MAN CHARGED AFTER ‘BEHEADING FATHER’ IN VIDEO POSTED ONLINE

▶ Footage remained on YouTube for six hours and included call for uprising against government

A man in the US has been charged with murder after he allegedly beheaded his own father and posted the footage on YouTube.

The suspect, Justin Mohn, 32, said in a video that he killed his father, Mike Mohn, “a federal employee” who he described as a “traitor”.

The video was online for six hours before being removed.

He was also charged with abuse of a corpse and allegedly used the video to call for an uprising against US President Joe Biden’s government.

Users of the social media platform, which has about 2.7 billion monthly users, informed authorities about the post.

Police in Pennsylvania said they identified “a person of interest” after being alerted to the footage.

The Bucks Country District Attorney’s Office said the call to emergency services was made by the victim’s wife.

“When officers arrived, they located the male deceased in the bathroom,” it said. Justin Mohn was detained three hours later, after police found his car at Fort Indiantown Gap, in Lebanon County, about 160km from his family home.

He was denied bail, Middletown Township Police Capt Pete Feeney said.

YouTube said the video was taken down due to its “strict policies prohibiting graphic violence and violent extremism”.

News of the arrest comes amid growing concern over the activities of fringe anti-government groups in the US.

Investigators in New York yesterday uncovered a suspected anarchist terrorism plot to kill dozens of people using home-made bombs and 3D-printed guns.

The suspects, Andrew Hatziagelis, 39, and Angelo Hatziagelis, 51, had written a “hit list” of targets, police said.

The material contained “multiple writings, multiple notebooks, showing they were antigovernment, police added.

There were writings quoting Charles Manson, Courtney Nilan of the New York police intelligence division told NBC.

Police found eight bombs in their apartment, two semi-automatic rifles, pistols and 600 rounds of ammunition.

Mr Mohn was detained after police found his car at Fort Indiantown Gap, about 160km from his family home

In a review of a new study of American far-right extremism published earlier this month, Philip Mudd, a former deputy director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Centre, observed “how common the phenomena of paranoia and prejudice are among people who see themselves as defenders of the real American dream”.

Such conspiratorial thinking was expressed in a shockingly violent act this week. Justin Mohn, 32, was arrested by police in Pennsylvania after allegedly posting a YouTube video in which he beheaded his father, who he described as “a federal employee”, before launching into a tirade against US President Joe Biden and calling for a national uprising.

Thanks to the power of social media, the video and its message of hate was online for six hours before being taken down. Although the extreme violence makes the incident stand out, the ideas and language contained in the clip – paranoia about big government, hostility to “globalists” and “woke” culture – are not the preserve of dark corners of the internet; they are increasingly mainstream.

Many governments and law-enforcement agencies in the US and other parts of the West remain focused on the violent threat posed by Islamist militants. This is understandable to an extent – such extremists have killed members of the public in several European cities, and the shadow of 9/11 looms large in the American consciousness. But if we are to identify where the greatest risk of terrorism comes from, the facts point in a different direction: the far right.

According to research published by the US National Institute of Justice in January, since 1990 far-right extremists “have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives”. In Europe, too, where a considerable number of hard-right parties with their roots in fascist movements are inching towards political power, right-wing extremists pose a demonstrable threat. The danger they present demands pro-active policing and intelligence work.

The 21st-century far right is often quite different from the street gangs or lumpen political groups of the past. The reach provided by the internet and social media helps extremists exploit an array of contemporary problems.

Social media platforms have a particular responsibility here, and need to meet that responsibility with more seriousness when it comes to content moderation. Aside from its hateful content, the appalling violence of the Pennsylvania video should have been enough for a wealthy platform provider such as YouTube to identify and remove it more quickly.

The medium of the message is one thing, but its content is another. Political leaders must get serious and understand that their words carry real weight. Polarising language, provocative policies and dog-whistle politics are often seized upon by the ultra-right, the conspiracy theorists and the peddlers of hate. Pennsylvania has shown how a diet of manipulation and grievance can have deadly consequences.