there is little to make sense of politically, but for someone who is Queer, the knowledge — and apparent adherence to — the beliefs of neo-Nazi mass shooters is startling. some information in the text is hyper-niche; others are clear alt-right dogwhistles. it's disturbing, ironic or not.
as i put it in my short thread, these kinds of mass shootings are much more about the "aesthetic" than any specific ideology besides doomerism and accelerationism, the confusion and contradiction are part of the point
unfortunately ive met some neo nazi queer ppl who effectively were like this irl irony poisoned to the point of being sincere. or yhe irony poisoning being the cover up eithrr way it amounts to the same thing
i was surprised to see lépine on one of the guns with all the other names, as his main motive was rooted in misogyny iirc? (i’m canadian so the name really stuck out)
my friend and colleague @crimew.gay took a look at the ideological substance of this video, if you'd like a slightly deeper look: bsky.app/profile/crim...
The 'tell' is the support for Brandon Herrera.
Means nothing. Tarrant's manifesto claimed that Candace Owens was a big factor in his radicalization. It's just trolling to muddy the waters. Every "manifesto" over the last few years is full of it. Take nothing at face value.
He briefly yelled "Fuck Trump" knowing the right-wing culture he was swimming in would pick up on that (which they have), but spent a few minutes on his meeting with Brandon Herrera and how much he admired Herrera. It was so fanboyish, Herrera had to do an X post today disavowing Westman.
This sounds pretty sincere: "I met Brandon Herrera at Shot Show last year. He and I had a conversation, but we agreed on a lot of things. So, ya'll should vote for Brandon Herrera for president....Fuck those kids."
He might have been sincere, but Herrera never ran for president, and his poorly executed run as a recent transplant for the House here in Texas never had substance on actual policy statements. Herrera is just a gun guy influencer with nothing to say outside of "commies bad, guns good!"
Probably overthinking it, but "fuck those kids" is probably more telling than anything. A big Herrera misstep in his ridiculous House campaign was being tied to a fake bomb threat in Uvalde. Yes, that Uvalde.
now it's the time we've all been waiting for: the transcription of the journals! (yay! I'm doing this 95% by hand. bear with me, please.) the first journal once again spans the dates May 23, 2025 to July 19, 2025. alt text will be where transcriptions occur once again. we'll start with its cover.
![Улучшить своно кизнь! [Russian: Improve your life!] Part one ЯNB [stylized 'RnB'] WAY OУT [stylized 'WAY OUT'] RYTHM BROWNIE SCOUT [a strain of cannabis] УМУ [tag? perhaps Russian: 'mind' in the dative singular?] ЖНаВИКТь ['zhnavikt.' tag?] АВВСУ [or ABBCY or ABBEY? tag?] [a sticker of a unicorn]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lb5rzms2ky5fmp6clthjwuvx/bafkreiaavn5lxp2acprtmlo4wylnbkga6oop2soxl6jkjvwrsb57pjsy7a@jpeg)
now the back of the cover: for those following along, this is the beginning of their faux-Cyrillic approximation of English. it has some quirks: H in diphthongs + J always is in Latin script, З is used for /z/ and /e/, a mysterious hook character is used for /ɪ/, and so on.
![[multiple images of Luigi from the Mario franchise scattered about] [in the middle: a Mario mushroom-shaped sticker with the text](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lb5rzms2ky5fmp6clthjwuvx/bafkreihuupwfg4mvn5zlhzxzszqj56f5nglhinktwm5sxyohvyx7no6ufi@jpeg)
(Copies from my other comment bc i meant to post it here, my b) I’m pretty sure that <з> is used for /z/ while <э> is used for /e/, which would match up with use in russian. is additionally used in some cyrillic scripts, tho none that I know of use it for /dʒ/ like they do here.
The obsession with Luigi is interesting. Did they think they were doing the same thing as Luigi mangione?
an example deciphering from that page: > тhиз паиjeз тhат хав бiн римовд weр онрилатiд то тhЫс jурнал. плиз донт старт гус чаис тhi мЫсЫнг "Вастман паиjeз" ЛОЛ > these pages that have been removed were unrelated to this journal. please don't start a goose chase for the missing "Westman pages" LOL
I’m pretty sure that <з> is used for /z/ while <э> is used for /e/, which would match up with use in russian. is additionally used in some cyrillic scripts, tho none that I know of use it for /dʒ/ like they do here.
If she put in the effort to do all this, why not use "Дж"??? that's what the Russians do!
(correction, sorry: missing a "а" between "старт" and "гус," and "фор" between "чаис" and "тhi")
page one: (linguistic trends: Russian in title, occasional use of Russian words like Я, с, этот, odd accent-imitating words like висоут for "without") (also: my saying before that they use з for /e/ and /z/ was wrong. they just write э exactly like з. oops!)
![05.23.2025 [Russian:] ПРОЯВЛеНИе МЫСЛеЙ [](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lb5rzms2ky5fmp6clthjwuvx/bafkreiempdxy63mwrclh56z6jweoe4czvleuy4f3vo6kdb4mbw2orxrxae@jpeg)
at first, identifying trends here led me to attempt to create a dictionary. but it is much, much faster to just read (if you know Cyrillic) and figure out those few words that didn't click the first time. that being said: this is the only page I will transcribe, at least for now.
I'm aware of news agencies looking into this, and perhaps they published as I was making this thread (not sure!) but the overwhelming consensus among everyone I've talked to who has even glanced at this journal is that it's wholly uninteresting: this shooting is, unfortunately, unoriginal.
it paints a picture of someone who is mentally ill and developed an obsession with school shootings, then fell down the radicalization pipeline. it describes taking after Adam Lanza in particular (thus Lanza's username on one of the guns, as I noted earlier). once again, regrettably: unoriginal.
and while I can't say I've ever seen a progressive-to-alt-right falling this far, it's (unfortunately) what I see to be the truth: this is someone who fell down into the wrong circles, whatever those might have been. we are left with a confusing, disheveled, troll-y political theory to boot.
I think that's not a 3, I think that's a variant of the propisnaya zeh (handwritten letter zeh)? I'd guess the mysterious hook character is some kind of archaic letter. to my memory, pre-reform Russian alphabet used dotted i the same way Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh, Komi, Rusyn, etc. do ...
... and given Robin Westman's aesthetics' overall vibe, I would not be surprised if this was partially based on pre-reform Russian orthography.