On Sunday morning, Jerad and Amanda Miller left their two cats with their next-door neighbour, and left their Las Vegas apartment complex on foot, armed with a handgun, a shotgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Less than five hours later, the couple burst into a CiCi’s Pizza restaurant just northeast of the Strip, yelled “This is the start of the revolution,” and opened fire on two police officers, in what the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department called a “politically motivated ambush”. They then stripped the slain officers of their weapons and ammo, covered them with swastikas, a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag, and headed to a nearby Walmart, where they fatally shot a bystander before Amanda turned the gun on her husband and then killed herself. Their plan, according to police, was to takeover a courthouse, execute public officials and ultimately overthrow the government.
In the days since the shooting, the portrait of the Millers that has emerged in media reports and police statements, as well as from their social media accounts, reveals a young couple that had fallen deeply down the rabbit hole of right-wing conspiracy theories. Neighbours told the Las Vegas Sun that the Millers had a reputation for espousing racist, anti-government worldviews and for bragging about their gun collection. On Facebook and in YouTube videos, posted under the username USATruePatriot, Jerad Miller identifies himself as a supporter of the Patriot Movement – an umbrella term that encompasses right-wing militias, white supremacists and sovereign citizens – and talks regularly about chemtrails, tyranny and overthrowing the federal government. This was his last Facebook post, published the day before the attack:
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Taken together, the two incidents reveal the dark, tragic side of right-wing extremist movements. According to numbers from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of Patriot groups in the US has skyrocketed in recent years, jumping from 149 in 2008 to a peak of 1,360 in 2012, a time period that corresponds to both the economic downturn and the election of the nation’s first black president. (For more on the correlation between racism and resource scarcity, check out this new face-morphing study from social psychology researchers at NYU.) Full story...
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In the days since the shooting, the portrait of the Millers that has emerged in media reports and police statements, as well as from their social media accounts, reveals a young couple that had fallen deeply down the rabbit hole of right-wing conspiracy theories. Neighbours told the Las Vegas Sun that the Millers had a reputation for espousing racist, anti-government worldviews and for bragging about their gun collection. On Facebook and in YouTube videos, posted under the username USATruePatriot, Jerad Miller identifies himself as a supporter of the Patriot Movement – an umbrella term that encompasses right-wing militias, white supremacists and sovereign citizens – and talks regularly about chemtrails, tyranny and overthrowing the federal government. This was his last Facebook post, published the day before the attack:
(...)
Taken together, the two incidents reveal the dark, tragic side of right-wing extremist movements. According to numbers from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of Patriot groups in the US has skyrocketed in recent years, jumping from 149 in 2008 to a peak of 1,360 in 2012, a time period that corresponds to both the economic downturn and the election of the nation’s first black president. (For more on the correlation between racism and resource scarcity, check out this new face-morphing study from social psychology researchers at NYU.) Full story...
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