Conspiracy Theories, Misogyny Drove Up Extremist Killings: Report

ACROSS AMERICA — Killings by domestic extremists increased slightly last year, fueled by conspiracy theories, misogyny and anti-vaccine sentiment, according to a report released Tuesday by a Jewish civil rights organization.

The Anti-Defamation League said at least 29 people were killed by extremists in 19 separate incidents, up from 23 such killings in 2020. While the number of killings grew modestly, it is “far lower” than in any of the years prior to 2020, which ranged from a low of 45 to 78, the ADL said.

“The 2021 murder totals were low primarily because no high-casualty extremist-related shooting spree occurred this past year,” the New York City-based civil rights group said. “Such sprees are the main contributor to high murder totals.”

On Oct. 27, 2018, for example, the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre that left 11 people dead is believed to be the deadliest act of antisemitic violence in U.S. history.

Despite the downturn in mass killings over the past two years, which other groups have attributed to the COVID-19, trends in 2021 mirrored long-term directions related to extremism.

The ADL report says white supremacists, anti-government "sovereign" citizens and others aligned with longstanding extremist movements killed 26 of the 29 people killed in 19 deadly attacks in 2021.

Still, no single ideological movement drove the increase, the report said. White supremacists were mainly responsible for the 2021 attacks, but it was not “an outright majority,” the ADL said.

“Right-wing extremists in the U.S. commit such a large proportion of murders for a range of reasons,” the report said. “The far right in this country is large, comprising many movements, including multiple white supremacist and anti-government extremist movements, as well as a variety of single-issue extremists and conspiracy-based movements.”

The report also looked at killings linked to newer right-wing movements that rose to prominence during the pandemic and the tumultuous presidency of Donald Trump, including incel/"manosphere" extremists, QAnon adherents and anti-government boogalooers, whose name is a slang reference to a future civil war that adherents embrace and anticipate, the ADL has said.

Most have at least some association with violence, the report said, “with many even engaging in terrorist plots and attacks.”

One example: Lyndon James McLeod — who killed five people in a multi-location shooting in Denver in December before he was shot and killed by police — had professed to be part of the “manosphere” network of men’s forums and blogs promoting anti-feminist, misogynist beliefs that blame women for societal problems.

McLeod’s own novels, published online, revealed his revenge fantasies, police said at the time of the killings.

In Maryland last fall, Jeffrey Allen Burnham killed his pharmacist brother, his brother’s wife and a third person because he believed his brother was involved in a government plot to poison people with COVID-19 vaccinations, the report said.

“Prior to the coronavirus, the anti-vaccine movement in the United States did not have a particular ideological leaning and contained both left-leaning and right-leaning activists,” the ADL report said.

“However,” the report continued, “the politicization of the coronavirus and other factors have created many new anti-vaccine conspiracy adherents and given the anti-vaccine movement a distinctly right-wing tone it did not previously have.”

Matthew Taylor Coleman, who is charged with killing his two infant children with a spear in Mexico in August, told the FBI he believed his wife had passed “serpent DNA” to them and that he was “saving the world from monsters.” He admitted to investigators he subscribed to the QAnon and antisemitic Illuminati conspiracy theories.

Adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory have painted Trump as a warrior in the secret “deep state” war against a powerful cabal of Satan-worshipping, child sex-trafficking Democrats and Hollywood elites.

The investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has revealed some of the rioters’ ties to QAnon. In June, federal intelligence officials warned that as the QAnon prophecies fail to materialize, Qanon could target Democrats and other political opponents for violence.

The death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who was attacked by rioters in the Capitol insurrection, was not counted as an extremist killing. He collapsed and died hours after rioters stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential electoral victory. Autopsy reports released in April showed Sicknick died of a stroke.

“Although it is clear that the Capitol attack could have contributed to, or even precipitated, the strokes that felled Sicknick, it cannot be definitely proven that he was murdered by a Capitol stormer,” the ADL report said.

The ADL said two incidents in 2021 involved left-wing extremists, two in which people with Black nationalist ties were accused of attacking police officers. In April, Noah Green, who reportedly has ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, killed one officer and injured another when he used his vehicle to crash through a barricade outside the U.S. Capitol. He was later killed by a third officer.

In Daytona Beach, Florida, Othal Wallace, was charged with murder in August after the death of a police officer he is accused of shooting. He has ties to several left-wing extremist groups including the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which the ADL describes as “the most extreme organized racist and anti-Semitic African-American group in the United States," and the Not F**king Around Coalition, an armed Black nationalist militia group.

One murder in 2021 was linked to domestic Islamist extremism and was the first so motivated since 2018, the report said. Over the past decade, domestic Islamic extremists have committed 87 murders, the report said, the majority from 2013-2017 when the terrorist group ISIS was at its most influential.

In August 2021, Imran Ali Rasheed of Garland, Texas, killed a Lyft driver, stole her car and drove to the headquarters of the Plano Police Department, where he opened fire and was killed before anyone was wounded. The FBI said at the time it thought Rasheed was inspired by “rhetoric or propaganda” from a foreign terrorist organization.