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News > World

White Supremacist Hate Crime Shooter Confesses: 'I Did It'

  • White supremacist Dylann Roof poses with the Confederate flag in a photo found after the Charleston Massacre.

    White supremacist Dylann Roof poses with the Confederate flag in a photo found after the Charleston Massacre. | Photo: Reuters

Published 10 December 2016
Opinion

In a videotaped confession played in court, the self-described White Supremacist spoke about being radicalized on the internet.

Jurors in a South Carolina courtroom on Friday heard the videotaped confession of devoted white supremacist Dylann Roof, who is facing 33 hate crime charges for the murder of nine Black members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, one day after Donald Trump announced his run for president.

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In the videotaped the day of his arrest, Roof, 22, appeared both relaxed and at times excited, even laughing as he answered some of the investigators’ questions.

At one point Roof explicitly described his act as “political” saying that he considered himself a white supremacist. “Our people are superior,” he said. “That’s just a fact.” He added that he became radicalized on the internet. "It sounds lame but it was pretty much the internet," he said.

Roof said his views on race were influenced by the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, where a young unarmed Black man was murdered by a vigilante in a case which gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. He also spoke about Muslims “overrunning” parts of Europe and his admiration for Hitler.

Roof’s trial comes as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the FBI have both reported a massive spike in hate crimes since the election of Donald Trump, which has emboldened White Supremacists who enthusiastically embraced Trump’s campaign.

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Trump, who during the campaign refused to reject the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan, appointed white nationalist Steve Bannon as a senior white house advisor. Noted white supremacist leader Richard Spencer has hailed Trump’s victory saying that “Trump has proven the power of these ideas.”

Trump’s choice for U.N. ambassador, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Hayley, made a direct connection between Trump’s racist rhetoric and Dylann Roof’s crime. Speaking on the one-year anniversary of the Charleston Massacre, Hayley said Trump’s “divisive rhetoric” was dangerous. "I know what that rhetoric can do. I saw it happen,” she said, referring to the Emanuel Church attack.

During the attack Roof reportedly told one survivor "Y'all are raping our white women, y'all are taking over the world," in an eerie echo of Trump’s claim during his campaign launch, which took place the day before the shooting, that Mexican immigrants were “rapists” threatening to take over the U.S.

Roof, who is representing himself, had earlier offered to plead guilty in order to avoid a possible death sentence. Prosecutors rejected that offer, proceeding to try Roof on charges which could bring the death penalty if he is found guilty.

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