A Florida man accused of posting online threats to carry out mass violence has been arrested and charged with making an interstate threat and a weapon violation, federal court records show.

Alexander Lightner, 26, of Venice, Florida, allegedly posted comments online that were “intended to convey the message that he was planning to conduct a racially or ethnically motivated mass casualty event,” according to an affidavit.

He was interviewed by FBI agents from the bureau’s Tampa Field Office a week later on January 5, and law enforcement executed a search warrant at Lightner’s home before he was arrested.

While searching Lightner’s home, FBI agents found an unlawful firearm suppressor in a laundry hamper of a bedroom he shared with his brother and “propaganda regarding white supremacist and accelerationist ideology in Lightner’s bedroom,” according to court records.

  • FireTower@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    Basically it’s someone that believes there is an up coming conflict (here seemingly a race war in his mind) and that by taking actions (here mass murder) they can cause the conflict to occur sooner, so they will sooner achieve their desired outcome of the conflict (here presumably some kind of ethno-state).

    It’s not always racially tied but seems to be in the particular case.

    • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      E.g. sometimes it’s religiously driven, like the evangelical nutjobs who believe that by behaving like shitheads in whatever capacity is their sect’s particular hobby-horse can somehow hasten the coming of the End Times. Whereupon they expect that they’ll totally be the special ones to be raptured up to heaven and not all those other sods just like them who aren’t “True Christians.”