The Minneapolis school shooter was a weird guy.
Robin/Robert Westman was seriously mentally ill, there’s no question. The question is whether there’s anything more to it than that. It’s difficult to tell. But there are some things to think about.
One of which could be the deeply disturbing Order of the Nine Angles, which has cropped up in some posts online.
But let’s start with Westman’s own video.
Two videos made by the 23 year old himself (herself?) were removed from YouTube shortly after the deadly attack at the Annunciation Catholic school in Minneapolis.
The longer of these, a twenty minute video, I managed to watch in its entirety. I can’t link to it here, because I can’t find it anywhere online anymore. All I can find now are partial descriptions and some screenshots.
But that video was really disturbing.
Intended, we have to assume, as the killer’s final statement to the world, he mumbles and provides running commentary as he films various carefully arranged items – primarily his sizeable arsenal of firearms and ammunition, most of which are decorated with words, slogans, references or symbols.
There’s so much of it that it’s difficult to keep track or recall everything. But I’ll highlight some of them.
But what it showed more than anything was an unhinged and suicidal young person preparing to act out a deranged fantasy: glorying in all the carefully laid out paraphernalia and intended messaging.
The problem with that messaging is that it’s totally confused and unclear. A mish-mash of references and tropes derived from the most toxic realms of the Internet.
There is no manifesto: no real mission statement or clear motivation. Media narratives that he ‘‘obsessed with idea of killing children” seem perhaps overly simplistic on first glance: though maybe it really is that simple.
But the imagery of his video is confused.
For example, there’s an anti Jesus or anti Christian element. Also an antisemitic element (a reference to the ‘six million’ not being enough) and a statement that ‘Israel Must Fall’.
But he also seems to lionise – or at least pay homage to – the far-right mass shooters Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant: who were both Zionists, pro Israel and anti Islam. They were also both partial to Masonic and Knights Templar imagery and mythology.
A desire to kill Trump also is alluded to by the shooter.
The fact that he also seems to say he’s from BlackRock or something like that suggests that he might actually be trolling conspiracy theorists at some points too.
Weirdest perhaps is that when Westman shows the pages of his handwritten personal diary, much of it appears to be in Russian – or at least something very similar to Russian Cyrillic. Yet, as far as has been reported, he/she has no connection to Russia. Westman grew up in Minneapolis and has no Russian family connection.
He also appears to reference the Russian FSB at one point too.
Less confusingly, he does reference other mass shooters. He seems to be somewhat influenced by the Columbine school shooters, and his videos seem to echo their films somewhat.
One of the most unsettling things is that he randomly breaks into sinister laughs at various points in the footage – highly reminiscent of the Joker from the Batman movies. Which wouldn’t be the first unhinged young shooter to evoke the Joker specifically.
But it doesn’t seem like a natural laugh: it seems like a deliberate affectation or reference. Like he’s consciously evoking the Joker for narrative effect.
I’m pretty sure he also referenced a direct line from the Dark Knight movie at one point too. So he was probably paying homage to the Aurora cinema shooter James Holmes (Holmes and another mass shooter, Adam Lanza, were also both linked to the Libor financial scandal, which is extraordinary).
The Joker affectation makes sense though, as the fictional villain has become the preeminent symbol for wanton violence and a kind of motiveless anarchy.
It’s worth noting that that Dark Knight film trilogy has taken on significant real world resonance, not just with the Aurora killings and now with this Minneapolis guy impersonating the Joker; but Trump himself quoted the Dark Knight Rises in his original inauguration speech. It’s a weird space Batman now seems to inhabit in the darker recesses of the collective consciousness.
What Westman seemed like in his video overall was an unstable person who’d taken in an overload of information and references from the Internet and was unable to necessarily form a coherent world view from them.
So it ends up being a jarring collage of disparate elements.
The only clear thing is that he’s suicidal: and he is also intent on killing before he takes his own life. The whole video is a carefully staged preamble to murder.
So, is it as straightforward as that? Probably. This is an instance where I don’t see a clear reason to suspect something more complex or conspiratorial.
The video does sometimes have the have feel of a staged scene: like an actor embodying a role. But that’s also indicative of a fractured or damaged psyche, rather than necessarily indicative of any broader conspiracy.
Though of course the Internet runs rampant with theories and speculation. Given some key past instances, this is understandable.
One of the most interesting suggestions is that he was a Satanist, connected with the Order of the Nine Angles, possibly the associated sect ‘764‘.
The Satanism speculation is, in the first instance, probably prompted by the anti Jesus imagery – he has an image of Jesus being used as a kind of dartboard.
And some cited unverified claims that he posted things on ‘Terrorgram‘, Discord or somewhere: but there’s no clear evidence of that that I’ve seen yet.
Also, just because someone has a resentment towards the church or Christianity doesn’t mean it has anything to do with actual Satanism. Some people have far more personal reasons for being hostile towards the church. Which we’ll get to in a moment
But the Order of the Nine Angles ( O9A) thing is interesting. And we should talk about it here a little bit.
The evidence for this connection in this particular instance appears tenuous perhaps. But it isn’t an entirely illogical notion.
O9A is a Satanic, neo-Nazi death cult that started in Britain but spread to multiple countries. The occult terror group crucially is entirely decentralised and doesn’t have a leadership in the classic sense: its adherents aren’t initiated by other members or higher-ups but they initiate themselves.
