U.S. political violence driven by new breed of ‘grab-bag’ extremists
Before he committed mass murder in Colorado late last year, Anderson Lee Aldrich was a lively presence among a group of friends who regularly assembled online for hours to chat, play video games and trade internet memes. The four irreverent young men shared a desire to mock “cancel culture” and laugh over “dumb, silly stuff,” Gilbert Arroyo, one of the friends, told Reuters. But over the roughly three years of their gatherings, the memes and quips Aldrich shared grew increasingly racist, homophobic and violent, according to three of the gamers and a Reuters review of online content that Aldrich assembled.