The Allen, Texas Massacre Appears To Be Yet Another Mass Shooting Motivated By Neo-Nazism & White Supremacy

It appears the man responsible for yesterday's mass shooting in Allen, Texas which claimed the lives of 8 people had neo-Nazi and white supremacist sympathies. The shooter was found with a patch on his chest with the insignia "RWDS" which is popular in neo-Nazi and white supremacist circles and stands for "Right Wing Death Squad".

In recent years, a number of the mass shootings which have plagued this country have been motivated by neo-Nazi and white supremacist sympathies such as the 2015 mass shooting at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the 2019 mass shooting at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, California, the 2019 mass shooting at the Walmart in El Paso, Texas and the 2022 mass shooting at Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York. 

The aforementioned shooting targeted specific groups. The mass shootings in Charleston and Buffalo targeted African-Americans, the mass shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway targeted Jews while the mass shooting in El Paso targeted the Hispanic community. 

At this point, it is unclear who the shooter in Allen was specifically targeting. Authorities might ultimately end up treating it the way the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois on the Fourth of July was last year notwithstanding the fact it has a significant Jewish population and that the shooter made an eerie visit to a Chabad synagogue the previous Passover. 

The fact that it was done on a national holiday where a large gathering of people was occurring might have been motive enough. For the shooter, a large crowd in front of a shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon might have been the equivalent of a Fourth of July parade. Even if the Allen shooter wasn't targeting any specific group, neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology espouses violence, and we should not be shocked when it adherents deploy violence in a lethal manner.

While gun control measures such as red flag laws can help, they might not be sufficient to stop those who adhere to violent ideologies be it neo-Nazism/white supremacy or Islamic radicalism (lest we forget the mass shootings at Fort Hood and San Bernadino). In which case, we are presented with the difficult task of preventing radicalization and the willingness to deploy terrorism against innocent civilians. As always there are never any easy answers.