LA Times reports that Palm Springs bomber had an account on Lemmy.world
Imagine my surprise reading this on the LA Times this morning (emphasis mine):
“I would not acknowledge reproduction as a human right, but instead as a form of rape,” IndictEvolution wrote on Lemmy.World in July 2023. “I am also not bothered by infanticide as long as it is done humanely...”
Here is an archive of the article.
Here is his account.
It looks like he only stayed on Lemmy for about a month, most likely a temporary Reddit exile with the earliest exodus on June 2023. The article mentions threads on Reddit but doesn't provide any quotes from there. User IndictEvolution on Reddit deleted their account, and the article makes it sound like they are referring to a different username that they don't specify.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-05-20/fire-fascination-with-explosives-family-discord-marked-path-to-clinic-bombingOpen linkView original on lemm.ee318
Comments187
Not beating the Reddit.world accusations. 😏
But have you considered .ML is evil tankie!?!!?
We need to step up our game. Quickly kill some white rich people, there's nothing more evil than that!
Wait! Choose which fat old white guys. Don't leave it to chance!
Nostradamus
you openly supporting killing white rich people?
I'm not native english speaker but I think the joke is pretty clear.
just kidding?
see how that works in court
I know that I gonna say may surprise you but the world is not just EUA and Europe.
I did not commit any crime
there's people on here pretty far down the radicalization funnel here so there's a lot of people indicating that that is acceptable behavior
I support treating rich white people the way you advocate for treating Palestinians.
so you want to kill people? how?
Humanely
how many would you like to kill?
I would never openly support such a thing!
🙂
"Tankies are a serious threat to domestic and international politics. Please ignore that only 1% of all people know what that is. Also let us actively keep a terrorist and retroactively remove their comments before it became news, because the FBI made us."
I can bet .ml is considered a bigger threat.
I mean it is but this was about .world
The point is to show that anticommunists complain about Lemmy.ml like McCarthy, but it ended up being a Lemmy.world mod that committed Malthusian terrorism.
The point was that people complain about something going on in .ml but something unrelated happened with .world?
Lemmy.world frequently calls Lemmy.ml evil, yet to our knowledge only a Lemmy.world mod has gone on to become a domestic terrorist, a Malthusian no less. It points to hypocricy.
Many more ways to be evil than just being a terrorist though
Let me guess, you think being a Marxist is evil?
Seems to be pretty effective, sitting at 76 upvotes and 9 downvotes as viewed from Lemmy.ml. Seems the random and baseless assertion of Russian propaganda is less effective.
Not terribly surprising. I wonder if some instance has a majority that dislikes the instance
Believe it or not, Lemmy.ml is federated with many instances.
Big if true
It's very impressive how brainwashed shitlibs are that they think the concept of "pointing out blatant double standards" was invented by a man who is younger than the current and previous US presidents.
This person was removed as the sole mod for [email protected] three days ago.
Edit to add:
.
He’s still the sole mod for [email protected] and [email protected], though those communities never really got off the ground.
Man this will probably hurt the amateur chemistry community due to overreacting crackdowns, even though this is one guy who was part of that community and plenty of other people have done bombings without any interest whatsoever in amateur chem. I do think the community needs more moderation given how frequently I see dumbasses on reddit doing some extremely dangerous shit without realizing it, but this will probably get any discussion of fun chemistry banned everywhere.
Mander.xyz is a better instance for science than Lemmy.world anyways.
Wow. Now there's a bunch of people who should never have been born. Too bad they've gotta make it everyone else's problem
The next terrorist to come from lemmy better not be another edgy fash loser. Do better.
Eco or better!
I dk what's better than eco.
Old school like Narodnaya Volya perhaps.
That was quite a read. Going to need to watch some youtube on this but concerned it may lead certain names going up on "The list"
I disagree. terrorism and accelerationism are not needed and do more harm than good. The idea that you can just commit political violence and solve your problems is too tempting to angry people, who then believe that the actually successful tactics like organizing are not necessary. It’s taking the easy way out and usually just turns more people against you.
Of course, violence to protect people from the violence of the fascists is entirely acceptable and to be lauded.
I think they're joking lol
Well, some adventurism seems to have some positive effect though. Look at how taking down the UHC pig is being received by the public. Could be used to radicalise some people perhaps
Must be pretty embarrassing for .ml that shitlib central got a terrorist before they did, ngl.
