Victims of El Paso attack could sue 8chan forum linked to alleged gunman, extremism expert says
Cybersecurity provider cuts off service to alt-right website after deadly mass shooting
Survivors and the families of those killed in the El Paso, Texas, shooting over the weekend could sue the alt-right forum 8chan because it appears responsible for stoking violence, an extremism expert says.
Police are investigating ties between the accused gunman and a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto released on 8chan just minutes before Saturday's deadly attack.
"I think it would be great if 8chan no longer existed," Mark Pitcavage, director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said.
This is the third global atrocity where the accused posted an extremist message on the website 8chan in advance, according to Pitcavage.
"It did not surprise me. This is the latest person trying to commit such a heinous act would post a justification for their actions on the website 8chan," he told The Current's guest host Laura Lynch.
8chan is a dark corner of the web where those disaffected by mainstream social media sites often post extremist, racist and violent views. Other incidents involving 8chan include a shooting at a San Diego synagogue in April and the massacre of 51 people at two New Zealand mosques in March.
At least 22 people killed, dozens wounded
At least 22 people were killed and dozens more injured when a gunman opened fire into a crowded shopping plaza in El Paso on Saturday morning.
Texas prosecutors charged Patrick Crusius, 21, on Sunday with capital murder in relation to the shooting spree. The single murder charge is likely a legal place holder to keep Crusius in custody until further charges can be filed for those killed and wounded.
Authorities are currently searching for any links between the alleged shooter and the material in the four-page document posted on 8chan, including the writer's expression of concern that an influx of Hispanics into the United States will replace aging white voters.
The writer denied he was a white supremacist, but the document contends "race mixing" is destroying the nation and recommends dividing the U.S. into territorial enclaves determined by race. Further, the first sentence expresses support for the man accused in the New Zealand mosque shooting earlier this year, who posted his own screed with a conspiracy theory about non-white migrants replacing whites.
Within the last year, El Paso has become a focal point of the migrant crisis. The city — which has roughly 680,000 residents, most of whom are Hispanic — is in West Texas and sits across the border from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Pitcavage, who is from El Paso, said he believes this "has greatly raised its profile" and may have made it a target for anti-immigrant fuelled violence.
"I was shocked. I unfortunately track a lot of extremist-related violence in the United States, but this particular attack occurred one and a half miles [more than two kilometres] from the house where I grew up ... so it took on a personal, as well as a professional meaning," he said.
8chan service cut off
In the wake of the El Paso attack and another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, less than 24 hours later, U.S. cyber security firm Cloudfare ended service early Monday for its customer 8chan.
In a blog post on Cloudfare's website, chief executive Matthew Prince wrote the alleged shooter "appears to have been inspired" by discussions on 8chan and pointed out that the website "has repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate."
The online message board is now suffering sporadic outages.
Operators for 8chan said on its Twitter account late Sunday there might be downtime over the next one or two days as the site seeks a solution.
Fredrick Brennan, who built 8chan and launched it in 2013, says there's a reason all these shooters are now using this website over others.
"One of the reasons is they know that 8chan is a site that's sympathetic to the ideas of the shooters," Brennan, who cut ties with the site last year, told CBC News on Monday.
"The second element is they know 8chan is very loosely, laxly moderated. ... So it's simple to post on there."
He is urging those now in charge of the website to "consider shutting down certain boards" in order to protect the victims of these atrocities.
We must recognize that the internet has provided a dangerous avenue to radicalize disturbed minds and perform demented acts.- U.S. President Donald Trump
U.S. President Donald Trump publicly addressed the El Paso tragedy on Monday and the gunman's alleged manifesto.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, he said the "perils of the internet and social media cannot be ignored" and pledged to develop tools to aid local and federal law enforcement in identifying mass shooters before they strike.
"We must recognize that the internet has provided a dangerous avenue to radicalize disturbed minds and perform demented acts," Trump said.
"We must shine a light on the dark recesses of the internet and stop mass murders before they start."
Written by Amara McLaughlin, with files from The Associated Press and Reuters. Produced by Danielle Carr and Howard Goldenthal.