New York AG says Buffalo shooter was radicalized by fringe websites

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on Tuesday released a report detailing how a white supremacist gunman who opened fire at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket in May and killed 10 people in a racially motivated attack was radicalized by fringe websites such as 4chan.

While Payton Gendron’s online posts and activity were previously known, James’s 49-page report offers a deeper examination of what led up to the shooting on May 14, when Gendron shot 13 people at a supermarket in a majority-Black neighborhood on the East Side of Buffalo.

James said Gendron, now 19, was active on message boards and forum sites such as 4chan, where he encountered a proliferation of hate speech and activity.

“The tragic shooting in Buffalo exposed the real dangers of unmoderated online platforms that have become breeding grounds for white supremacy,” the attorney general said in a statement, calling for better oversight of these platforms. “This report is further proof that online radicalization and extremism is a serious threat to our communities, especially communities of color.”

Gendron is charged federally with 26 counts, including 10 counts of hate crimes. He also faces another 25 counts, including first-degree murder charges, at the state level. Gendron has pleaded not guilty to both state and federal charges.

Other modern mass shooters have also been active online before carrying out attacks, including the gunman who murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and livestreamed the attack on Facebook.

Gendron, who livestreamed his attack on Twitch with a GoPro camera, claimed in personal writings online that he was inspired by the New Zealand gunman, Brenton Tarrant.

Both shooters have cited the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which falsely claims liberals are replacing white people with minorities and people of color for political gain, in manifestos posted online.

But James says there’s a larger, disturbing trend behind those two attacks.

Tarrant’s shooting followed a mass attack in Norway in 2011 in which a neo-Nazi killed 77 people in a series of violent crimes after posting a manifesto outlining “explicit guidance to other extremists for how best to commit future mass atrocities,” James said.

“And followers have heeded his advice—in the years since those murders, white supremacists across the globe have followed this playbook,” James wrote in the report. “The Buffalo shooter, like others inspired by those killings, explicitly referenced the Norwegian killer’s manifesto in
his own writings.”

According to the report, Gendron also credited many of his radical beliefs to 4chan, which he began using regularly in 2020, and he was fueled by hate memes and images online that were antisemitic or racist.

He used other websites to assemble the tactical gear he used in the attack. On YouTube, Gendron learned how to convert an AR-15-style rifle with a fixed magazine to fit a detachable magazine, James said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Tuesday called for federal and state laws to better combat online extremism and violence, including amending Section 230, which protects companies from speech that users post through online social media platforms.

Hochul also recommended a state law that would criminalize the creation of graphic images or videos from those who commit violence and penalize people who share or repost those images or videos.

“This report offers a chilling account of factors that contributed to this incident and, importantly, a road map toward greater accountability,” the governor said in a statement.