Scott Olson / Staff / Getty Images The suspect behind the May 14 shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, NY reportedly identified as a white supremacist and antisemite in his manifesto, stating he wished that “all Jews” went “to hell.”
The shooting resulted in 10 dead. The suspect, identified as 18-year-old Payton S. Gendron, is currently in custody and is on suicide watch, according to CNN. He is pleading not guilty.
Journalist Tom Elliot tweeted out passages from the shooter’s purported 180-page manifesto that was posted online; in the manifesto, the shooter asked a series of questions to himself and then answered them. The suspected shooter wrote that he chose the supermarket because it was in an area with “the highest black population percentage … and isn’t that far away” and because the state’s “heavy gun laws” assured him that “any legally armed civilian was limited to 10 round magazines or firearms.” The suspect also proudly called himself a fascist, white supremacist, racist and antisemite, stating: “I wish all JEWS to hell! Go back to hell where you came from demon! But in reality, a Jew with confined to Judea where he can’t spread his people or beliefs is of no concern to me. It’s important to note that with proper connection to the [I]nternet, that is impossible.”
The alleged shooter rejected the label of being politically conservative, calling the philosophy “corporatism in disguise.” On being called “right wing,” “left wing” or “socialist,” he simply wrote, “Depending on the definition” to all of them. “On the political compass I fall in the mild-moderate authoritarian left category, and I would prefer to be called a populist,” he wrote, later adding that he wouldn’t mind being called “an ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist.”
The suspected shooter wrote that he became radicalized after “browsing 4chan,” a forum of anonymous Internet users, during the “extreme boredom” of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The shooter went down a rabbit hole from 4chan and into websites like the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the alleged shooter believed in “Great Replacement Theory” that whites would be replaced by immigrants of colors and that Jews are behind such efforts.
Buffalo killer says he specifically chose NY because their gun-control laws meant legally armed civilians would be limited to 10 round magazines. pic.twitter.com/JC41aVFegB
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 16, 2022
Buffalo killer says he’s a fascist, racist, and proud anti-Semite pic.twitter.com/YE8aEGqI1G
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 16, 2022
Buffalo killer says he “wants no part” of political conservatism and is open to being called socialist pic.twitter.com/ZQrDHIA4TQ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 16, 2022
Buffalo killer says his views evolved from “communist ideology” and says he now "falls in the mild-moderate authoritarian left
category, and I would prefer to be called a populist” pic.twitter.com/r6rjTeUrl2— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 16, 2022
Like the New Zealand killer, the Buffalo killer aligns himself with “eco fascism” pic.twitter.com/QkcbH2JciY
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 16, 2022
"Before I begin I will say that I was not born racist nor grew up to be racist. I simply became racist after I learned the truth. I started browsing 4chan in May 2020 after extreme boredom, remember this was during
the outbreak of covid.” pic.twitter.com/VQEx2CDCqo— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 16, 2022
Additionally, CNN reported that the alleged shooter “was inspired by the 2019 mass killing at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which the gunman similarly wrote a lengthy document and livestreamed the attack.” The Buffalo shooting was livestreamed on the streaming platform Twitch; the streaming platform eventually took it down but not before it proliferated to various other social media platforms.
The suspect had also visited the store back in March to plan the attack, and in 2021, he made a murder-suicide threat while he was at high school and was placed briefly in a facility for a “mental health evaluation,” per CNN.
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