What we should acknowledge is that this loose ideological network is the epitome of evil.
Members of the O9A or its affiliates have committed horrific acts around the world, including brutal murders, terrorist acts, paedophilia and child killing. They in fact intrinsically believe in and promote rape, paedophilia, human sacrifice, and mass killing within their ideological framework.
See a list here of some of the known crimes committed by its devotees. It’s eye-watering stuff.
And most of it is ritualistic in nature: the evil acts are typically either initiation rituals or acts seen as being of ‘spiritual’ value. These psychotic weirdos believe that the destiny of the ‘Aryan race’ isn’t just to cleanse and conquer earth but to colonise the Milky Way galaxy.
I’m not concluding with any confidence that this Minneapolis kid affiliated himself with the O9A: but you could easily argue that his crime and the various symbolisms in his aforementioned video fit the mold quite neatly.
For example, his anti Jesus imagery and his attack on the church: the O9A cult is rabidly hostile to the Judeo-Christian establishment and its perceived war against the white race.
There are also identifiable occult/Nazi symbols in his video presentation. But this is becoming common: as with the Buffalo shooter, for example.
And even the specific targeting of children seems to align with the cult’s ideology. There have been multiple violent or sexual assaults on children by these cultists, and ritualised child sexual abuse has been a recurring feature (read how many of the cases have involved ritual child abuse).
It could even account perhaps for the apparent Russian writing in his diary, as this Satanic/Nazi cult network is known to have acolytes in Russia, where the far right is rampant. In fairness, they seem to have disciples everywhere.
Even the apparent hostility towards Donald Trump has parallels to this recent case from April in which a young man murdered his parents as part of an alleged plan to kill the president and trigger a revolution to ‘save the white race’.
Crucially, as the above linked abc article notes, the 17 year old was a member of the Order of Nine Angles.
Again, I’m not saying Westman was O9A affiliated or inspired. Just that the possibility isn’t far-fetched.
The Order of the Nine Angles, by the way, is a subject the podcaster William Ramsey (whose show I appeared on several times) specialises in and has written a book about (available here).
The way that twenty minute video is presented, with all the carefully laid out references and symbols, does have a *ritual* feel to it.
Someone like Westman could’ve easily fallen into the online radicalisation trap, specifically with a movement like the Nine Angles. The network’s online indoctrination networks and channels seem to operate pretty freely.
Moving beyond the satanic or neo-Nazi considerations, there are a few other curious things.
Firstly, what’s with this thing of high profile shooters apparently being Trans individuals?
It’s actually been a right-wing ‘anti-woke’ meme even before this. Naturally, right wing commentary online is rife with anti-Trans posts in the wake of the Minneapolis shooting.
But the race to label shooters as transgender has mostly proven false before: the Uvalde, Texas, school shooter was claimed to be a Trans individual, but it was apparently untrue.
The one other case where it appears to have been legitimately a trans shooter was the 2023 Nashville school shooter, Aiden Hale: that too was specifically an attack on a church school (though not Catholic).
But it seems odd that every time there’s a shooting incident, there’s false viral posts claiming it’s a transgender perpetrator: and then this time it actually is a trans perpetrator for real.
I don’t know what that means, if anything at all.
You also notice that a number of these young shooters seem to have very similar faces or overall appearances.
What does any of that mean? Again, I don’t know.
It seems likely in any case that Robin Westman probably carried some kind of trauma, which might’ve led to his unhinged nature.
I have to be honest and admit that the fact this was a Catholic school – and that his mother worked there and Westman himself/herself attended there – made me wonder if he’d possibly suffered abuse during childhood.
Actually, the aforementioned YouTube video did show a phrase like ‘Kill Pedos’ or something very similar written on one of the weapons.
Which might actually contradict the whole O9A/Satanist angle: as those guys seem rather fond of paedophilia.
It’s been reported that Westman’s mother has refused to cooperate with police. That’s a bit weird too.
All of this is just speculation though, some of it possibly clutching at straws.
If this was, as some speculate, a staged shooting involving a controlled patsy (and I don’t think it was), they certainly covered all the bases in that twenty minute video: hitting as many reference points as they could.
But the fact that the videos were so quickly taken down suggests to me this wasn’t a staged psy-op type event: if it was, they would’ve kept the video available for maximum exposure.
Also, again, the reference points in that video were so numerous and all over the place that I tend to think it really was just the confused arrangements of a broken, twisted mind – possibly further destabilised by online indoctrination sources.
We can never entirely rule out a broader operation or manipulation, given other cases. But with the rampant cyber mind-warfare that is being waged today, these horrific events are self perpetuating anyway: in my article about the Christchurch massacre I referred to this as a ‘perpetual motion machine‘ that is operating to generate these events. It’s almost a macro level psy-op generator.
In some ways, Westman might have something in common with Axel Rudekabana, the deranged teenager who carried out the horrific knife attack on young girls in Southport in the UK.
If anything, this horrible event demonstrates the toxic, hostile and confused climate we live in: and the destructive effect it’s having on vulnerable people, especially younger people who’re growing up in this fucked up landscape.
The modern sociopolitical environment and this online hyperreality mind-fuck is so destructive that it is not just claiming victims – it’s victims are claiming victims.
It’s all beyond disturbing, beyond disgusting.
