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| He killed these two and wounded three other women and one man |
The man who shot dead two women at a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida, on Friday before killing himself was a far-right extremist and self-proclaimed misogynist who railed against women, black people, and immigrants in a series of online videos and songs.There's nothing to see here folks, nothing at all. The fact that members of the Democratic coalition are being violently threatened and killed by people with motivations that echo the grievances stoked by Trump and his cult is purely coincidence.
Scott Beierle, 40, was named by Tallahassee Police as the gunman who opened fire inside the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio, killing two and injuring four other women and a man.
Those killed were named as Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, 61, who worked at Florida State University's College of Medicine, and FSU student Maura Binkley, 21.
On a YouTube channel in 2014, Beierle filmed several videos of himself offering extremely racist and misogynistic opinions in which he called women “sluts” and “whores,” and lamented “the collective treachery” of girls he went to high school with.
“There are whores in — not only every city, not only every town, but every village,” he said, referring to women in interracial relationships, who he said had betrayed “their blood.”
Officer Damon Miller of the Tallahassee Police Department said he could not tell BuzzFeed News whether women were specifically targeted in the attack or whether these online posts were the subject of detectives’ inquiries.
“Everything that he has a connection to we're investigating right now," Miller said.
Police said they were still investigating a motive, but noted Beierle had previously been investigated for harassing women.
In one video called “Plight of the Adolescent Male,” he named Elliot Rodger, who killed six people and injured 14 and is often seen as a hero for so-called “incels,” or those who consider themselves “involuntarily celibate.”
“I’d like to send a message now to the adolescent males... that are in the position, the situation, the disposition of Elliot Rodger, of not getting any, no love, no nothing. This endless wasteland that breeds this longing and this frustration. That was me, certainly, as an adolescent,” he said.
This is the second deadly attack this year in which Rodger has been mentioned by the suspected assailant. A man who wrote anti-women references on his Facebook account allegedly killed 10 people in Toronto in April when he drove his van into a crowd. “The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” Alek Minassian wrote on Facebook prior to the attack in a post that also mentioned “the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”
Some in the incel community have previously raged against women wearing yoga pants.
Another of Beierle’s 2014 videos was titled “The Rebirth of my Misogynism,” and featured him listing the names of women — from eighth grade until his time in the Army — who he said caused his “rebirth.” (A Pentagon spokesperson told BuzzFeed News Beierle served from 2008-2010).
In the video he said women were capable of “treachery” and “lying.” He spoke aggressively about women giving him their phone number even when they had a boyfriend and how angry it made him. He also mentioned a girl who cancelled dates on him. “I could have ripped her head off,” he said.
Unlike the YouTube videos, his songs on Soundcloud were all uploaded in the last few months. Shortly before Friday’s shooting, Beierle uploaded one song called “Fuck ’Em All,” with the lyrics: “To hell with the boss that won’t get off my back / To hell with the girl I can’t get in the sack.”
Another song, called “Nobody’s Type,” featured him lamenting that women didn’t find him attractive. “I’m no athletic shark. I’m not a physical specimen. I don’t win the trophies and medals. Nobody stands in awe of me,” he sang.
In “American Wigger,” he sang that he would “blow off” the head of a women he referred to using the c-word. The song “Locked in my Basement” featured an extremely disturbing tale of Beierle holding a woman prisoner in his basement using chains so he could rape her.
Representatives for YouTube and Soundcloud didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Beierle’s political affiliations were not immediately clear, but he was highly critical of the Obama administration in his 2014 videos. In one video, he said that he resented having to subsidize as a taxpayer “the casual sex lives of slutty girls” through the Affordable Care Act’s contraception provisions. In the same video he also criticized “the invasion of Central American children” in the US that year and said the migrants seeking asylum should be deported on barges.
The Tallahassee shooting comes after a spate of deadly violence from the far-right in the past two weeks. On Oct. 27, a far-right extremist shouting anti-Semitic phrases opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11. That came just three days after a man shot dead two black people in Louisville, Kentucky, in an attack authorities have described as a hate crime.
In a punk song he made called “Don’t Shame,” Beierle sang of walking into a girl’s locker room and going on “ass-grabbing rampage of underage girls.” He also spoke about grabbing women in the song “Handful of Bare Ass.” The Tallahassee Democrat newspaper reported he had been arrested in 2012 and 2016 for grabbing women’s buttocks without their consent. Prosecutors eventually dropped charges in both cases, according to the newspaper.
“I have no shame, but this is to blame. I would do anything. I just don’t care. I have no fear of any consequences,” he sang.
“I am pro-death," the song continued. "The more that die the merrier."