Dylann Roof’s manifesto resembles comments on neo-Nazi website, analysis finds

Comments on a website with neo-Nazi leanings appear similar to passages from the manifesto of Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old white man charged with killing nine black parishioners last week at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., according to an analysis by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The organization, which tracks hate groups, ran text from the manifesto posted on LastRhodesian.com through plagiarism detection software and found that passages were similar to comments posted by the user “AryanBlood1488” to articles on the website of the Daily Stormer.

In one example, a section from the manifesto is nearly identical to a comment posted on a Jan. 31 Daily Stormer article titled “Former Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt: Sweden Belongs to the Hordes, Not the ‘Uninteresting’ Ethnic Swedes.”

In a section of his manifesto labeled “Blacks,” Roof discusses white culture:

“I mean that our culture has been adopted by everyone in the world. This makes us feel as though our culture isnt special or unique.”

Among the comments posted by AryanBlood1488 on the January article: “White culture is World Culture, and by that I don’t mean that our culture is made up of ones from around the world, I mean that our culture has been adopted by everyone in the world. This makes us feel as if it isn’t special, because everyone has adopted it.”

Keegan Hankes, who conducted the center’s analysis, said he believes Roof is AryanBlood1488.

“We’re confident he searched hate websites and commented,” Hankes said Monday.

The Daily Stormer offers a disclaimer that it is opposed to violence.

Roof’s manifesto on LastRhodesian.com, which was registered in February, was discovered over the weekend. It says the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black Florida teenager, marked a turning point, fueling his obsession with racial issues.

Roof’s website also reflects the strong influence of a white supremacist group called the Council of Conservative Citizens, the center said.

After Martin’s death, Roof wrote, the council helped wake him up to black-on-white crime. In comments on a second Daily Stormer article, also from January, titled “No Longer Posting Council of Conservative Citizens Articles,” AryanBlood1488 wrote:

“I have serious, great respect for the CofCC because they are the ones who woke me up to black on white crime in the beginning. It was the first site I went to the day that changed my life, the day I decided to type in ‘black on white crime’ into Google.”

On Monday, several Republican presidential candidates said they would return campaign contributions made by Earl Holt III, leader of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

Hankes said the law center will continue poring over writings it believes are associated with Roof. “We’re very, very interested in places that might have contributed to his radicalization,” he said.

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