Three Men Who Shot Black Lives Matter Protesters Emerged From Internet’s Racist Swamps
The white supremacists who showed up to a Black Lives Matter protest Monday night in Minneapolis and shot five African-American participants were not there just by coincidence.
As more facts emerge in the case, it’s now beginning to appear that not only was the attack a carefully planned attempt to disrupt the demonstration, but the men who participated in the shootings had been radicalized in the course of conversing on websites and in chatrooms where racist and other far-right extremist ideology flourishes. Indeed, the men began networking in real life as a result of their Internet hatemongering.
Minneapolis police have now arrested three men in connection with the shooting, which occurred at about 10:45 p.m. in front of the police precinct station where the Black Lives Matter had set up an encampment Nov. 15 to protest the shooting that day of an unarmed 24-year-old black man named Jamar Clark.
According to several witness accounts, the men confronted protesters at the rally, but were in turn chased by a group of protesters into an alley, where one of them pulled a gun and shot into the crowd. None of the five victims suffered life-threatening injuries, but all were hospitalized. Authorities are trying to determine whether the men fired in self-defense, or whether the matter should be investigated as a hate crime.
More: Three Men Who Shot Black Lives Matter Protesters Emerged From Internet’s Racist Swamps