Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #222 Fascism and the Black Metal Music Scene, Part II

Lis­ten:
MP3 One Seg­ment

Updat­ing dis­cus­sion from FTR-211, this pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of Nation­al Alliance leader William Pierce’s acqui­si­tion of Resis­tance Records (a white pow­er music label.) (Pierce is the head of the Nation­al Alliance, arguably the most impor­tant domes­tic Nazi group.)

Plan­ning to spe­cial­ize in black met­al music (among oth­er gen­res), Pierce and his asso­ciates are recruit­ing main­stream musi­cians to record racist and Nazi music under pseu­do­nyms.

The broad­cast high­lights the for­ma­tion of Resis­tance Records (pri­or to acqui­si­tion by Pierce) by George Bun­di (a.k.a. Eric Hawthorne.) Stem­ming from the World Church of the Cre­ator (anoth­er domes­tic fas­cist group), Hawthorne and Resis­tance have been cel­e­brat­ed by the Church of Satan. (Domes­tic fas­cists Boyd Rice and Michael Moyni­han are both mem­bers of the Church of Satan and influ­en­tial in the black met­al milieu.)

A mem­ber of the Church of the Cre­ator (Ben Smith) mur­dered sev­er­al peo­ple in the Mid­west (see FTR-168.) The pro­gram high­lights Moyni­han’s sup­port for Amer­i­can Nazi James Mason and his espousal of “lone wolf” racist killers like Smith. Mason has been fea­tured on the racist tele­vi­sion show of Tom Met­zger, whose orga­ni­za­tion has been suc­cess­ful­ly sued by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter. Anoth­er of Moyni­han’s icons (and posthu­mous bene­fac­tor of Moyni­han’s pub­lish­ing out­fit) is SS offi­cial Karl Willigut.

The pro­gram reviews Moyni­han’s plans to pub­lish work by fascist/occultist Julius Evola (anoth­er advo­cate of fas­cist vio­lence as a “spir­i­tu­al” act). Moyni­han is also plan­ning to pub­lish music by the Iron Guard, a Roman­ian fas­cist group allied with Hitler (see FTR-221.) (Endorsed by Evola, the Iron Guard liaised with Otto von Bolschwing. Von Bolschwing was a key SS man who worked for the CIA after the war.)

The broad­cast sets forth the Abraxas Foun­da­tion’s espousal of the Iron Guard’s phi­los­o­phy of “long live death.” (Record­ed on 4/9/2000.)

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #222 Fascism and the Black Metal Music Scene, Part II”

  1. The look on Frank Luntz’s face when these guys were play­ing must have been price­less.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 26, 2012, 8:21 am
  2. [...] FTR #222 Fas­cism and the Black Met­al Music Scene, Part II This entry was post­ed in Counter-pro­pa­gan­da, Fas­cism, New Age and tagged 9/11 Truth Move­ment, Anti-Semi­tism, Aryan Nations, Auschwitz, Black Met­al, Boyd Rice, David Icke, Eric John­son, Eustace Mullins, Evola, Fer­al House, Fos­ter Gam­ble, Free Ener­gy, G. Edward Grif­fin, Jew­ish Con­spir­a­cy, Lord of Chaos, Michael Moyni­han, Peter Lev­en­da, Proc­tor and Gam­ble, Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion, Roth­schilds, The Order, Thrive. Book­mark the perma­link. ← Raphaël Enthoven : « La diver­sité est une inven­tion des Blancs, c’est un délire colo­nial » [...]

    Posted by « Thrive »: An example of counter-culture fascism | Lys-d'Or | May 30, 2012, 10:51 am
  3. It sounds likes this fel­low might no longer be sat­is­fied with mur­der­ing eardrums:

    BBC
    ‘Neo-Nazi’ singer Vikernes in French ter­ror arrest
    A Nor­we­gian musi­cian with links to mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been arrest­ed in France on “sus­pi­cion he was prepar­ing a major ter­ror­ist act”.
    16 July 2013 Last updat­ed at 09:10 ET

    The French inte­ri­or min­istry said Kris­t­ian “Varg” Vikernes con­sti­tut­ed “a poten­tial threat to soci­ety”.

