NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A manifesto left behind by the Antioch High School shooter reveals a 17-year-old young man who was sucked into the world of hate and never found his way out, says a veteran researcher who specializes in hate and political extremism.
Solomon Henderson’s 51-page manifesto posted online is filled with the vilest words about African-Americans and Jews. One of the central questions, according to Jared Holt of the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue: Who radicalized this young man?
"We have a Black kid expressing white supremacist ideas. Have you ever seen that before?" NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked.
"This would not be the first time that a person of color shackled themselves to a white supremacist movement,” Holt answered. “But in my experience as a researcher, this is one of the most extreme cases I’ve ever seen."
The expert on hate and extremism began poring over the manifesto soon after he and his team discovered it online in the hours after the Antioch High School shooting.
That manifesto – title N*****Cell Manifesto – declared: "The West has fallen. Billions must die. Billions must die. Accelerate, accelerate, accelerate.”
Those words, Holt said, represent the worst of the world of hate and a concept known as accelerationism.
"These are communities that encourage not only mass murder and genocidal fantasies but also destruction of things like critical infrastructure — any sort of action that would cause mass devastation or suffering,” he explained.
"So they are talking about bringing about the collapse of society and creating their own utopia?" NewsChannel 5 asked.
"Essentially, yeah,” Holt agreed. “They do not believe that democratic government will ever get them the kind of ethnic superiority or ethnic dominance that they want."
Included in the manifesto are some antisemitic claims made by the Goyim Defense League, the group NewsChannel 5 Investigates confronted in July when they created a scene on the streets of Nashville.
But Holt cautioned against reading too much into that relationship — at least, for now.
"One way or another, this shooter came across this flyer and recognized that it’s something he thought might be great to include in his manifesto,” the researcher said.
“I think that kind of speaks to the audience for that kind of material."
Then, there are the manifesto's claims that Henderson was radicalized by conservative commentator Candice Owens -- which Holt said appears to have been lifted from a notorious mass murderer's own manifesto.
"The line about Candace Owens radicalizing him is a very lightly modified copy and paste from the Christchurch manifesto," he said, referring to the 2019 New Zealand massacre that left 51 people dead, with 89 others injured around a mosque and Islamic center.
Another question: who knew about Henderson's plan?
The manifesto talks about someone helping him write part of it, and Holt said extremists in online communities identified him as the shooter before the police did.