The Texas shooter reportedly wore a patch popular with far-right groups

With four letters, the alleged shooter in the Allen, Texas mass murder may have been trying to publicize his far-right political ideology during the attack.

He suspect reportedly dressed a patch reading “RWDS”, or “Right Wing Death Squad”, a longstanding slogan of the fascist right wing.

The phrase is a favorite of members of the Proud Boys, the right-wing street gang whose leadership was convicted last week of seditious conspiracy for their actions during the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Several members of the group wore “RWDS” patches that day, a New Yorker article of the indicated time.

Proud Boys president Enrique Tarrio is one of those doomed leaders. A website called 1776.shopwhere he and other Proud Boys sold merchandise included listings for vinyl decals and patches with the text “RWDS”.

The phrase is so common among extremist groups that, following news of the Texas shooting, scores of reporters and academics posted photos of their encounters with it:

huffpost previously reported John Donnelly, a former police officer and white supremacist from Woburn, Massachusetts, bragged online about wearing a Right Wing Death Squad clothing company T-shirt to the gym. The T-shirt contained another popular far-right meme: the phrase “Pinochet did nothing wrong,” a reference to the murderous Chilean dictator with a penchant for killing leftists.

“I got a few looks,” Donnelly wrote. Using a derogatory slur, Donnelly said he believed Jews “win” if “you’re not wearing offensive clothes to the gym.”

That reference to Pinochet is key to understanding the phrase “right-wing death squad” and, in particular, US support for extrajudicial killings of left-wing political figures and others who are simply associated with the left through their assassins. .

As noted in a 2021 role published by the West Point Counterterrorism Center, the phrase “Right-wing death squad” “is a meme alluding to incidents of extrajudicial executions of political opponents by the Chilean fascist regime of Augusto Pinochet. Dissidents, particularly leftists, socialists and supporters of the previous government, were thrown from helicopters by the Pinochet regime. Today, the reference often features an image of a helicopter and is often accompanied by taglines such as ‘Right Wing Death Squad’, ‘Free Helicopter Rides’ and other iterations.”

And as photographer Jeff Schwilk told The Intercept In a report on far-right interest in Pinochet, “Pinochet specifically listens to the heyday of US-backed death squads in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, from the Phoenix Program in Vietnam to Suharto in Indonesia and the Contras in Nicaragua. It is a direct threat of intent for deadly mass violence and future death squads that target the left in the United States and anyone else they consider to be an enemy. He reveals the true nature of this ideology.

The phrase has a long history in the Trump era of American politics.

The night he won the 2016 New York Republican presidential primary, Donald Trump retweeted good wishes from a white supporter self-described nickname “RWDS”, The American Prospect noted at the time.

There were numerous references to the phrase the following year at the deadly white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photographers captured “RWDS” written and spray painted on shields wielded by white nationalists.

After the demonstration, Facebook reclaimed that he had banned a group called the “Death Squad of the Right,” among others, from his platform. However, three years later, the Technological Transparency Project reported that the group still had at least three pages on the website that were created before the 2017 ban.

In 2019, the authorities were doing research Michael V. Zaremski, a New Jersey paramedic accused of terrorizing his ex-girlfriend, when it was discovered that Zaremski had stockpiled weapons and far-right literature, and talked about committing a mass shooting at a hospital. prosecutors alleged that Zaremski had made videos reenacting the mass shooting of Muslim worshipers in Christchurch, New Zealand, and that he had a “right-wing death squad” patch on his EMT vest.

That same year, thelight waveThe band “OBNX” released the song “Right Wing Death Squad”, part of the album “RWDS”, which is still available on major platforms such as Apple Music. According to public figures from Spotify, the song has more than 1.1 million “plays.”

In 2020, journalists noted Proud Boys wearing the patches during a pro-gun rally outside the Virginia State Capitol. A Proud Boy at that event seemed unwilling to explain what the initialism “RWDS” stood for. “You can look it up” told an inquisitive journalist.

Later that year, a man who was with a group of Proud Boys in Washington, DC, was photographed wearing a T-shirt with the text “6MWE” across the chest, or “6 Million Wasn’t Enough”, a reference to the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, and “RWDS” on the sleeve.

And in 2021, federal investigators investigated a US Marine and others who were part of a Facebook chat group called the “Right Wing Death Squad.” The members of the group, one of whom was allegedly linked to the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen division, discussed the killing of Democratic Party employees, minorities and drug users with explosives and firearms. The Daily Beast reported.

The motives of the alleged Allen, Texas shooter are still unknown.

An FBI bulletin on the suspect said a review of his social media accounts revealed “hundreds of posts and images that include writing containing racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist rhetoric, including neo-Nazi material and material advocating race supremacy.” white”. Rolling Stone reported.

And several reports pointing to his “RWDS” patch, though coming from anonymous law enforcement officers, offer more context about the suspect’s policies.

But authorities are not publicly discussing what they have found. Local, state and federal investigative agencies did not respond to questions from HuffPost.