    He was arrest­ed in cen­tral France after his wife bought four rifles.

    Vikernes, described by French offi­cials as a neo-Nazi, had in the past received a copy of a man­i­festo from Breivik, who killed 77 peo­ple in Nor­way in 2011.

    ...

    The offi­cial said: “There were sev­er­al sus­pi­cions that made the ser­vices fear he could pos­si­bly car­ry out a vio­lent act.”

    Legal per­mit

    Kris­t­ian Vikernes was arrest­ed along with his wife, a French nation­al, in Cor­reze, a region in cen­tral France.

    Police sources said offi­cers were search­ing their home for weapons and explo­sives.

    Offi­cials say Vikernes’ wife had a legal firearms per­mit when she bought the four rifles.

    Vikernes, a black met­al musi­cian and writer known as Varg, was con­vict­ed in 1994 of stab­bing a man to death in Oslo and burn­ing down sev­er­al church­es.

    He was released in 2009 and moved to France with his wife and three chil­dren.

    On his web­site, Vikernes dis­cuss­es Breivik’s man­i­festo, but also crit­i­cis­es him for killing inno­cent Nor­we­gians.

    Breivik’s 1,500-page man­i­festo out­lined his planned cru­sade against Mus­lims, who he said “were tak­ing over Europe and could only be defeat­ed through a vio­lent civ­il war”.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 16, 2013, 7:22 am
  4. While the motive for the neo-Nazi attack on a Wal­mart in El Paso, TX, was explic­it­ly laid out in Patrick Cru­sius’s man­i­festo post­ed on 8chan where he described his white nation­al­ist goals, the motive for the attack in Day­ton, OH, by Con­nor Betts remains large­ly a mys­tery. Cru­sius fits the class neo-Nazi domes­tic ter­ror­ist pro­file. But Con­nor Betts was a self-described anti-fas­cist, sup­port­er of Eliz­a­beth War­ren, and a reg­is­tered Demo­c­rat. He was basi­cal­ly the oppo­site of the pro­file of a mass shoot­er. At least if we sole­ly look at his self-described pol­i­tics. The fact that his own sis­ter was one of the first vic­tims only adds to the mys­tery.

    But as the fol­low­ing arti­cle makes clear, as more infor­ma­tion comes out about who Con­nor Betts was, a pic­ture emerges of a man moti­vat­ed not by pol­i­tics or ide­ol­o­gy but by an intense fas­ci­na­tion with vio­lence, gore, sadism, and hyper-misog­y­ny. The kind of misog­y­ny typ­i­cal­ly found with ‘incels’. Although Betts was­n’t quite an incel. He dat­ed. His last gir­friend actu­al­ly described an inci­dent where he took her on a trip to deliv­er an anony­mous threat­en­ing let­ter to his pre­vi­ous girl­friend because he thought it was fun­ny. But his intense misog­y­ny becomes unam­bigu­ous when we look at his hob­bies: Betts was the mem­ber of a band ded­i­cat­ed to misog­y­ny and glo­ri­fy­ing vio­lence against women. The band, Men­stru­al Munchies, was part of the “pornogrind” scene. Pornogrind appears to be a sub­genre of “gore­grind”, itself a fusion of “grind­core” and death met­al music. Mentstru­al Munchies released albums with titles like “6 Ways of Female Butch­ery” and “Pree­teen Daugh­ter Pu$$y Slaugh­ter,” and used cov­er art show­ing the rape and muti­la­tion of female bod­ies.

    We’re also learn­ing that, back in high school, Betts was caught with a ‘hit list’ of boys and ‘rape list’ of girls. And He did pro­fess an inter­est in satanism. In addi­tion, one of his band mem­bers recounts Betts bring­ing a hand­gun on one of their tours and seri­ous­ly sug­gest­ing that they rob a gas sta­tion. The guy was basi­cal­ly a tick­ing time-bomb.

