On the morning of 17 May 2025, a 25-year-old suspect carried out a suicide attack using a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device outside a fertility clinic in the Old Las Palmas area of Palm Springs, California. The explosion injured four people and destroyed large parts of the clinic, with damage reported at several properties surrounding the detonation.
Authorities reportedly found a tripod and filming equipment near the blast area and confirmed that the perpetrator had attempted to livestream the attack. Since then, more information has emerged regarding the attacker and his online footprint, showing that he actively engaged with several niche online extremist communities and was preoccupied with ensuring that his actions would attain high visibility. On 4 June, US authorities arrested a possible accomplice of the attacker, who allegedly provided him with the material necessary to craft the explosive device he used.
This Insight analyses the niche ideology espoused by the Palm Springs bomber. Further, it focuses on his preoccupation with disseminating efilism through online content and his interest in past notable acts of violence. This Insight demonstrates that although the attacker subscribed to ‘efilism’, an ideology not previously linked to instances of ideologically-motivated violent extremism, he used media to confer meaning to his actions and connect them to past cases of extremist attacks. Finally, it argues that elements related to the bombing can offer researchers and practitioners valuable information on the growing and unpredictable threat posed by niche extremist ideologies.
Introducing Efilism
The bombing suspect created several pieces of digital content and claimed to operate various accounts on several online platforms; they provide an overview of his motivation and ideology. His main effort was a website (which has since been taken down) where he included a short overview of his beliefs, as well as a link to a thirty-minute long audio recording. In addition to this content, which can be considered preparatory work for the attack, the bomber was also active on several platforms, including message boards and social media, particularly X, YouTube, and Reddit. He referenced these platforms directly regarding their moderation policies in his audio recording.
The bomber espoused a niche ideology known as “efilism”. Efilism (from the backwards spelling of life) is a radical variant of anti-natalism that is, to an extent, adjacent to pro-mortalism. Anti-natalism states that it is immoral for humans to reproduce, as this will increase the overall amount of suffering, and pro-mortalism posits that it is desirable to cease to exist (allowing or even promoting suicide, but notably, opposing harming others). Efilism sees the total extermination of all conscious organisms as a morally desirable outcome. The attacker, while using pro-mortalism and efilism interchangeably, clearly subscribed to efilism, stating in the audio his ultimate hope to “[sterilise] this planet of the disease of life”.
Efilism appeared in the late 2000s and has since remained de facto limited to online channels, with most adherents being concentrated around a small number of influencers. While not all efilists see themselves as violent (the now banned r/efilism subreddit had rules against violent speech, although this to an extent also likely reflected the subreddit’s moderators’ desire to avoid infringing platform rules), several prominent influencers within the community have either justified or minimised the impact of violence, or even directly advocated for it. Stochastic calls for violence in efilist communities are often directed at pregnant women (often including extreme misogynistic messaging, almost certainly demonstrating their adjacence to incel and other manosphere subcultures) or at anything and anyone “promoting” reproduction. The Palm Springs attacker states in his audio recording that he chose a fertility clinic as his target precisely due to it being a symbol of natalism, again showing a deep ideological adherence to efilist messaging.
The Bomber’s Use of Media
The preparatory work carried out by the bomber, involving the website, audio, and failed livestreaming attempt, showcases his interest in ensuring the mediation of his attack. In the audio, the bomber demonstrates that he understands that his ideology remains confined to small online niches and states that the aim of the attack was “to get people’s attention”. Moreover, he spends considerable time highlighting perceived efforts by major social media platforms to “censor” efilist content, again directly linking a (lack of) media exposure to the reason for his attack. Overall, the tone and content of the material portray efilism as an elitist ideology representing a truth that is only accessible to the few, and that “the system” is seeking to obfuscate.
The content created by the attacker showcases a preoccupation with reaching a large audience, something seen in other lone actor terrorism cases. While some coverage described it as a “manifesto” (the attacker states he had “written some things down”), the audio recorded by the bomber resembles the unstructured format of a vlog. Throughout the recording, the perpetrator constructs interactions with an imagined audience – he addresses “anyone who listens to this”.
This wide community of listeners appears extremely diverse. It likely includes supporters, ideological opponents, and third-party observers. For instance, in certain parts of the audio recording, the suspect sketches out an efilist argument, only to provide a hypothetical counterargument, which is then rejected, thus simulating a dialogue with “outsiders” who are not acquainted with the ideology. Elsewhere, he directly attacks opponents, accusing them of irrationality or stupidity for refusing to see the “truth” of efilism. Finally, he uses terminology and references accessible to members of his online community. Towards the end of the audio, the attacker even apologises to his listeners for rambling, which further highlights its informal and improvised, vlog-like structure.
The website further highlights this preoccupation with his actions being mediated, although in a more structured way, to a large audience of both supporters and opponents. The top banner reads:
“Welcome! Here, you can download the recorded stream of my suicide & bombing of an IVF clinic! ”
The quasi-ironic text of the banner appears overly informal and is likely directed at insiders from online efilist spaces who may wish to mainstream their ideology further. Other parts of the site, instead, target outsiders. This includes the “Possible FAQs” section, which sketches out the basic premises of efilism and dispels some objections. Here, the attacker also addresses ideological opponents (which he refers to as “pro-lifers”), taunting or insulting them.
