I wasn’t going to respond to this.

It wasn’t until it was brought to my attention that I was mentioned in the article that I bothered to read it. Then I also noticed that media was uncritically spreading these claims as gospel.

Let’s scrutinize the list of the 13 alleged Alt-Right killers:

1.) Dylann Roof – Dylann Roof unambiguously falls into the category of what I have described in the past “a self detonating lone wolf vanguardist.” He was a White Nationalist lone wolf killer in the tradition of Frazier Glenn Miller, James von Brunn and Joseph Paul Franklin.

There is nothing that connects Dylann Roof to the Alt-Right except his age. It later came out at his trial that he was inspired by old Hollywood movies like American History X, Higher Learning and Romper Stomper. He was disappointed that there were “no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything” in South Carolina like he saw in these movies. We also learned during his trial that Dylann Roof suffers from a number of mental illnesses and Hashimoto’s Disease.

No one at the time described Dylann Roof as an “Alt-Right killer” because there was no obvious connection to the movement. The Alt-Right later became famous during the Trump campaign. This is a mendacious attempt to smear the Alt-Right through association with Dylann Roof.

2.) James Fields, Jr. – James Fields, Jr. is an Alt-Right sympathizer.

Aside from his age, James Fields, Jr. has nothing in common with Dylann Roof. There is no proof that he came to Charlottesville with the intention to kill anyone. Dylann Roof unambiguously engaged in premeditated murder in an attempt to spark a race war. James Fields, Jr. killed someone in a traffic accident and spent the rest of the day crying in his jail cell. This isn’t similar to Dylann Roof, James Von Brunn, Glenn Miller or Joseph Paul Franklin who were ideologically driven killers.

3.) Devon Arthurs – Devon Arthurs killed his Atomwaffen roommates after he converted to Islam. He was angry that his roommates had “disrespected” Islam. He also told the police that he was motivated by US military attacks on Muslim countries. His crime was motivated by religion. He also has nothing in common with Dylann Roof and James Fields, Jr. except his age.

4.) Elliot Rodger – The Supreme Gentleman was a mixed race incel. I have no idea how Elliot Rodger has been posthumously rebranded as an “Alt-Right killer.” He wasn’t even White. No one including the SPLC labeled him an Alt-Right killer when he went on his shooting spree.

5.) Christopher Harper-Mercer – This one is the biggest stretch of them all. Christopher Harper-Mercer was a mixed-race Satanist who executed nine Christians. No one associated him with the Alt-Right at the time and he is also being posthumously rebranded as an “Alt-Right killer.”

6.) Jeremy Christian – Jeremy Christian was an insane Bernie Sanders supporter. He planned to sell his comic book collection to move to Brazil to live among an aboriginal tribe. The only thing that Jeremey Christian has in common with Christopher Harper-Mercer was that both men lived in Oregon.

7.) Samuel Woodward – Samuel Woodward is a former member of Atomwaffen who is accused of murdering Blaze Bernstein who was a Jewish homosexual. While the crime may indeed have been ideologically motivated, Atomwaffen is known for its hatred of the Alt-Right.

8.) Nicholas Giampa – Nicholas Giampa killed his White girlfriend’s parents in Virginia. Even if you connect Giampa, Arthurs and Woodward to Atomwaffen, there is no obvious pattern to their crimes. Their motives were different and their victims have nothing in common.

9.) Lane Davis – Lane Davis was a MILO intern who killed his father over his obsession with conspiracy theories. He was arguably an Alt-Lite killer. This is yet another example of how an interpersonal crime is used to smear the Alt-Right. Once again, it is mendacious to argue that Lane Davis is a murderer in the same sense that Dylann Roof, Glenn Miller or Joseph Paul Franklin were murderers.

10.) William Edward Atchison – William Edward Atchison was a school shooter in New Mexico who admired other school shooters. He was fed up with his life and randomly targeted his victims. The claim has already been dismissed by the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office.

11.) James Harris Jackson – James Harris Jackson was a racially motivated murderer. He claims to have hated black men his entire life. Once again, there is no proof he had any connection to the Alt-Right except for his age and racial beliefs.

12.) Matthew Riehl – Matthew Riehl was a mentally ill libertarian Trump supporter who shared memes and posted on 4chan. He shot four sheriffs deputies and killed another one. He was motivated by hostility to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department which he accused of being a bunch of Nazis. He also appears to have had either Asian or Native American ancestry.

13.) Alexandre Bissonnette – Alexandre Bissonnette was a Canadian who shot up an Islamic Center in Quebec City. The evidence of his connection to the Alt-Right is that he was a Facebook fan of Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen.

14.) Sean Urbanski – Sean Urbanski was a racially motivated killer in Maryland. The single strand of evidence that connects him to the Alt-Right is that he was a member of a Facebook group called the Alt-Reich which is a term typically used by conservatives like Rick Wilson as an epithet.

The names on this list are reminiscent of the time the SPLC’s Mark Potok attempted to blame Jared Loughner’s shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords on the Tea Party. More than anything else, it shows the sheer mendacity of the SPLC because the people on this list have nothing in common. Basically, this is an attempt to force meme the notion that the Alt-Right is turning back to the violent vanguardism of the 1980s. No one on this list is even connected to any Alt-Right group or leader except for Atomwaffen which is a National Socialist group that is known for being emphatically anti-Alt-Right.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t racist murderers. Dylann Roof was a racist murderer. Glenn Miller was a racist murderer. Joseph Paul Franklin was a racist murderer. In all of these cases though, there was no ambiguity about their motives or ideology. These men recognized each other as being White Nationalist vanguardists – Miller was inspired by Franklin – whereas most of the people on this list would dispute the argument that they are part of the same movement.