The Racists Trying to Exploit the Parkland Shooting
By Charles Bethea
1:10 P.M.
Last Wednesday, in Parkland, Florida, more than four hundred miles from Jereb’s home base, in Tallahassee, a nineteen-year-old named Nikolas Cruz allegedly killed at least seventeen people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, injuring at least a dozen more, with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. The next day, the Anti-Defamation League reported that it had spoken with Jereb, and that he had confirmed that Cruz had trained with the R.O.F. Someone at the A.D.L. had spotted a thread on the notorious imageboard Web site 4chan, in which posters claimed that Cruz had associated with the group. It would later become evident that the purpose of the thread had been to fool members of the media. The idea for it reportedly originated, earlier that afternoon, on a chat app for gamers called Discord, which is popular with neo-Nazis.
“Nikolas Cruz was a revolutionary member of the Republic of Florida,” one post read, “who preached twisted and dark things like terrorism and attacking innocent people.” Purported pictures of Cruz attending R.O.F. gatherings also appeared. Jereb soon began receiving calls from reporters who’d found the R.O.F.’s “hotline” number on its home page. “He was part of our organization,” Jereb reportedly told the Daily Beast, about Cruz. “He wasn’t particularly active in it, but at some point he came to Tallahassee with I believe the Clearwater RoF. I know he didn’t live in Clearwater, but I think that was the company he clicked up with.” ABC News reported that three former schoolmates had said “that Cruz was part of the group. They claimed he marched with the group frequently and was often seen with Jereb.” These comments went well beyond what even Jereb had boasted. The sources for the ABC News report appear to have been some of the same online trolls who hatched the plan, on Discord, to trick the press. (ABC News declined to comment on its reporting; on Friday evening, the story was removed from its Web site.)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...kland-shooting
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