In December, a 15-year-old Wisconsin teenager named Samantha Rupnow armed with two 9 mm handguns opened fire in her school, killing a teacher and two students, including herself. While this was a tragic event, I’d be lying if I said that seeing mass violence in the news fazed me anymore. However, this tragedy did catch my attention because of the profile of the killer, as we don’t see many female school shooters.
I can’t help but be curious as to what would drive a person to commit a heinous act of violence like a school shooting. So, after news of the shooting broke, I decided to see if any of Rupnow’s social media profiles were still public. I was able to find, and archive, an X account that belonged to Rupnow. On this account, she shared a link to a Google document of her manifesto, but did not properly input sharing permissions to allow others access to the document.
Luckily, journalist Anna Slatz of Reduxx Magazine secured verified copies of Rupnow’s manifesto sourced from Rupnow’s online boyfriend. In this manifesto, titled “War Against Humanity,” Rupnow wrote of her hatred for humanity, specifically those she felt were low-operating, referring to them as “scum.” The sentiments in her manifesto echo those of other recent school shooters globally. She even praises multiple well-known mass murderers as “saints.”
Interestingly enough, according to ProPublica, Samantha Rupnow and Solomon Henderson, a 17-year-old who opened fire in his school in Tennessee just a month later, were following each other on X. Learning this made me wonder if the two teenagers were in some sort of pact, or if they had just somehow met in an online community for people with aspirations to commit violence.
News stories about both of these school shooters slowed and eventually stopped. It wasn’t until recently that I was able to confirm my latter suspicion of how the two killers became connected. One X user, who uses the handle @bx_on_x and investigates extremist online groups, posted a thread in January with evidence of both Rupnow and Henderson having connections to online terror “accelerationist” groups.
According to bx, terror accelerationist groups are defined by their belief that once humanity collapses, their ideology, whatever that specific group may believe in, will reign supreme. Some groups are far-left and others far-right, but all adhere to wanting “total human death.” These groups look to sow social division, by means of violence, in order to speed up, or accelerate, the fall of humanity. Most of these groups have core ideologies centered on satanism, pedophilia, and anarchy. They are often found using applications like Discord and Telegram and recruit members via various social media and youth-oriented platforms.
On March 6, the FBI released a public service announcement warning parents of these online accelerationist groups. The announcement details the typical method of these groups as targeting vulnerable young people and grooming them to commit acts of violence, against themselves or others, and posting or livestreaming them for the group. The FBI reports that while some groups extort young people to commit violence or share child sexual abuse material, many of the groups also seek to radicalize young people into becoming agents of violence. These groups specifically target young people with mental illness and troubled home lives.
According to WIRED, these groups have been active for years. In many ways, it is disappointing to see the FBI’s slowness on reporting and arresting known members of satanic accelerationist groups. For example, the X user Bx made authorities aware of Henderson’s involvement in these groups a month before he murdered a student at his high school. But the FBI didn’t take any action before it was too late.
It’s not just Rupnow and Henderson who have been connected to these groups. The perpetrator of the 2024 Southport, United Kingdom, mass stabbing has been linked to accelerationism, as has the man behind the 2022 Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket shooting. Acts of violence all over the world have been linked to these online communities, and per the FBI’s statement, there has been “a sharp increase in the activity of … violent online networks which operate within the United States and around the globe.”
What makes these groups so frightening is how successful they are in finding and encouraging young people to become mass murderers. Vulnerable teenagers no longer need to “fall in with the wrong crowd,” as the wrong crowd is actively seeking them out. An accelerationist group can encourage someone to commit suicide or self-harm without anyone knowing or finding out.
These satanic accelerationist groups deserve a comprehensive deep dive. But that’s not a job for a student journalist. However, this student journalist does feel confident in predicting that we will continue to see many more acts of violence sourced from accelerationist groups in the coming years. Hopefully, we will soon see more mainstream media outlets report on these groups and more parents will become aware of the real dangers lurking behind their children’s phone screens.
My advice, if you come across a social media profile advocating or supporting violence, don’t hesitate to report it to local and national authorities. You will never get in any trouble for submitting a report, even if nothing comes of it. As civilians, we can play our part by spreading awareness and being vigilant in an effort to stop the evil of violent accelerationist groups.
