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Florida Shooter Spewed Racist, Anti-Semitic Invectives

[additional-authors]
February 20, 2018
Nikolas Cruz, facing 17 charges of premeditated murder in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, appears in court for a status hearing in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S. February 19, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Stocker/Pool

Messages from an Instagram group chat obtained by CNN reveal that the Florida shooter issued messages containing anti-Semitic and racist content.

The CNN report described Nikolaus Cruz’s posts in the chat as “hundreds of racist messages, racist memes and racist Instagram videos”; one of his messages actually stated that he hates “jews, n*****, immigrants.” The chat also reportedly featured Cruz ranting about how Jews are conspiring to “destroy the world” and how he wanted to murder Mexicans, blacks and gays.

Another one of Cruz’s messages read, “My real mom was a Jew. I am glad I never met her.”

Despite the messages, there is no evidence that Cruz was ever affiliated with a white supremacist organization, as earlier reports had stated.

Cruz confessed to the shooting, where he murdered 17 people and injured 14 others. Five of the murdered students were Jewish.

The FBI was reportedly notified twice about the shooter being a potential threat, and yet they did nothing about it. The first instance involved a YouTube video blogger notifying the FBI in September that a user with Cruz’s name commented on one of his videos, “Im going to be a professional school shooter”; the second involved the FBI being tipped to Cruz’s “erratic behavior and disturbing social-media posts.” The FBI didn’t follow up on either instance and didn’t inform local officials about it.

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