Evergreen High School shooter’s online footprint reflects new wave of extremism, experts say

The online footprint of the -year-old who shot two students and then himself at Evergreen High School this week fits into a new wave of online extremism that calls for violence as a way to destroy society experts noted Social media accounts for Desmond Holly suggest to experts that he was involved in nihilistic violent extremist networks which the U S Department of Justice defines as people who seek to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations which often include minors An account on TikTok linked to Desmond displayed several hallmarks of that brand of extremism reported Matt Kriner executive director of the nonprofit Institute for Countering Digital Extremism Desmond also held an account and commented on a website called WatchPeopleDie which features videos of killings sexual violence and animal cruelty according to the Anti-Defamation League WatchPeopleDie and other online spaces are the nihilistic system mentioned Oren Segal the ADL s senior vice president of counter extremism and intelligence Those who are spending their time posting images of murders and beheadings and rapes and other horrible things and also expressing extremist and hateful views and glorifying past shooters That makes up this nihilistic system The structure originated as an effort to accelerate the collapse of modern society by exacerbating social tensions and dividing society through violence and has roots in white supremacy and fascism Kriner declared But the groups have continually evolved and most of nihilistic violent extremists in current times don t share a single strong ideology instead relying on a hodgepodge of different motivations he noted They just hate everyone he declared They don t really have a goal The purpose is pain Segal noted that three U S mass shooters in the last nine months were advancing on WatchPeopleDie before their attacks There is a through line between them he declared There is something connecting them and it is these horrible online spaces So even though the tragedy is unique every single time we can point to a common thread And we need to ask ourselves How do we stop it ' Violent extremist configuration Both of the students that Desmond shot at the Jefferson County school remained in critical condition Friday Desmond s parents and other relatives have not returned requests for comment since his death The Jefferson County Sheriff s Office has substantiated that Desmond was radicalized but has not provided any additional details on that radicalization or its impact on Wednesday s attack Agents have reported they were still considering Desmond s motive Radicalized Evergreen High School shooter appeared to hold antisemitic violent views in online accounts This file is auto-generated function d l use strict l querySelector d addEventListener undefined typeof URL d wp d wp d wp receiveEmbedMessage d wp receiveEmbedMessage function e var t e content if t t secret t message t value a-zA-Z - test t secret for var s r n a l querySelectorAll 'iframe data-secret ' t secret ' ' o l querySelectorAll 'blockquote data-secret ' t secret ' ' c new RegExp https i i i