GERMAN KILLER DREW ON CONSPIRACY TROPES
He mixed extreme paranoia about secret state surveillance with far-right conspiracy tropes, misogyny and racist vitriol.
The gunman who killed nine people in the Frankfurt suburb of Hanau left behind a 24-page rambling screed calling for the “complete extermination” of races he considered inferior; a video blending far-right diatribes, delusional musings and an infamous quote by Adolf Hitler; and an English-language video statement that echoes themes of child sacrifices and disdain for mainstream media found in the Qanon conspiracy theory.
The attacker was found dead at home along with his mother, who may have been his 10th victim. His website and Youtube channel came down almost immediately, as German authorities tried to prevent his rant from spreading across the internet and morphing into an extremist rallying cry, as happened after the mosque killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, last March.
All of the people he killed during his rampage across the city were of foreign origin.
Identified as Tobias Rathjen, the gunman made no direct references to Qanon, farright memes or other deadly attacks and their notorious perpetrators such as the killer in Christchurch or the gunman in the German city of Halle who killed two people outside a synagogue on Yom Kippur in October.
Germany’s federal prosecutor, Peter Frank, described the rant as stocked with “confused ideas and far-fetched conspiracy theories.”
It was last modified on Jan. 22 and offered no indication he was planning an attack, according to Rita Katz of the SITE Intelligence
Group. The English-language video was completed on Feb. 13, she said.
Despite his incoherence, the 43-year-old tapped into an increasingly widespread vein of conspiracy theories originating in the United States, including many by Qanon, which promotes a right-wing conspiracy theory that President Donald Trump is fighting “deep state” enemies.