The group that flagged an online user account now linked to the teenager who committed the shooting at Evergreen High School said the incident is part of a concerning pattern that needs more attention.
Oren Segal, senior vice president of Counter-Extremism and Intelligence for the Anti-Defamation League, said Tuesday that the type of hate and extremism the organization researches and tracks is shifting, and people need to understand the change.
Instead of the extremism and violence centered around the ideology behind a type of hate, now the point is the gore and violence itself.
“I don't want to say it's brand new, but what is different here, what is disturbing here is that the attacks seem to be coming faster and quicker,” Segal said. “The people seem to be getting younger. I mean, our own children are killing our children in this country now. And the through line between them is this ecosystem of hate and violence.”
“This is a pattern, not a coincidence,” he said.
The Anti-Defamation League investigators were concerned about an online user in July, enough that they flagged it to the FBI.
It’s something the organization does regularly. Often, as was the case this time, they did not know the identity of the online user.
“This is where we rely on law enforcement,” Segal said.
But after the shooting at Evergreen High School, when the Jeffco Sheriff’s Office identified the student shooter and posted a picture of him online, the investigators of the ADL recognized the boy.
“We realized that this was the person that we had been tracking and flagging,” Segal said.
Jeffco investigators have said they believed he had been “radicalized,” but haven’t shared more about their findings.
On Monday, the FBI confirmed that it had been investigating the identity of an online user who had been discussing plans for a mass shooting, and said that part of their investigation stopped on Sept. 10, the day of the Evergreen High School shooting.
The FBI has not answered any follow-up questions about its investigation.
Segal said there have been other cases where law enforcement thanks the ADL for their tips, but they don’t usually get to know if police believe they’ve been able to stop another mass shooting.
In this case, Segal said the organization has not been in touch with the Jeffco Sheriff’s Office which is also investigating the shooter’s actions leading up to the incident.
Instead, Segal said the organization is focused on continuing to raise awareness.
Three weeks ago, the ADL published a report that it shared with school district superintendents across the country to help them better understand the new version of extremism in these online subcultures, the websites that are a platform for it, and to recognize early warning signs.
Segal said that even though he couldn’t share what was forwarded to the FBI, in general, the Evergreen shooter’s activity mirrored that seen for the shooters in Madison, Wisconsin, and in Nashville, Tennessee.
“He had been sharing symbols and code words that extremists use, referencing past school shooters and even beginning to amass tactical gear,” Segal said. “It appeared that the person making those posts was developing a deep fascination with mass shooters. This is somebody who was expressing neo-Nazi views and that was active on a violent gore site that we know at least two previous school shooters were active on before him.”
Social media accounts and online user profiles on other websites, which have since been taken down, show the shooter in Evergreen posing as previous school shooters, including those from Columbine High School.
According to the ADL research, in a now-deleted TikTok video, the shooter modeled some of his new gear, including a tactical helmet and a gas mask, and responded to comments about his plans.
ADL believes the Evergreen shooter had first created an account on one of the websites, Watch People Die, in December.
According to a news report from the Associated Press, administrators for the website, Watch People Die, said in an email that the Evergreen shooter “lied about his age in order to access the site and was not a very active user of it, with only seven comments.” The AP also reports the email referred to the shooter in Evergreen, as well as the shooters of the Wisconsin and Tennessee incidents, as “unhinged losers.”
Segal said that in addition to awareness about subcultures fascinated with and promoting and violence, the public should demand new accountability.
“We all need to confront this crisis with a sense of urgency,” Segal said. “Our strategies need to change. Our expectations of accountability are not outrageous. People should be asking themselves, why does a platform like watch people die even exist? I think these are not unreasonable questions for people to ask, whether they've been in these communities that have been targeted or not. Because my biggest concern at this moment right now is that this will likely happen again soon.”
