The Internet Built These Killers
Two San Diego teenager shooters did not invent a worldview. They downloaded one.
The two teenagers who opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego mosque left a 75-page manifesto that is the clearest and most chilling portrait yet of what online radicalization is doing to kids.
Eighteen-year-old Caleb Liam Vazquez of Chula Vista and 17-year-old Cain Lee Clark of San Diego livestreamed the attack to Discord. Their 75-page document contained both of their separate manifestos, with a title built like a flag: The New Crusade: Sons of Tarrant — a tribute to Brenton Tarrant, the white supremacist who slaughtered 51 Muslims in two New Zealand mosques in 2019.
These two boys did not invent a worldview. They inherited one — assembled, piece by piece, from the open sewer of the modern internet.
That is the part of this story that should keep parents awake. The *Sons of Tarrant* manifesto is not the work of a single ideology with a single grievance. It is, in every meaningful sense, the kitchen sink — every poisonous current of the last f…