    So giv­en that the Betts’s polit­i­cal back­ground makes him a high­ly unlike­ly can­di­date to go on a seem­ing­ly ran­dom mass mur­der spree, the fact that he was obsessed with rape and vio­lence and chan­neled that obses­sion in his music sug­gests that this might be one of those rel­a­tive­ly rare instances where men­tal ill­ness, and not ide­ol­o­gy, was the pri­ma­ry dri­ver of this mur­der spree:

    Vice News

    EXCLUSIVE: Day­ton Shoot­er Was In a “Pornogrind” Band That Released Songs About Rap­ing and Killing Women

    By Daniel Newhauser
    Aug 5, 2019

    Before he killed nine peo­ple in a mass shoot­ing in Day­ton, Ohio, ear­ly Sun­day, Con­nor Betts was deeply involved in the misog­y­nis­tic, male-dom­i­nat­ed “gore­grind” or “pornogrind” extreme met­al music scene. It has a region­al fol­low­ing in the Mid­west and is known for sex­u­al­ly vio­lent, death-obsessed lyrics and dehu­man­iz­ing imagery depict­ing women.

    Over the past year, the 24-year-old shoot­er occa­sion­al­ly per­formed live vocals in the band Men­stru­al Munchies, which released albums titled “6 Ways of Female Butch­ery” and “Pree­teen Daugh­ter Pu$$y Slaugh­ter,” with cov­er art show­ing the rape and mas­sacre of female bod­ies. He also per­formed with a group called Putrid Liq­uid.

    Now one of Betts’ band­mates, Jesse Creek­baum, 25, is tak­ing the record­ings down. He says he’s remov­ing them out of fear the vul­gar music he pro­duced will make a cult hero out of the mur­der­er, who was killed by police at the scene. He’s also received death threats online because of his asso­ci­a­tion with Betts.

    Creek­baum, who has been writ­ing and record­ing music under the name Men­stru­al Munchies for more than five years, says he did it most­ly as a joke and now is sick­ened that Betts appar­ent­ly took it all seri­ous­ly.

    “I feel shi tty hav­ing let him be in the band, doing those lyrics,” Creek­baum said. “Because I know, like, where­as I saw it as a joke — like, ‘Let’s play this and we’ll shock some peo­ple,’ and then the peo­ple that we know laugh — he did­n’t see it as a joke. He was like, ‘Fu ck, yeah. We’re gonna do this.’”

    “It’s like, Jesus Christ, how much of this was like real life for him?” he said.

    ...

    The Pornogrind scene

    The Mid­west pornogrind scene exists in an obscure pock­et of the larg­er grind­core genre and con­sists of a hand­ful of bands who often play shows to each oth­er or to small audi­ences. Even bet­ter-known bands in the genre writ large, such as Ger­many-based Cock and Ball Tor­ture, have just thou­sands of Face­book fans.

    Men­stru­al Munchies often per­formed with oth­er region­al acts like Necro Can­ni­bal Ass Grinder, Bill Nye da Nazi Spy, and Cunt Torch, play­ing fes­ti­vals like the Porn­fieldz of Illi­noise Grind­fest or a for­mer venue in Colum­bia, Mis­souri, called UPS — Under the Porn Shop, named for its loca­tion beneath the Venus Adult Mega­s­tore, owned by the moth­er of fel­low scen­ester Zach Wal­ton, of the band Groin Mal­let.

    In a phone inter­view, Wal­ton, who has booked Men­stru­al Munchies at that venue, said the pornogrind scene is tight-knit and that he and his friends have been dev­as­tat­ed to learn what Betts did. But he doesn’t believe the con­tent of the music con­tributed in any way to his actions.

    “It’s just the music we love, you know, like, it’s fun to play. It’s ener­getic and there’s noth­ing else like it. So we play it,” Wal­ton, 29, said. “And then we get peo­ple like this, who, you know, are fuc king sick in the head, who get into our scene and end­ed up killing nine peo­ple and almost, you know, putting a bad name on our scene. And that’s not fair for the rest of us.”

