Texas Mass Killer: a Neo-Nazi Inspired by a Jewish Anti-LGBTQ Fanatic

Killer cited Chaya Raichik, the terroristic Libs of Tok Tok, as an inspiration, just like the Proud Boys and other white supremacist groups cite her

Will U.S. society ever decide to end a right-wing culture of military-style assault rifles and casual gun violence?

Will enough ever be enough? Members of minorities have more skin in the game than most, as illustrated just over a week ago by a killer who opened fire while wearing a patch that said “RWDS,” an abbreviation of “Right Wing Death Squad,” a slogan popular across a broad spectrum of U.S. Christian nationalist, antisemitic, and white supremacist circles.

The attacker who killed 11 people in the 2018 Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooting often shared RWDS memes on social media. Members of the openly antisemitic and racist Proud Boys are often seen wearing RWDS patches, including at drag queen library readings where they brandish guns while threatening LGBTQ parents and children.

In the photo below, Proud Boy member Jeremy Bertino, who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges related to the January 6 riot, wears an RWDS patch and a shirt that says, “Pinochet did nothing wrong.”

Augusto Pinochet was the military dictator of Chile from 1974 to 1990. After a military coup put him in power, he had 130,000 members of the liberal political opposition arrested. Approximately 35,000 were tortured. Thousands disappeared, presumably killed. Reports later emerged that at least 120 of the “disappeared” were dropped to their deaths from helicopters and airplanes.

The latest U.S. mass shooting should teach us something, but will it?

Just over a week ago, a neo-Nazi (who I choose not to name) armed with an arsenal of military-style assault rifles opened fire in a Dallas-area shopping mall, killing eight people and wounding seven more in the space of four minutes. If an off-duty police officer hadn’t run toward the gunman and killed him, countless more people would have died.

That officer has told reporters that the trauma he experienced trying to save children who died will torment him for the rest of his life.

I have no doubt.

When the officer described the shock of seeing firsthand what an AR-15 does to a child’s skull, I cried with him. When I was an 18-year-old Marine, I sometimes did “butts” duty, meaning I sat in a dugout underneath practice targets, where I witnessed the terrifying destructive power of AR-15 (M-16) rounds.

Many people cried the day of the mall shooting, but it’s already obvious that nothing in the United States is going to change because of just one more horrific shooting.

Mass gun killings are accelerating in frequency, but Republicans will not consider any solution that involves restricting assault rifles

Texas and national-level politicians made clear from the moment the mall-shooting headlines started buzzing in on Americans’ phones that any talk of restricting or regulating gun ownership is a nonstarter. They offered “thoughts and prayers” for victims’ families, then puffed up in outrage when Americans pointed out that God isn’t going to stop gun violence, that only lawmakers can act.

In my own state of Michigan, local sheriffs commented that they will refuse to enforce a soon-to-be passed “red flag” law that would let family members help identify people who are too violent/unstable to safely own assault rifles or other guns.

Through April of 2023, the U.S. suffered through more mass shootings than the number of days in the year.

As an aside, I wish we’d talk more clearly and openly about gun violence. For a very short time after the Dallas killings, gory photos circulated on Twitter. That police officer’s trauma showed up in vivid color and brutal detail. Then algorithms kicked in and deleted the images. Newspaper and TV journalism sites observed long-standing policies not to depict violence overly clearly. Those exploded skulls and mangled torsos changed into neutral, even boring, numbers.

Eight people dead? Well, that doesn’t sound too terrible. I guess? Let’s get on with our day.

The Dallas shooter cited Chaya Raichik, Libs of TikTok, as a key inspiration

Here’s where transgender, gay, bisexual, and other LGBTQ people become particularly fearful. For those who don’t know who Chaya Raichik is, she’s credited for inventing the LGBTQ “groomer” slur — promoting the notion that queer people are inherently abusive and that we seek equity and inclusion in order to molest children.

Apparently in order to leverage a disgust response, Raichik often promotes lies about genital surgery on trans children, procedures that simply do not happen for minors in the U.S. (Or pretty much anywhere.) Did you think otherwise?

Raichik’s outrage machine might be to blame for your mistake.

Her Libs of TikTok account on Twitter promotes variations of “look at these disgusting queer people” nearly every day — in between mocking calls for equality for Black people or for an end to police violence targeting Black people.

Raichik, an Orthodox Jew and a former real estate agent in Brooklyn, has become a hero to the extremist right. Proud Boy chapters monitor her tweets closely, almost always showing up — heavily armed — to the LGBTQ events she complains about.

When Raichik tweets, bakeries, donut shops, and even churches get firebombed. (Yes, literally firebombed.) Grown men wearing Right Wing Death Squad patches point guns at families and scream obscenities at small children.

The more Raichik tweets, the more people come to believe it’s cool to hate queer people the way she obviously (and viscerally) hates queer people.

That Dallas shooter is one of those people. He described himself as a Nazi, a white supremacist, a proud anti-semite, and a big fan of Libs of TikTok.

Like with many on the far right, the shooter’s ideas are incoherent and contradictory. He was Hispanic and would not be considered White by most of the white supremacists he idolized. He wrote that he hates Jews, but he cited the Jewish Raichik as one of his biggest inspirations.

Then he went out and legally purchased a veritable armory of military-style assault rifles, drove to an outdoor shopping mall and made “Right Wing Death Squad” come true.

What Chaya Raichik does is ‘stochastic terrorism,’ a problem made far worse by easy access to assault rifles

I have no idea why Raichik hates queer people as intensely as she does. I don’t know if she believes all the lies she spreads. But with over 2m followers, she has an enormous platform to spread them. When she demonizes queer people, she is engaging in what’s known as stochastic terrorism, “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.”

I don’t know if the Dallas shooter believed all her lies. I don’t know if he realized she was Jewish. I don’t know if he knows that Jewish people are highly unlikely to be homophobic, express hatred toward queer people, or engage in stochastic terrorism.

He probably doesn’t know that most observant Jews in the United States worship at synagogues that are part of LGBTQ-inclusive movements. (Click to read about Reform and Conservative Judaism.)

Does it matter what either of them believe?

Does it matter that Raichik’s stochastic terrorism is anathema (or should be) to people of faith who believe in love and kindness? Does it matter that the shooter held contradictory racist, anti-semitic, and anti-queer belief systems?

Does it matter that the Proud Boys and other extremist actually promote themselves as death squads?

I can only think of one thing that matters in terms of mass shootings.

We scapegoats (whether we be Black, Hispanic, Jewish, Asian, Queer, etc) are scared to death by the exploding popularity of white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and Proud™ hatred.

But we’re terrified that these groups are arming themselves to the teeth as more mainstream leaders on the right celebrate assault-weapon ownership as a virtue, a necessary element of liberty.

Liberty to kill people in mass numbers in mere moments? Seriously? Why?

When you’re a member of a hated minority, the absurdity of that position crystalizes.

This is madness, and it must end.

I’ll leave you with this:

Through April of 2023, the U.S. suffered through more mass shootings than the number of days in the year. 708 people were shot. 254 of them died. Many of the dead were children. The month of May looks set to make the annual numbers even more grim.

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