The Problem of Credibility
The elements discussed above demonstrate how the Palm Springs attacker understood that efilism was unknown outside of a few fringe online spaces, and saw it as the goal of his attack to mainstream it. I argue that these factors presented the attacker with a problem of credibility: to succeed, he had to convince his imagined audience of the ideological logic of his attack, and to validate his identity as a terrorist. Through the media he produced, he sought to resolve this problem in two ways: by demonstrating his belonging to efilist communities, and by linking himself to past violent attackers.
First, the attacker sought to demonstrate ideological consistency through his online presence. On social networks, including on his alleged YouTube channel (which the platform has since removed), he experimented with homemade explosives and used handles consistent with anti-natalist/efilist undertones. In the audio recording, he referenced efilist influencers, seeking to demonstrate his familiarity with their material and communities, and to align himself with them. On the website, this claim of belonging takes its most structured form. Here, the attacker sketches a map of ideologies adjacent to efilism, demonstrating his understanding of its premises, background, and context. He also includes a “bibliography” for outsiders to become more informed on efilist principles and thought.
The attacker also uses this bibliography to further his second effort: that of rooting his violence in past extremism, thus validating his role as part of a so-called lineage of attackers. Among the referenced texts, the attacker included the transcripts of a series of videos from a defunct YouTube channel that allegedly belonged to the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooter. These transcripts, which the Palm Springs bomber considered authentic, include several statements adjacent to or seemingly supportive of efilist ideas. In them, the Sandy Hook shooter allegedly states that, while “[he] differs from the efilists in several regards”, he still supports them “because [he] hates life and value”.
Unlike later lone actors, the Sandy Hook shooter did not seem preoccupied with mediating his actions or mainstreaming an ideology, as highlighted by his efforts to destroy possible evidence ahead of the attack, nor did he appear to see himself as a terrorist. Even if the recordings are taken as authentic, these resemble unstructured monologues, almost always targeted at the channel’s small online community. However, by listing him alongside other efilist influencers and ideological references, the Palm Springs attacker sought to “reclaim” the Sandy Hook shooter for his purposes, de facto placing him as his ideological “predecessor”, thus reflectively boosting his own credibility.
The attacker’s attempt to establish his credibility as a lone actor terrorist is likewise demonstrated in more subtle ways. Most notably, there are several fairly performative acts that, while not explicitly referencing past shooters, seek to partly copy them. As stated prior, the informal and quasi-ironic language and style of the website and audio may be a reference to previous attackers’ use of irony in their manifestos. Moreover, the preoccupation with livestreaming the attack is almost certainly an attempt to imitate previous attackers. Possibly the most notable instance of this stylistic imitation is the website itself, whose Q&A structure copies that of several lone actor terrorists’ manifestos, and follows the “template” of the 2019 Christchurch shooter’s writings. Finally, having identified the Sandy Hook shooter as his predecessor (whether or not that this was a tenable claim), the Palm Springs attacker chose to imitate his alleged recordings by uploading an audio monologue of his own online.
Conclusion: Opportunities for Further Research
The Palm Springs bomber was preoccupied with mainstreaming his ideology to the largest possible audience. He took performative steps to ensure his recognition as a terrorist, which he saw as conferring credibility to his actions. He sought to recuperate the figure of the Sandy Hook shooter as his ideological and material predecessor. Moreover, although sharing little with them in ideological terms, he copied some actions of other notable lone actor terrorists, including writing a website-manifesto, using a Q&A format to explain his ideology, using informal and ironic language, constructing and engaging with an audience, and attempting to livestream his attack.
These elements can be useful to policymakers as they show that, regardless of ideology, lone actor terrorists often follow certain performative expectations that guide their behaviour, particularly regarding their engagement with online media. This, in turn, suggests that mediation, entailing processes of content creation, sharing, and consumption of extremist communities, has a fundamental role in making some forms of lone actor terrorism possible. The Palm Springs attack, whose perpetrator saw the mainstreaming of his ideas as the key purpose and meaning of his actions, is one of these. As a starting point, this Insight could help craft more targeted “best practices” indicating how to respond to lone actors’ attempts to mediate their actions. For social media platforms, it could provide an incentive to analyse and possibly reform content sharing and promotion mechanisms, disincentivising their use and abuse by extremist actors.
Finally, I tentatively argue that comparative research could also benefit from these observations. For instance, the preoccupation with media observed in Western cases of lone actor terrorism, including recent attacks on schools, may have a parallel in less-studied cases of violence observed in other countries. These include the growing phenomenon of Xianzhongxue attacks in China, sometimes referred to as “revenge against society” attacks by Western media, and Mudjima (literally “don’t-ask-why”) attacks in South Korea and Japan. A media-centred (rather than ideology-centred) approach could highlight the role, if any, that different media spaces play in the actuation of violent attacks.
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Manfredi Pozzoli is a master’s graduate in International Affairs at LSE and SciencesPo Paris, as well as a research fellow at Think Tank Trinità dei Monti, in Rome. His research interests include the intersection of social media and terrorism, especially in the context of Europe and North America.
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