    Betts was not involved in any of the writ­ing or record­ing and only per­formed as a live vocal­ist for Men­stru­al Munchies. Nev­er­the­less, Creek­baum said he removed the band’s Face­book, Band­camp and YouTube pages from the web. But a saved ver­sion of the Band­camp page found on the Inter­net Archive reveals the sex­u­al­ly vio­lent and demean­ing album titles and art­work.

    Many of the band’s songs are still active on oth­er web­sites. The mem­bers of Putrid Liq­uid did not respond to a request for com­ment sent through their Band­camp page, which is still active.

    Creek­baum says he feels con­flict­ed: On the one hand, he believes music and art do not cause peo­ple to com­mit mur­der, but on the oth­er hand, he feels guilty for hav­ing asso­ci­at­ed with some­one who car­ried out vio­lence sim­i­lar to the kind he por­trayed in his songs.

    Creek­baum said he con­tact­ed the Day­ton police imme­di­ate­ly after hear­ing the news, but said they hadn’t replied to him, although he said the FBI vis­it­ed his home on Mon­day to inter­view him.

    Betts’ bizarre behav­ior

    Look­ing back, there were clues some­thing wasn’t right with Betts. Betts was a lon­er and emo­tion­al­ly with­drawn, Creek­baum and oth­ers in the scene told VICE News.

    Creek­baum said Betts once brought a hand­gun on a tour to Iowa and sug­gest­ed to oth­ers that they rob some gas sta­tions — some­thing Creek­baum said he chewed Betts out for but didn’t take seri­ous­ly.

    He said he and oth­ers had recent­ly dis­tanced them­selves from Betts over his bizarre behav­ior, includ­ing talk­ing in real­is­tic terms about the vio­lence depict­ed in the music, telling sto­ries about his past metham­phet­a­mine use, and lying about hav­ing a crim­i­nal record.

    He said Betts had also told them about a pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed inci­dent in which he was sus­pend­ed from his high school for keep­ing a “hit list” and a “rape list” of class­mates he want­ed to com­mit vio­lence against. And Betts had men­tioned to Creek­baum that he was depressed. Still, Creek­baum said he did not think Betts was capa­ble of this kind of slaugh­ter.

    “I think he decid­ed that he was going to kill him­self, and he was like, ‘I don’t have the balls to do it’ and he drew a gun,” Creek­baum spec­u­lat­ed.

    The band hadn’t been active since Creek­baum found out in July that Betts had con­tact­ed show­go­ers online after a recent gig and asked them to send him mon­ey on Pay­Pal, some­thing Creek­baum found obnox­ious.

    The music was cre­at­ed to be con­tro­ver­sial, Creek­baum said, inspired by the work of shock-rock acts like the Men­tors and GG Allin. He often played ful­ly naked wear­ing an executioner’s hood. In a video, they can be seen per­form­ing in noth­ing but San­ta Claus beards and hats.

    And if the goal was attract­ing con­tro­ver­sy, they suc­ceed­ed. Creek­baum said even some of his close friends found the misog­y­nis­tic imagery to be too much. Now, the music is sure to be exam­ined in a nation­al con­ver­sa­tion as social crit­ics point to tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty as a root cause of mass gun vio­lence.

    Betts’ appar­ent polit­i­cal beliefs are also draw­ing scruti­ny. He iden­ti­fied as an anti-fas­cist and slan­dered Nazis and gun vio­lence in social media posts that have since been removed from Twit­ter and Face­book. Some on the polit­i­cal right have seized on that to infer his ide­ol­o­gy was part of his motive.

    The anti-fas­cist extreme met­al band Neck­beard Death­camp was quick to dis­tance Betts from their scene.

    “OH TURNS OUT THE DAYTON SHOOTER WAS LITERALLY CONNOR FUC KING BETTS,” Neck­beard Death­camp wrote in a since-delet­ed tweet. “I DON’T KNOW IF I WOULD USE THE TERM LEFTIST TO DESIGNATE ONE OF THE DUDES IN MENSTRUAL MUNCHIES. ANTIFASCIST SURE. BUT NOT GREAT WITH WOMEN.”

