Much now depends politically on who Thomas Crooks was, the young man who almost shot Trump at a campaign rally with an AR15 rifle, the symbol of the conservatives.
Was he schizo? Ideologically left? A radical incel? Was he cynical and calculating like Oswald, the killer of JFK, who knew full well that Kennedy was replaceable? Or did Crooks believe in the left-wing conspiracy ideology according to which Trump would immediately become a dictator like Hitler and Mussolini after his election?
A picture gradually emerges from various sources: He was above average intelligent, interested in chess and programming, and had recently earned an associate’s degree in engineering from a community college. In the US, such universities are considered not prestigious, but do not cost a fortune like a “better” institution.
Former classmates described him as a loner who was bullied for his skinny build and mouse-like demeanor.
He lived in a slightly wealthier area and was too poor a shot to join the school team. The rifle was his father’s and we don’t currently know if he took it without permission. The father could be conservative and investigators are obviously looking for family tensions. Thomas was registered as a Republican.
Past perpetrators have often left traces on the Internet that can be used to track their radicalization. Crooks was apparently too smart for that and avoided attracting the authorities’ attention early on. His computers may be encrypted.
Nothing is currently known about mental health problems, but he was exactly the age at which schizophrenia typically develops.
Explosives or at least explosive materials were found in the vehicle he used. Authorities are only giving rough descriptions to the press. The more intelligent a perpetrator, the more likely he is to be able to cook up real explosives.
The FBI has not been able to find a manifesto, which is very unusual. Perpetrators usually copy fragments of other people’s texts to explain their actions to the world and also to signal something to their parents. Surprising his parents like that does not exactly indicate a good relationship.
So far, his internet history looks clean, but he is likely to have used concealment methods.
The Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a wooded facility south of Pittsburgh that has a 180-meter-long shooting range, confirmed that Mr. Crooks was a member.
Incel
What’s missing? Information about friends and relationships. In various countries, radical lonely people (incels) have long been seen as terrorist threats.
In the Plymouth shooting in England in August 2021, 22-year-old Jake Davison killed five people (including his mother) and injured two others before shooting himself. Davison was diagnosed with autism and ADHD as a child. He became increasingly interested in weapons and was considered lonely. The Covid lockdowns had further negative effects on his mental health. Davison uploaded videos to YouTube under the name “Professor Waffle” and talked about incel issues. He lamented “missing out on a teenage romance” and complained about “chads,” slang for confident, sexually active men.
Researchers are finding more and more links between the radical incel scene and classic political extremism.
Incels have several similarities with jihadist terrorism in terms of radicalization and tactics
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1765022/FULLTEXT02
Incels are sometimes cross-motivated by far-right ideologies. The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that 67 percent of all domestic terrorist attacks in the United States between January 1 and August 31, 2020, were carried out by right-wing extremists.
Crooks was a registered Republican and Trump is the party’s candidate. The fact that the campaign event was held near his home may simply have been simply an opportunity to do something “big.” He had no prospect of escaping after a successful assassination attempt and the likelihood was very high that he would be shot while trying. This suggests suicidal tendencies.
Trump’s history with women and status makes him a “Chad,” the cliché image of a man who takes women as he pleases.
A 21-year-old perpetrator named William Atchison was at least partially identified as an incel in December 2017 (2017 Aztec High School shooting). His online activities included writing pro-Hitler and pro-Trump posts and visiting internet forums such as 4chan and Kiwi Farms, as well as white nationalist websites such as The Daily Stormer. He used various usernames, including “Future Mass Shooter” and names modeled after several mass murderers. He was a sysop for Encyclopedia Dramatica and said:
“Work sucks, school sucks, life sucks. I just want to get out of this shit.”
Alek Minassian had admitted to driving a van into a Toronto sidewalk in 2018, killing 10 people. Minassian has told police he was radicalized online by other incels. Before the attack, Minassian posted a message on Facebook:
The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! Long live Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!
Elliot Rodger published a 141-page incel manifesto online before killing six people in a shooting and stabbing in California in 2014. He has since become a martyr in the incel community.
Incels are typically in their mid-twenties, heterosexual, and childless. Most considered themselves middle class or lower middle class. Most had some form of post-secondary education and lived either at home or rented.
Incels typically have extremely poor mental health, with a high incidence of depression and suicidal thoughts.
This Pew Research Center Ideological Consistency Scale survey found that incels are slightly left of center on average. They believe that most women are attracted to a small number of men (Chads) who have a monopoly on sexual encounters, while the “genetically inferior” incels are excluded from the gene pool.
Much of this fits Crooks, and by his age he may have come to the “realization” that he would never achieve his goals in life, thus never have a life worth living. Trump and the Republican Party are elite circles and seem like a conspiracy group of “Chads.”
Hoffman, Ware, and Shapiro (2020) found that nearly 70% of users of the Incels.co forum were depressed and over 25% were on the autism spectrum. Moskalenko et al. (2022) report staggering rates of self-reported depression (95%) and anxiety (93%) in a survey of 274 incels.
In a 2020 yearbook from his school, he is seen in a photo with a mouse hairstyle, glasses, braces, and a T-shirt with the US flag and Mount Rushmore. That was the year the COVID pandemic began and caused increasing isolation in America.
Crooks was wearing a T-shirt from Demolition Ranch, a YouTube channel known for its content on firearms and explosive devices, when he committed the crime. Run by Matt Carriker, the channel has millions of subscribers and features videos exploring the capabilities of various firearms and explosive devices.
