This is a follow-up post to one from January this year: https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2022/01/06/ugly-connections/
Late in December 2021 a gunman went on a killing spree in Denver. The murders appear to be reprisals for imagined slights. The added twist to the killings was that the murderer had also been a (sort of) science fiction author with a series of books one of which presaged the mass killings. For example, the protagonist of the books "Lyndon" kills two tattoo artists in the books whereas the real killer (Lyndon James McLeod) attacked two tattoo shops.
The killer wrote as "Roman McClay" and earlier in the year I was asked by some people whether he had any connection with the far-right sci-fi authors I've covered here. My answer at the time was that the connections were indirect. Media reports drew connections between McClay/McLeod and far-right self-help gurus Mike Cernovich and Ivan Throne as well a far-right pundit Jack Posobiec (see https://twitter.com/COSAntiFascists/status/1475992196847390725?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1475992196847390725%7Ctwgr%5E186526d59787c0067264287f49ca6dd9172c9c6e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewsone.com%2F4267885%2Fdenver-mass-shooter-lyndon-mcleod-white-supremacist-report%2F ). Although Vox Day's Castalia House has published works by Cernovich, Throne and Posobiec, there did not appear to be any direct connection between McClay/McLeod and Day/Castalia.
Yesterday, in the post on extreme-Catholic/misogynist Brian Niemeier's paranoia about demons, Doris Sutherland pointed out multiple connections between McClay/McLeod and the circle of authors around Niemeier. In particular, Niemeier has been promoting for some time the life/relationship/self-help advice of author Adam Lane Smith aka The Brometheus. Niemeier is Lane Smith's editor.
Meanwhile, Adam Lane Smith was an online friend and promoter of McClay/McLeod. Doris put extensive documentation in her comment which you can read here https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2022/07/28/demons/#comment-75552
Lane Smith's Twitter account surprisingly still has old tweets with him promoting McClay/McLeod's novels:
Note that this book specifically is the one in which McClay/McLeod mentally rehearsed the actual murders he would later commit, INCLUDING the names of the actual victims. Now, obviously, Adam Lane Smith did not know at the time that the ostensible work of fiction was literal murder fantasy. However, he does promote himself as an exceptional judge of character and (surprise, surprise) an advocate of Brian Niemeier's witch test (e.g. https://twitter.com/TheBrometheus/status/1451238295367716866 ).
The connection between these far-right fantasies and actual violence is usually hard to establish. There are famous examples such as the Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh being inspired by the notorious racist alt-history fantasy The Turner Diaries. The use of fiction creates a curtain of deniability. After all, there are lots of novels in which terrible people do terrible things but don't inspire actual violence. With McClay/McLeod there is zero gap between the far-right murder fantasy and real-life killings. The murderer was using fiction as a way of rehearsing his revenge murder spree while tieing it to a worldview in which his masculinity and traditional values were threatened by demonic forces.
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