    “JUST ANOTHER DIME A DOZEN OHIO GRIND DUDE WHO CAPED PROGRESSIVE POLITICS WHILE TREATING WOMEN LIKE SH IT,” the band con­tin­ued in anoth­er tweet. The band fol­lowed up with a thread explain­ing they did not know Betts, although he did fol­low their account on Twit­ter.

    Ryan Ward, of the Ohio-based Cunt Torch, a band that reg­u­lar­ly played with Men­stru­al Munchies, likened the com­ing back­lash to how Mar­i­lyn Man­son and “South Park” were blamed for the Columbine shoot­ings, although he acknowl­edged that it is some­what dif­fer­ent because a mem­ber of a band com­mit­ted the heinous act, not just a fan.

    Still, he says he finds it hard to believe the dehu­man­iza­tion por­trayed in the music con­tributed to an envi­ron­ment in which Betts felt desen­si­tized enough to com­mit actu­al vio­lence him­self, includ­ing shoot­ing to death his own sis­ter and her boyfriend, two of the vic­tims of his ram­page.

    Part of the music is you want to fig­ure out ways to por­tray peo­ple as being dehu­man­ized as much as pos­si­ble or, you know, degrad­ed. And sex­u­al dehu­man­iza­tion and objec­ti­fi­ca­tion is a big way of doing that,” Ward said. “If for some rea­son the music he made or what­ev­er, some­how did do that for him, I feel that it’s an excep­tion, not the rule when it comes to peo­ple mak­ing this music.”

    “I feel it’s our respon­si­bil­i­ty to make it a point to let peo­ple know that, no, this is not what we actu­al­ly stand for,” he added. “Our songs aren’t prophe­cies, you know, like, they’re not fuc king, omi­nous fuc king mes­sages that are sup­posed to come true. They’re just songs.”

    ———-

    “EXCLUSIVE: Day­ton Shoot­er Was In a “Pornogrind” Band That Released Songs About Rap­ing and Killing Women” by Daniel Newhauser; Vice News; 08/05/2019

    ““Part of the music is you want to fig­ure out ways to por­tray peo­ple as being dehu­man­ized as much as pos­si­ble or, you know, degrad­ed. And sex­u­al dehu­man­iza­tion and objec­ti­fi­ca­tion is a big way of doing that,” Ward said. “If for some rea­son the music he made or what­ev­er, some­how did do that for him, I feel that it’s an excep­tion, not the rule when it comes to peo­ple mak­ing this music.””

    Well, let’s hope Betts is indeed the excep­tion for peo­ple into “pornogrind” music. At a min­i­mum, it sounds like the kind of genre that’s going to have a con­cen­tra­tion of psy­chopath fans even if the major­i­ty of peo­ple are just into it for the shock val­ue. And Betts cer­tain­ly sound­ed like a bud­ding psy­chopath:

    ...
    Look­ing back, there were clues some­thing wasn’t right with Betts. Betts was a lon­er and emo­tion­al­ly with­drawn, Creek­baum and oth­ers in the scene told VICE News.

    Creek­baum said Betts once brought a hand­gun on a tour to Iowa and sug­gest­ed to oth­ers that they rob some gas sta­tions — some­thing Creek­baum said he chewed Betts out for but didn’t take seri­ous­ly.

    He said he and oth­ers had recent­ly dis­tanced them­selves from Betts over his bizarre behav­ior, includ­ing talk­ing in real­is­tic terms about the vio­lence depict­ed in the music, telling sto­ries about his past metham­phet­a­mine use, and lying about hav­ing a crim­i­nal record.

    He said Betts had also told them about a pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed inci­dent in which he was sus­pend­ed from his high school for keep­ing a “hit list” and a “rape list” of class­mates he want­ed to com­mit vio­lence against. And Betts had men­tioned to Creek­baum that he was depressed. Still, Creek­baum said he did not think Betts was capa­ble of this kind of slaugh­ter.

    “I think he decid­ed that he was going to kill him­self, and he was like, ‘I don’t have the balls to do it’ and he drew a gun,” Creek­baum spec­u­lat­ed.
    ...

