'They come for the lulz... but stay for rage juice': Conservative blasts 'radicalizing' internet 'messiahs'

On Thursday, in a podcast interview posted to The Bulwark, former RNC official and Jeb Bush staffer Tim Miller walked through the danger posed by the internet's radicalization of "angry young white men" to commit acts of hate.

This danger, Miller argued, is laid clear by the gunman who murdered 10 Black supermarket shoppers in Buffalo, after months of preparation and planning — and inspiration from the darkest corners of online message boards.

"These young men were radicalized not by religious clerics or cult leaders, but by message-board messiahs who cloak their radical ideology in memes," said Miller. "The 18-year-old who carried out the latest white supremacist mass murder left no doubt that’s exactly what led him to do it. He wrote in his 180-page manifesto that the idea for the attack came online: 'Browsing /pol/ one day I saw a short gif of a man walking into a building and shooting a shotgun through a dark hallway.' That man was the perpetrator of the massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, which he livestreamed on Facebook."

"The Buffalo shooter says he then began researching Christchurch and developed his beliefs, mostly on the internet, where he learned about the Great Replacement theory, which posits that shadowy forces — usually Democrats or Jews — are plotting to replace white European ethnoculture by importing minorities with higher fertility rates," noted Miller. "This replacement ideology has flourished in online forums like 8Chan and Gab and Parler where racist blog boys post dehumanizing memes that they often pretend are jokes when called on it."

The Attorney General of New York has already announced an investigation into the online platforms that allegedly inspired the gunman's murderous rampage.

"They come for the lulz, but stay for the surround-sound of rage juice that tells them that they are the victim of modern woke culture," concluded Miller. "And the most unstable among them get convinced that their only choice is to act. From Christchurch, to Charleston, to El Paso, to Buffalo, we’ve seen the deadly result — which is why we cannot dismiss their lulz as some stupid internet game. I’d like to close this week by remembering the people who are the victims of this latest racist attack."

You can read the whole interview here.