when the truth of the motives of the shooters and killers is likely much more complicated.
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