A South Carolina man with white supremacist connections who expressed admiration for Charleston, S.C., church shooter Dylann Roof was arrested Wednesday and accused of plotting an attack after unknowingly discussing his plans with an undercover FBI employee.
The Washington Post reports that 29-year-old Benjamin Thomas Samuel McDowell told an FBI employee that he wanted to do something on a “big scale” and then write on the building he targeted “in the spirit of Dylann Roof.”
According to the criminal complaint, McDowell told the undercover employee, “I seen what Dylann Roof did and in my heart I reckon I got a little bit of hatred and I ... I want to do that shit. Like, I got desire ... not for nobody else ... it just ... I want something where I can say, ‘I fucking did that’ ... me personally.”
From the Post:
According to the complaint, Horry County, S.C., police knew McDowell as someone who had made white supremacist connections while serving prison sentences for various criminal offenses. He posted rambling, expletive-filled white supremacist rants on Facebook, and in early January, requested an “iron”—or gun—from someone through Facebook instant messenger, according to the complaint. Less than a week later, he was in touch with an undercover FBI employee whom McDowell believed handled problems for the Aryan Nations, a group that espouses racist and anti-Semitic beliefs.
McDowell’s case is somewhat similar to Roof’s in that Roof, too, expressed frustration that, in his view, white supremacists were not taking enough action. Roof, who was sentenced to death last month for shooting and killing nine black parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, wrote in a journal that he “would rather live imprisoned knowing I took action for my race than to live with the torture of sitting idle” and suggested he hoped others might follow suit.
“It isn’t up to me anymore,” Roof said. “I did what I could do. I’ve done all I can do. I did what I thought would make the biggest wave, and now the fate of our race sits in the hands of my brothers who continue to live freely.”
McDowell apparently had not picked a specific target and did not have a plan of attack, but he told the undercover FBI employee that he wanted to target nonwhites at a county outside of where he lived, and he did not want to get caught.
“I got the heart to do this,” McDowell said, according to authorities.
McDowell, according to officials, asked the undercover FBI employee to buy him a handgun, and that serves as the basis for the criminal charge against him; McDowell is a felon and therefore forbidden from possessing a firearm. The employee and McDowell hatched a plan in which the employee would pick him up from his mother’s house and drive him to his grandfather’s house to get money to pay for the gun and ammunition, authorities say.
On Wednesday, McDowell and the employee met as planned, and McDowell purchased a .40-caliber handgun with a shaved-down firing pin for $109, officials say. He was then arrested by federal agents.
Interestingly enough (not), in none of the reports that I’ve read about McDowell has he been described as a terrorist, but had he been brown-skinned and Muslim, the efforts to tar him with that descriptor would have been immediate and endless. Let’s call it what it is: These white supremacists plotting these actions are domestic terrorists, plain and simple.
It’s also ironic that McDowell would claim to have “the heart to do this” while simultaneously claiming that he did not want to get caught. You are either down for your cause or you aren’t, you fucking pussy.
Finally, how are you plotting an attack you need financing from your grandparents to complete? This is like the Kmart “Blue Light Special” of terror-attack plots.
But whatever. This is the environment and attitude your president is fostering in this country.
God Bless Amerikkka.
Read more at the Washington Post.