Introduction
In March 2023, six people were killed in a shooting at a Nashville elementary school. Three of the victims were children. The perpetrator, who was equipped with three firearms, was killed by police officers. In addition to covering the tragedy of the attack, news reports focused on two parallel elements: an unpublished ‘manifesto’ found by authorities at the shooter’s residence after the event and the identity of the attacker.
There were reports by the media that the shooter had left a document, possibly a manifesto, for authorities to find. While the actual content of the document remains unknown, other journalists later referred to the document as a suicide note. This description seems to have been echoed by the shooter in a private text exchange on Instagram shortly before the attack – and as having been part of a broader collection of documents, including maps of the school and detailed plans of action. Yet, the use of the term manifesto immediately fuelled comparisons of the Nashville shooter with other lone attackers, like the Buffalo and Christchurch attackers.
On 28 April, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced that the manifesto written by the shooter was set to be released “very soon”, after undergoing a process of internal review. Considering the nature of the material possibly contained within the document, and the chance of it perpetrating further harm to people and groups uninvolved in the incident, this decision appears paradoxical, if not actively counterproductive for countering extremism. A court hearing on 8 June saw the parents of the shooter request that ownership of the document be transferred to the victims’ relatives – who oppose its release. Yet, with the police and courts still formally responsible for the documents, the writings’ fate remains, as of now, uncertain.
After the shooting, Tennessee authorities quickly disclosed that the shooter was a 28-year-old transgender former student of the school. The identification of the shooter as trans caused a significant backlash on both traditional and digital media, with sharp increases in transphobic rhetoric. Prominent far-right figures, including Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, linked the attack to an (unidentified) underground, far-left “trans-terrorism” and “Antifa” network.
This Insight provides an overview of the importance of manifestos to single-actor attacks and the risks associated with the publication of any material written by the Nashville shooter. In particular, this Insight highlights the risk to the LGBTQ community in both the narratives around the attacker’s gender identity and the potential for targeted violence if the manifesto is released.
Lone Wolf Terrorists and the Importance of Manifestos
Manifestos have become increasingly common in cases of lone-attacker terrorism. Perpetrators of widely different political persuasions – from incels to white supremacists – often use social media to share them with a broad, decentralised audience. The medium of the manifesto, often copied and pasted in its content, almost formulaic in its language, works in the same way that memes do. They provide transmissible templates and compress various symbols together, but nevertheless need to be decoded, as the injection of irony covers the intended message, preventing outsiders (normies) from understanding it. Like memes, manifestos shift between different registers, superimposing layers of irony and serious material. Moreover, manifestos flatten violence so as to render it manageable, both for the purposes of sharing it with possible sympathisers and network members and for normalising it to the wider public.
Broadly speaking, manifestos contain certain basic elements: an (ideological) justification for the attack; an autobiographical profile of the attacker, including an overview of the process of self-radicalisation; an element of political theory, or even a ‘teleology’ of violence, basically explaining the shooter’s assessment of their actions’ possible socio-political consequences, with common themes such as martyrdom and dehumanisation of a specific enemy. Other elements may include a set of logistical instructions directed at assisting possible ‘copycats’ (as in the case of the Buffalo shooter, whose manifesto catalogued and reviewed hundreds of items of military and combat equipment, from ammunition to gloves), and miscellaneous visual elements.
There can also be an aesthetic code to manifestos. Most manifestos speak to a predominantly Western-based, internet-literate (mostly English-speaking), young adult audience, and often to specific online subcultures. In many cases, they share symbols, terms, and even visual elements with one another. The Bratislava attacker wrote his manifesto in English rather than his native language and sought to insert himself directly into the role occupied by previous terrorists. In the attacker’s view, he joined a long line of ‘Saints’. This last concept derives from an extremist Telegram network, referred to as ‘Terrorgram’, which praised and ‘beatified’ previous far-right militant accelerationist terrorists.
Although notable examples of pre-2019 terrorist manifestos exist, including the writings of the Unabomber or those of the perpetrator of the 2011 Oslo attacks, the manifesto compiled by the Christchurch mosque shooter can be considered a kind of model. The Bratislava attacker derived its structure from its Q&A format, while ICCT reported how the Buffalo shooter directly plagiarised the Christchurch manifesto in multiple points. The 2019 Poway Synagogue shooter launched his attacks only one month after the mosque shooting and quoted the Christchurch manifesto as an inspiration in his own writings.