    So Betts appears to have been gen­uine­ly men­tal­ly ill in a man­ner that made him obsessed with vio­lence, in par­tic­u­lar vio­lence against women. Might that be at least part of the expla­na­tion for why his sis­ter was one of his first tar­gets? Well, there’s anoth­er twist to all this involv­ing his sis­ter. It turns out she iden­ti­fied as a trans­gen­der man. It was some­thing she report­ed­ly was only open about to a rel­a­tive­ly small cir­cle of friends. And one of those friends claims her broth­er did­n’t know she was trans­gen­der. Is it pos­si­ble he recent­ly dis­cov­ered this and was sent into some sort of rage? At this point we don’t know, but it rais­es the ques­tion of how a vio­lent hyper-misog­y­nist might respond if to the rev­e­la­tion that his sis­ter is trans­gen­dered:

    Splin­ter News

    Friends Say that Sib­ling Mur­dered by Day­ton Shoot­er Was a Trans­gen­der Man

    Kate­lyn Burns
    08/07/2019 2:51pm

    Accounts from friends and social media pro­files belong­ing to a vic­tim in last weekend’s shoot­ing in Day­ton, OH, whose name was pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed as Megan Betts, indi­cate that Betts was a trans­gen­der man who went by Jor­dan Cofer and used he/him pro­nouns.

    Accord­ing to media reports, Cofer, 22, was the sib­ling of shoot­ing sus­pect Con­nor Betts, and was the first vic­tim in the mass shoot­ing in Dayton’s Ore­gon dis­trict that left nine dead and 27 wound­ed. It appears that Cofer was out as a trans man to only a hand­ful of peo­ple, and there is no indi­ca­tion at this time that his gen­der iden­ti­ty was a moti­vat­ing fac­tor in his death.

    A close friend of Cofer’s—who wished to remain anonymous—confirmed the authen­tic­i­ty of sev­er­al social media accounts to Splin­ter, say­ing that he was trans and pre­ferred being called Jor­dan.

    “Jor­dan was my clos­est friend,” said the friend over Twit­ter direct mes­sage. “He iden­ti­fied with he/him pro­nouns to peo­ple he trust­ed and knew would sup­port him. Jor­dan was prob­a­bly one of the sweet­est peo­ple you would ever meet, a true saint, but he was also very scared con­stant­ly. He tried to give the best to every­one.”

    A Twit­ter account asso­ci­at­ed with Cofer appears to show him tweet­ing at his broth­er just hours before the shoot­ing.

    Sto­ries like Cofer’s, fea­tur­ing a young trans per­son who was a vic­tim of a dev­as­tat­ing and high-pro­file crime but who appears to have only shared his trans sta­tus with a small cir­cle of peo­ple, are del­i­cate. Peo­ple can debate about whether the fact of his gen­der iden­ti­ty is news­wor­thy. What is clear, though, is that his friends are free to remem­ber him as they knew him.

    The trans com­mu­ni­ty also has a right to account for its dead. There’s been no indi­ca­tion thus far that Cofer’s mur­der was a trans­pho­bic hate crime, but it serves as an impor­tant reminder that trans peo­ple are more than the trans­pho­bia soci­ety vis­its upon them. Every­one who spoke with Splin­ter for this sto­ry felt it was impor­tant for his true iden­ti­ty to be accu­rate­ly report­ed in the press, with­out sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic or polit­i­cal sen­ti­ments.

    Jor­dan told me in the past that he was not out to his fam­i­ly, but that could have changed in the past month as we bare­ly spoke of the top­ic recent­ly,” the close friend, who said Cofer nev­er told his broth­er about his trans sta­tus, told Splin­ter. “I do not believe that his gen­der iden­ti­ty had played a part in his death because of the fact that he wasn’t out to many peo­ple.”

    A Tum­blr account that appears to have belonged to Cofer list­ed him as an “ace poly trans boy with a lov­ing heart and way too much work to do.” The friend con­firmed the account belonged to Cofer, say­ing they met on the plat­form.

