'God I am ugly': Nashville school shooter's social media shows he embraced white supremacy

The 17-year-old who killed a female student at a high school in Nashville before taking his own life was an African-American Reserve Officers' Training Corp member who hated Black people and identified as involuntarily celibate, according to a manifesto apparently posted by him online.

A document outlining his views was posted to the X account of the shooter, Solomon Henderson, along with a photo of a handgun in a backpack that appears to have been taken in a bathroom before he walked into the cafeteria at Antioch High School and opened fire around 11 a.m. Central Time. Henderson’s X account was still active, with the link at the time of publication.

In a question-and-answer section in the document, Henderson indicated the attack was motivated by “hatred” of Black people referenced through a racial slur. Europeans, according to the shooter, “need to be protected because they are conquerors, inventors and revolutionary’s [sic] thinkers.” It goes on to accuse Jews of subverting Europeans and imperiling their existence, echoing the racist Great Replacement theory.

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The final page of a diary that was also posted on the shooter’s X account shows a photograph of Henderson, accompanied by the inscription: “God I am ugly. 4 hours to go.”

An entry in the position document on Henderson's opinions of Black people includes a litany of shockingly dehumanizing and ultraviolent descriptors of murder and atrocities.

Henderson credited less than a dozen internet personalities, mostly far-right influencers with radicalizing him.

The list includes Candace Owens, a Black conservative who left the Daily Wire website founded by Ben Shapiro last March following a string of increasingly antisemitic comments. In 2019, Owens testified before a House subcommittee hearing on white supremacist terrorism as a witness for the Republican minority. Owens lashed out at another witness during the hearing, saying, “The audacity of you to bring up the Christchurch shooting manifesto and make it seem as though I laughed at people that were slaughtered by a homicidal maniac is in my opinion absolutely despicable.”

Henderson wrote: “To expand on this, Candace Owens has influenced me above all. Each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over the Jewish question.”

Henderson also said he was influenced by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier who dined with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, and Ethan Ralph, a far-right podcaster who helped stoke the Gamergate controversy, a culture war flashpoint in 2014 that proved to be a staging ground for a misogynist backlash against women’s participation in gaming and other male-dominated spaces.

Henderson describes himself as a "Groyper incel," using terms that respectively refer to Fuentes followers and the involuntary celibate, or incel, movement.

Fuentes responded to the shooting by acknowledging that Henderson called himself a 'groyper,' but distanced himself from the attack in a post on X.

The document also credits the rapper Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) with inspiring his violence and extremism.

Henderson's position document pays tribute to an array of white supremacist mass murderers, including Patrick Crusius, who carried out a massacre targeting Hispanics in El Paso, Texas, in 2019; Brenton Tarrant, who killed Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019; and Anders Breivik, who murdered young people at a youth camp in Norway in 2011.

Henderson's document expresses support for neo-Nazi ideals, which he described as "a better, neater, cleaner world by eliminating all undesirables." He added, "We must aid the Aryans regardless of our race."

Henderson’s diary indicates that he had initially planned to attack on Thursday, but decided to move it up to Wednesday because he wanted “to speed things up.” He said he was “scared of failing to kill myself and then going to jail,” and that his “goal was to kill at least 10 people.”

He wrote on X that he had saved money for a GoPro camera "but it was hard to explain to my parents why I needed it so I couldn't buy it." Henderson's X account includes a link to the streaming platform Kick.com, where three videos documenting his attack were posted. The videos have since been taken down from that site, although Henderson's X account remains active.

Henderson’s X account re-shares posts from four other accounts that promote violence, self-hatred, white supremacy and the incel movement. Some of the accounts show pictures of the users making the A-OK hand signal and writing, “Goodbye everyone.”

The similarities suggest some degree of coordination, although it is unclear whether the other account owners carried out attacks of their own.

Henderson said he had "connections" to some of the other shooters, although "only loosely via online messaging platforms."

In a section of his position document, Henderson paid tribute to what he called "new gen cases," including Natalie Rupnow, the 15-year-old girl who fatally shot two students at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, last month.