Right Wing Media Cheers Plan to Release Nashville Shooter’s Manifesto
The far-right believes the government has been hiding the motivations of a school shooter who murdered 6 people in Nashville.
by Evan Urquhart
The right-wing press are currently salivating over news the FBI has decided to release a killer’s writings to the public. Ever since the March shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville which left 6 dead, 3 of whom were children, the far-right has held it as a matter of faith that they alone understood the killer’s motives, based on their hatred and fear of transgender people. Very little is actually known about Aiden Hale (more commonly referred to as Audrey), except that he is believed to have been transgender, and that he once attended the Covenant School, the site of the shooting, as a child.
Unlike many recent mass shooters, most of whom had ties to far-right forums and/or white nationalism, Hale did not publish a manifesto online or leave behind a trove of online activity that shed light on his motives. This lack of publicly available information has resulted in the conspiracy theory that Hale’s motives have been intentionally suppressed by authorities and the news media. For example, David Hookstead writing for the anti-woke sports blog Outkick, claims that if Hale had worn a MAGA hat, his writings would already have been made public.
screenshot from OutKick
What Hale did leave behind was a recently active LinkedIn profile that expressed a preference for he/him pronouns and the name Aiden. This scanty evidence, bolstered by rumors and deliberate misinformation, is all the right has needed to spin a theory that the shooting was motivated by anger over anti-trans hatred and discrimination. This conviction has been helped along by conspiracy theorists and far-right influencers on social media. One main source of the rumors about Hale’s writings was a tweet by right-wing extremist and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, who placed his own tweeted speculations about the shooter’s motive inside quotation marks, leading many to repeat Posobiec’s words as if they’d been sourced from Hale’s writings. (Remember, at this time the writings recovered from Hale’s home and car have not been released to the public.)
Fuel for the fire has been added by Tennessee Republicans, who have complained to the right-wing press that the FBI hasn’t released the information fast enough. Now, news has broken that the writings will be released, although there’s been no timeline mentioned for this to happen. According to the New York Post, the Nashville police have said the writings are currently being “reviewed for public release.” Right-wing media are covering this news in a celebratory fashion.
screenshot from the New York Post
It would be nice to hope that when the writings are released about Hale’s motives contained therein will then be settled. However, authorities have also said that some of Hale’s writings constitute a danger to the public due to the detailed nature of Hale’s plan before the shooting. This would seem to leave conspiracy theorists in a win-win situation. If the material released supports their theories on Hale’s motives, they can accept the evidence and work it into the ongoing effort to case the movement for trans rights as violent. If, however, the released material does not support that view, they can carry on believing it and claim the information released was censored.