    An Insta­gram account for Cofer fea­tures a pro­file pho­to of Nate­wantsto­bat­tle, one of his favorite YouTu­bers. Accord­ing to the friend, Cofer was deeply involved in the fan­doms of sev­er­al well known YouTu­bers, includ­ing Jack­Sep­tic­Eye, who is fea­tured in Cofer’s Tum­blr pro­file pic­ture.

    Bell­brook Police Chief Doug Doher­ty released a state­ment to the media on Mon­day evening on behalf of the Betts fam­i­ly that made ref­er­ence to their griev­ing the loss of their daugh­ter. Attempts to con­tact the fam­i­ly through the Bell­brook police, which is cur­rent­ly han­dling media requests, were not returned before pub­li­ca­tion. The Day­ton Police Depart­ment said it was not aware of Cofer’s gen­der iden­ti­ty.

    ...

    Over the week­end, Can­dice Keller, an Ohio Repub­li­can offi­cial, pinned the blame for the ris­ing num­ber of mass shoot­ings in the coun­try on “the break­down of the fam­i­ly,” list­ing the exis­tence of trans­gen­der peo­ple at the top of the list.

    The poten­tial for the politi­ciza­tion of Cofer’s trans sta­tus is high in this case, though it should be reit­er­at­ed that there sim­ply is no cur­rent avail­able evi­dence to sug­gest that Cofer’s killer, his own broth­er, even knew of his gen­der iden­ti­ty, much less whether it was a moti­vat­ing fac­tor in the shoot­ing.

    Cofer’s close friend said she hopes that peo­ple will remem­ber him for how he lived his life. “I am dev­as­tat­ed, but I’m not let­ting that hold me back from hav­ing him be seen as him,” she said. “I will remem­ber him as prob­a­bly one of the biggest, best parts of my life. All of my best expe­ri­ences involved him.”

    ...

    ———-

    “Friends Say that Sib­ling Mur­dered by Day­ton Shoot­er Was a Trans­gen­der Man” by Kate­lyn Burns; Splin­ter News; 08/07/2019

    “Accord­ing to media reports, Cofer, 22, was the sib­ling of shoot­ing sus­pect Con­nor Betts, and was the first vic­tim in the mass shoot­ing in Dayton’s Ore­gon dis­trict that left nine dead and 27 wound­ed. It appears that Cofer was out as a trans man to only a hand­ful of peo­ple, and there is no indi­ca­tion at this time that his gen­der iden­ti­ty was a moti­vat­ing fac­tor in his death.

    So at this point we have no idea of Con­nor even knew is sis­ter Jor­dan was trans. But as one of Jor­dan’s close friends points out, it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble Con­nor very recent­ly learned about this:

    ...
    Jor­dan told me in the past that he was not out to his fam­i­ly, but that could have changed in the past month as we bare­ly spoke of the top­ic recent­ly,” the close friend, who said Cofer nev­er told his broth­er about his trans sta­tus, told Splin­ter. “I do not believe that his gen­der iden­ti­ty had played a part in his death because of the fact that he wasn’t out to many peo­ple.”
    ...

    So that all just adds to the mys­tery of the motive. But the more we learn about Con­nor Betts, the more it appears that his pro­fessed left-lean­ing pol­i­tics and anti-fas­cist self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was­n’t part of the motive.

    Along those lines, it’s worth not­ing one of the obser­va­tions in the fol­low­ing arti­cle about Betts’s anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties: there was a KKK ral­ly in Day­ton back in May. A hand­ful of klans­men showed up but hun­dreds of counter-pro­tes­tors showed up too. Betts was there, armed with a gun and cov­er­ing his face with a ban­dan­na. And accord­ing to the reporter who spoke with him at the ral­ly, Betts did­n’t appear to be there with any oth­er group. He was just a lone ‘anti-fas­cist’ with a gun at the counter-protest, sug­gest­ing that Betts was­n’t actu­al­ly direct­ly involved with any anti-fas­cist groups:

    Day­ton Dai­ly News

    Day­ton shoot­er was armed counter-pro­test­er at Ku Klux Klan ral­ly

    By Will Garbe and Hasan Karim, Staff Writer
    LOCAL Aug 06, 2019

    The man who killed nine peo­ple in Dayton’s Ore­gon Dis­trict was seen car­ry­ing a gun and protest­ing against the Ku Klux Klan at a ral­ly down­town in May.

