On Saturday afternoon, a gunman killed eight and injured seven at a mall in Allen, Texas. The shooter was killed by police. It is the second deadliest mass shooting in the United States thus far this year.
Law enforcement officials have since revealed that the shooter, Mauricio Garcia, espoused white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideology online. During the shooting, he also reportedly wore a patch with the acronym “RWDS,” which stands for “right-wing death squad.” The phrase has been popularized by far-right extremists.
Conservatives are refusing to believe it. They think that it’s impossible the shooter could’ve harbored such beliefs because he appears to have been Latino.
There has been no official confirmation of Garcia’s racial or ethnic background. People assumed that he was Latino or Hispanic based on his name and photos circulating online.
Last year, Axios reported on the rise of far-right ideology among people with Hispanic backgrounds. High-profile extremists who have Hispanic or Latino roots include Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and Proud Boys’ longtime leader Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of sedition for his role in the Capitol riot last week.
Nevertheless, many prominent online conservatives insist that the media and law enforcement are lying about the Texas mass shooter’s extremism.
Lexit, a group that advocates for Latinos to leave the Democratic Party, tweeted that the “fake media” is falsely labeling the shooter a “racist.” Lexit also suggested that Garcia was merely “against Democrats and the leftist agenda.”
Although law enforcement officials are the source for reports that Garcia espoused white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideology online, many on the right are blaming the media.
Conspiracy theorist Mindy Robinson claimed that the “foreign controlled mainstream media” is spreading “fake news” about Garcia’s beliefs based purely on “the imaginary, destructively divisive, race-baiting Left’s anti-American narrative.”
Ashley St. Clair of the right-wing satirical site Babylon Bee sarcastically tweeted, “Nothing screams ‘white supremacist neo-Nazi’ quite like a Mexican gang member named Mauricio Garcia.” CBS News reports he had no serious criminal record.
Other conservative figures also spread unproven allegations that the shooter had ties to organized crime.
QAnon influencer Lauren Witzke claimed that Garcia was an “illegal cartel gangbanger.” There is no evidence that Garcia, a United States Army veteran, was an undocumented immigrant or involved in a cartel. Even if he had been in a cartel or other criminal organization, this does not preclude him from harboring white supremacist or neo-Nazi beliefs.
QAnon conspiracy theorist Jeffrey Pedersen, known online as In the Matrixxx, claimed the shooter was a “South Texas Prison Valluco gang member.” There have been no reports that Garcia served prison time.
Pedersen also said every media outlet that referred to Garcia as a white supremacist should be jailed.
Denials of Garcia’s extremism are proliferating in online spaces popular with conservatives. This is a familiar pattern that unfolds every time a shooting is perpetrated by someone with far-right extremist views. The effort is intended to cast doubt on the link between extremism and violent criminal behavior.
Some are pushing back on the flood of baseless and unproven allegations about the Texas mass shooter.
“The border has shit to do with this,” Twitter user @LadyJayPersists wrote of claims that he was a “Mexican nationalist.”
“Seeing a lot of blowback to WaPo and WSJ saying Mauricio Garcia may have had white supremacist ties, given his race,” Robert Downen of the Texas Tribune tweeted. “So periodic reminder that there’s a long history of POCs advancing and supporting Nazi/white supremacist goals/ideology.”
