Gilroy gunman promoted white supremacist manifesto.
Shortly before Sunday’s mass shooting in Gilroy, the 19yearold who committed the crime used his Instagram account to promote a book widely considered a manifesto of white supremacy, offering insight into the stillunknown motivation of the gunman.
Santino William Legan, on many levels, was an average Bay Area teen, growing up in a wellknown South Bay family less than 2 miles from where the violence played out. But a handful of social media posts suggests Legan ran astray of his more established family members, embracing a disturbing and tangled ideology of hate and violence.
In an Instagram post written about an hour before the rampage, Legan encouraged people to read “Might Is Right or the Survival of the Fittest.” The fringe book, originally published in 1890 and since rereleased by a handful of small publishing houses, is a call to action against the alleged tyrannies of government and organized religion. The 96page work encourages the “strong” to rise up over the “weak.”
While some literary historians suggest the book was written as a satire of social Darwinism — the theory that likens survival of the fittest among plants and animals to human society — many say it was a genuine promotion of the Anglo race. The book repeatedly demeans black and Jewish people as inferior. It also argues that women are the property of men.
“Books play a big role in the white supremacist movement,” said Peter Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University in Southern California who studies political extremism and violence. “Posting (about a book) is a clear shout to say the reason I’m doing this violence is not just personal but to say I’m acting on behalf of a larger movement.”
Simi said the Gilroy incident appears similar to other racially motivated shootings in which a gunman acts alone but at the behest of the cause. March’s killing spree at mosques in New Zealand, which claimed 51 lives, followed the telltale pattern, he said. In that event, the shooter’s gun contained a mark referencing the supremacist book “The Turner Diaries.”
“This is the type of isolated violence that (the movement) sees as effective and helpful for what they want to do,” Simi said. “It furthers their cause of polarization.”
Authorities have not yet provided a motive in Sunday’s shooting and are still baffled about why someone would spray gunfire across the grounds of the area’s most celebrated event, the Gilroy Garlic Festival. They only said that Legan cut through fencing that surrounded the threeday fair to avoid metal detectors and then, dressed in camouflage, began firing an AK47style rifle he obtained in Nevada.
He killed 3 people and injured 12 before being fatally shot by police. Authorities do not yet know if he was acting alone.
“Everyone wants to know why,” said Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee, responding to questions from reporters Monday. Smithee said his force, joined by the FBI, is working to get answers.
Legan lived in Gilroy, at least until he graduated from Gilroy High School in 2017, after which — at some point — he moved to rural Mineral County, Nev., along the California border. Since the shooting, authorities have searched both his residence in Walker Lake, Nev., and his childhood home in Gilroy. Smithee said it was not clear how long Legan had been back in the Bay Area.
Legan comes from a family that may be best known for its athletic prowess. His father, Tom Legan Jr., was a celebrated runner and supporter of youth sports. His brother, Rosino Legan, is an amateur boxer who competed in the USA Boxing National Championships in Spokane, Wash., in 2014.
Santino Legan’s late grandfather, Tom Legan, is perhaps the most renowned family member. He served in the military as a weapons officer in Korea before winning a post on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors in the 1980s and ’90s. His record was tainted during a reelection bid by accusations that he molested his eldest daughter, but he was ultimately cleared of the charges in court.
While Santino Legan was not very active on social media, his three recent posts on Instagram suggest hateful, if not racist, leanings, especially his nod to “Might is Right.”
The book is espoused by a small, but verbal faction of white supremacists and has been kept in circulation by a few rightwing printers. Written under the pseudonym Ragnar Redbeard, who may represent more than one person, the book has sold 120,000 copies since its original publication, according to Amazon.
“Strong men are not deterred from pursuing their aim by anything,” it reads in flowery Victorian prose. “They go straight to the goal, and that goal is Beauty, Wealth and Material Power. The mission of Power is to control and exploit the powerless, for to be powerless is to be criminal.”
The book is generally not available in stores but is sold on Amazon for $12 and up. Readers on Amazon rate the book four out of five stars.
Legan’s promotion of “Might is Right” on Instagram was followed up by a question; “Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats?” It also contained a picture of a Smokey Bear sign indicating “high” fire danger.
Another Instagram post by Legan featured a picture of his maternal grandfather, identified as Ali Asghar Vahabzadeh, with comments about “anglicizing” his apparent Iranian name to Ali Baylor.
Two flags posted on Legan’s Instagram page appeared to identify Legan’s heritage as Iranian and Italian.
His Instagram account has been taken down since the shooting, and the content is no longer visible to the public.
A third post by Legan, before it was removed Sunday night, read, “Ayyy garlic festival time. Come get wasted on overpriced s—.”