    Con­nor Betts, 24, was shot and killed by Day­ton police dur­ing the Sun­day morn­ing ram­page. Nei­ther the police nor the FBI have iden­ti­fied a motive for the attack, though the fed­er­al author­i­ties said Tues­day he “was explor­ing vio­lent ide­olo­gies” before the shoot­ing.

    The May 25 ral­ly attract­ed about 500 to 600 counter-pro­test­ers who opposed the nine Klans­man who came from Indi­ana and protest­ed in Cour­t­house Square. The counter-protest group was fenced 0ff away from the Klans­man and sev­er­al peo­ple in the crowd were seen car­ry­ing firearms.

    Hasan Karim, who knew Betts and grew up in Bell­brook in the same high school class, was in the crowd accom­pa­ny­ing free­lance jour­nal­ists and was tak­ing pic­tures of the event. Karim bumped into some­one in the crowd and the man told him ‘You don’t know me.’ The two said hel­lo to each oth­er and Karim rec­og­nized Betts by his voice, body and man­ner­isms in their brief inter­ac­tion.

    Betts wore a ban­dan­na cov­er­ing part of his face and sun­glass­es. He car­ried a gun which appeared to be sim­i­lar in style to the one used in Sunday’s shoot­ing. He did not appear to be part of any group that was in the protest crowd.

    The Indi­ana KKK group’s ral­ly and counter-protest events result­ed in no arrests, no uses of force by police, and no injuries.

    ...

    ———-

    “Day­ton shoot­er was armed counter-pro­test­er at Ku Klux Klan ral­ly” by Will Garbe and Hasan Karim; Day­ton Dai­ly News; 08/06/2019

    “Betts wore a ban­dan­na cov­er­ing part of his face and sun­glass­es. He car­ried a gun which appeared to be sim­i­lar in style to the one used in Sunday’s shoot­ing. He did not appear to be part of any group that was in the protest crowd.

    Note that there were reports of a group of antifa mem­bers at the counter-protest. So Betts was there, armed and dressed like an antifa mem­ber, but he did­n’t actu­al­ly appear to be part of the actu­al antifa group there.

    It’s also worth not­ing the sim­i­lar­i­ties to a pre­vi­ous mass shoot­ers, Steven Kazmier­czak, the North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty for­mer stu­dent who open fire on a class, killing 18 peo­ple before killing him­self. Kazmier­czak also appeared to be heav­i­ly dri­ven by an intense fas­ci­na­tion with vio­lence and gore, with a focus on the “Saw” movies. Like Betts, Kazmier­czak had an inter­est in Satanism. Although Kazmier­czak also had a his­to­ry of inter­est in white-pow­er move­ments, so in that sense he fit the clas­sic mass mur­der­er pro­file more close­ly than Betts.

    The iron­ic part of all this is that one of the prob­lems with how the US deals with domes­tic ter­ror­ism is that when­ev­er the ter­ror­ist is a far right white male the ascribed motive is typ­i­cal­ly left to ‘men­tal ill­ness’ com­mit­ted by a ‘lone wolf’, despite the fact that the white male ter­ror­ists almost always appears to have been rad­i­cal­ized online and spurred on by neo-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da. But in the case of Con­nor Betts, he real­ly does appear to be a lone wolf not dri­ven by pol­i­tics and his mass mur­der spree real­ly does appear to be pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by a men­tal ill­ness. So it’s this high­ly anom­alous mass mur­der event that actu­al­ly fits the pre­vail­ing ‘men­tal­ly ill lone wolf’ nar­ra­tive.

    It’s also worth keep­ing in mind that since Betts was fas­ci­nat­ed with mass mur­der­ers and satanism and vio­lence in gen­er­al he prob­a­bly got exposed to a lot of the neo-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da that glo­ri­fies mass mur­der­ers. So in that sense he could still be seen as being influ­enced by far right pro­pa­gan­da.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 9, 2019, 12:31 pm

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