Moments after the news broke that a young White male had shot and killed 9 Black people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, the national media began to frame the story. Without much evidence, commentators on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC suggested that the killings were likely the act of a mentally ill individual.
It was the same framing that was used for White mass murderers such as Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook shooting) and James Holmes (Aurora movie theater shooting). The “mentally ill” defense allows a criminal to plead insanity and face a less severe punishment.
But mental illness can’t be a crutch for Dylann Roof. His act of violence on the nine innocent Blacks inside Emanuel AMC church was not a random act by some guy who lost his mind. It was the act of a racist terrorist who had a purpose to the crime he committed.
Several bloggers uncovered Roof’s racist manifesto from his website. His ideology is similar to the words of an ISIS or al-Qaida terrorist. The only difference is that race is replaced by religion.
Here are excerpts from Roof’s manifesto:
On Blacks being violent:
N—- are stupid and violent. At the same time they have the capacity to be very slick. Black people view everything through a racial lens.
On why he wishes every Black person was abused by a white person:
I wish with a passion that n—- were treated terribly throughout history by Whites, that every White person had an ancestor who owned slaves, that segregation was an evil an [sic] oppressive institution, and so on.
On segregation and school systems:
“Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back Negroes. It existed to protect us from them. And I mean that in multiple ways. Not only did it protect us from having to interact with them, and from being physically harmed by them, but it protected us from being brought down to their level. Integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to [the] level of brute animals. The best example of this is obviously our school system.”
On White flight:
“White parents are forced to move to the suburbs to send their children to ‘good schools.’ But what constitutes a ‘good school’? The fact is that how good a school is considered directly corresponds to how White it is.
I hate with a passion the whole idea of the suburbs. To me it represents nothing but scared White people running. Running because they are too weak, scared, and brainwashed to fight.”
On why Blacks are different from Whites:
“Anyone who thinks that White and Black people look as different as we do on the outside, but are somehow magically the same on the inside, is delusional. How could our faces, skin, hair, and body structure all be different, but our brains be exactly the same? This is the nonsense we are led to believe.
Negroes have lower Iqs [sic], lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals. These three things alone are a recipe for violent behavior.”
