Even now, the first thing you notice about the Islamic Center of San Diego is how unremarkable the street is. The mosque is situated along a thoroughfare lined with the kind of mid-century homes that families pass down, tucked away in Clairemont, a residential neighborhood of single-family homes and small parks. It’s not the kind of location that makes national headlines. And yet it did on May 18.
There were three fatalities. Amin Abdullah was a security guard. Nadir Awad, a shopkeeper, is said to have dialed 911 prior to being shot. Mansour Kaziha, whose spouse is a teacher at the center’s school. Caleb Vazquez and Cain Clark, two teenagers who had apparently never met in person before deciding to carry out a massacre together, killed them. They connected via the internet. In the initial round of coverage, that detail was essentially a footnote, but it might end up being the most significant aspect of the story.
What investigators are currently sorting through is more akin to a scrapbook of complaints than a traditional manifesto. According to reports, a 75-page document that is still undergoing authentication is replete with racist meme culture, incel slang, and neo-Nazi imagery. There is hate speech directed at women, Muslims, Jews, Black and Latino communities, LGBTQ individuals, and pretty much anybody the writers can think of. To put it plainly, the FBI didn’t discriminate based on who they hated, according to Mark Remily.
Although it would be tempting to refer to this as ideology, ideology implies a coherent concept. The writings, according to American University researcher Cynthia Miller-Idriss, are “messy and blurry,” a piecemeal justification put together by someone who has spent too much time fostering hatred. That description seems accurate. Reading the early reports gives the impression that these two young men were more marinated in a movement than radicalized by it.
The part that sticks out is the livestream detail. There is a clear resemblance to the 2019 Christchurch massacre in New Zealand in that both gunmen appear to have worn body cameras and broadcast their assault in real time. Something about the structure of extremist violence was altered by that attack. It created a terrible genre by turning mass shootings into editable digital content. Two teenagers from the United States took the template and ran with it seven years later. It’s difficult to ignore how effortlessly the script moved.
The false information started almost as soon as the suspects were identified. In a matter of hours, accounts with sizable followings on X began asserting that the shooters were a transgender couple. This claim was unsupported by any news reports or police briefings. Since then, PolitiFact has refuted it. The claim, however, spread because it always does. Following these attacks, there is a recurring pattern in which the rumor and the truth compete with one another, with the rumor typically wearing better shoes.
In the days since, the community has accomplished something more subdued and noteworthy. On Thursday, thousands of people attended a funeral prayer. At a temporary memorial along the fence, neighbors have been leaving flowers. Resilience was the community’s strength, according to Dr. Muhammad Rahman, whose kids were on the playground when the shooting began. It might have landed because he said it without acting.
The most important issues are still unresolved. How two adolescents from disparate backgrounds met in a dark corner of the internet. Why does it appear that no one near them has noticed? What specifically could have prevented them? The inquiry will go on. The responses might not be satisfactory. Seldom do they.