Founding Documents and Mosaics: Manifestos and Violent Communities
In my last GNET Insight, I wrote that the media created by lone actors are an integral and fundamental meaning-conferring part of the violence they commit, and represents the rationale behind their actions. This is demonstrated by their media’s mosaic-like nature: manifestos, point of view (POV) style attack videos, or tweets generated by lone actors often combine unrelated cultural material, creating a complex mix of symbols often imbued with irony.
But these mosaics are not just ironic. Engaging with, comprehending, and potentially reproducing them means aiding the repetition of violence, powered by social media and algorithms. Lone attackers use the reproduction of mediated violence to amplify its resonance, literally multiplying its reality endlessly. This compensates for their lack of a meaningful strategic apparatus and outlook: unlike traditional terrorist organisations, lone-actor terrorists become combatants only in the moment of their attacks. Because of this, the media adopts the role of an accomplice, carrying their violence – crystallised into specific audio-visual artefacts – endlessly into the future.
For the communities that share them and their ideas, manifestos become like scriptures alongside other extremist writings. A handful of aphorisms from terrorists have become extremist mantras, often even breaking into the mainstream. The Unabomber’s manifesto’s opening line “The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race” has become a meme independent of its original context. Meanwhile, the Terrorgram network portrayed some extremists as ‘Saints’ and ‘evangelists’. For example, one of the images shared on the network featured the Christchurch shooter as a Saint, holding his manifesto as if it were holy scripture.
The Nashville Manifesto Should Not Be Published
No clear date has yet been set for the publication of the Nashville shooter’s manifesto, and a recent tweet by the Nashville Police Department indicates a delay in the release process due to “pending litigation”. It is likely that the document written by the Nashville shooter will be made available to the public. This probable outcome, which is motivated by pressures from the Republican Party and right-wing organisations, entails a series of dangers, both for private individuals and at-risk minority groups. Moreover, if anything, the publication of the document is likely to increase, rather than decrease, the risk of future lone-actor attacks.
If the document resembles a suicide note, its release is likely to needlessly publicise sensitive elements and episodes related to the shooter’s private life. This, in turn, might cause additional harm to the perpetrator’s family members who, as with other similar cases, appear to be extraneous to the radicalisation process and the actual carrying out of the attack. Publishing the document might increase these individuals’ risk of being doxed, becoming the target of online abuse, and even physical violence, as well as having adverse financial impacts in terms of job and housing security.
While it is important to note the shooter’s choice not to release the document online, as done by previous attackers, and instead leave a single copy at home to be found by the police, lends credibility to the ‘suicide note’ view, the alternative presents even more problems. If the document does resemble a manifesto, similar to the ones written by the Buffalo, Isla Vista, or Oslo shooters, or it states that the attack was a deliberate anti-Christian act, as suggested by prominent right-wing outlets, its publication is still likely to cause harm to innocent people.
At a moment of growing online and offline abuse being directed at the LGBTQ community and trans people in particular – often coming from decentralised, extremist, online-based networks – further exacerbating the discourse surrounding these minorities is a careless and almost actively violent decision, which should be avoided by policymakers. Numerous media outlets have already reported an increase in transphobic violence, and in the spread of transphobic, homophobic, and misogynist material online by far-right groups in the aftermath of the attack. In a worst-case scenario, the acceleration of this process might favour the likelihood of retaliatory attacks targeting the LGBTQ community.
Finally, the publication of the manifesto is likely to increase the risks of copycat attacks following the Nashville shooting. As noted previously, manifestos play an important role in inspiring other attacks. Rather than decrease the risk of further violence, releasing the document might turn the Nashville attacker into a ‘Saint’ for future extremist sub-cultures.
Releasing the document written by the Nashville shooter is a dangerous decision, which, if implemented, risks increasing violence towards individuals unrelated to the attack. It also does not contribute to the fight against lone wolf terrorism, and instead might even hinder it by encouraging further cycles of stochastic violence. Authorities should, when confronted with material of extremist nature and authorship, which is directly linked to these types of attacks, seek to halt its spread, and, if possible, prevent it altogether. In the words of the lone attackers themselves, the release of their media online is precisely what gives meaning to their actions, by firmly ensuring the endless reproduction of their violence. Stopping this chain of repetition outweighs the negligible (if any) benefits of allowing disturbing and highly upsetting material to be made accessible to the public.
Manfredi Pozzoli is a master’s student in International Affairs at LSE and SciencesPo Paris, as well as a research fellow at Think Tank Trinità dei Monti, in Rome, and an analyst at the Nicholas Spykman Center for Geopolitical Analysis. His research interest include the intersection of social media and terrorism, especially in the context of Europe and North America, and the development of covert psychological operations in the Cold War.