Oh fuck they’re going to call us all extremists
We'll have to push back with pointing to the decentralized nature of the fediverse, and that there's gonna be crazies on some instances. I always use email as an analogy when explaining Lemmy, maybe we could continue that and argue you wouldn't blame all of email infrastructure if an extremist had a gmail or Hotmail or whatever.
Actually now that I read that, it just might be more confusing. But there's gotta be a counter angle to argue to get ahead of people thinking "Lemmy=bad"
Also even if the cops shut down world, people will just … move. Like yours and my instances don't even have the word "lemmy" in the domain. I don't think anyone would care beyond "we shut down that radical forum."
Though most likely is it goes completely unnoticed and some bombing or shooting or human rights abuse next week will shoves it down the memory hole for good.
It's funny because even of the people I know, it's actually like "lemmy=what?" Even of the people I've talked to about it.
They're so painfully disinterested, they usually tune out after the first five words of my fediverse elevator pitch.
Next week? Try last night in DC. I'm doubting this will even register tbh
It would not bode well for the future of discourse if lemmy.world of all places gets shut down for radicalism. Our instance is significantly more radical than lemmy.world. Can you imagine some ecofascist idiot who posted on slrpnk.net a couple times committing a terror attack and getting the instance taken down? I can, which is why this news should be very concerning.
Edit: Just looked through some of the bomber's comments and their replies and some users even pointed out that his rhetoric was reminiscent of ecofascism. Anti-natalism and ecofascism are ideological siblings. The backlash to this attack is going to catch environmentalist groups in the crossfire, with many environmental activists being accused of having anti-natalist views. Anyone who's ever advocated for degrowth might get lumped in with them.
I agree, you have very good points. I don't particularly think that him having posted for about a month two years ago on a particular instance is any particular mark against that instance, as I think that that could have happened to many (but perhaps not all) Lemmy instances. Good point about backlash hitting eco activists too.
You think that quote's bad, you should see what they're saying on Xitter
I’m glad I’m not there. I only ever had a Twitter account when I made a bot that fact check replied every post of Trump’s around 2016, then I deleted it.
Soooo..... What are they saying? I don't have xitter...
I mean just the usual, you know, Nazi stuff
If I had to choose between a bomber and something like r/jailbait (which was the medias first big look at reddit) as the sites big first exposure to the world, I'm going for the bomber every time.
lmao, the only mod action on his account was removing him as the mod of ![email protected] three days ago, after he was already dead.
Which was the day after the bombing, FBI must have been up LW’s ass pretty quick.
LW still not banning that comm is disgusting
Up until now I thought anti-natalism was nonviolent. Now they've got their own Unibomber.
That seems very minor. I wonder if it was just a coincidence. Someone pointed out in another comment here that he's still the moderator in a couple of other communities.
That’s the only mod action for the entire community, if it’s a coincidence it’s a wild one.
Ah, interesting. That pushes it more toward probably not a coincidence.
I think the guy was the only mod, and he stopped posting 2 years ago.
100% guarantee that he also had a Steam account and wore pants at some point in his life.
100% of people who consume water die!
Oh damn, i just hydrated myself
"Looking for a man who recently drank milk?"
I love how quickly lemmy.world speed ran the aesthetically lib to fash redditor pipeline problem without even a profit motive behind them.
I mean lemmy.world aims to be Reddit 2, and reddit had jailbait, fatpeoplehate, the_donald, keeps Gamergate subreddits open, r/conspiracy, and so many more horrid things kept up because it made more clicks.
So why wouldn't lemmy.world keep an active terrorist on board? Think of the potential money to be made.
Maximizing the MAU and pLTV of a niche internet forum for the love of the game.
Lock it down!
The implication here is that somehow that's a problem with lemmy and lemmy.world...but I bet he also had an amazon account and no one is blaming them.
I didn't read it as any particular implication, but that they just found the money quotes they wanted on lemmy.world.
I heard the bomber was chosen as Time person of the year in 2006
Small niche where the user is active, big international service that everyone uses that has zero connections to them.
Gee I wonder why people are talking about lemmy.world
"Active" being a dozen posts from two years ago.
Though right now we're probably inflating our own importance by thinking anyone at all will associate Lemmy with this guy in any meaningful way. The name was referenced by the reporter because they needed to say where the random posts came from, and talked about like it's just a general social network rather than an organizing place for a radical ideology.
Of course it's fash nonsense, too.
I'm just proud they know we exist.
We're hittin the big time boys!
We did it Reddit!
Woop! We made mass violence perp level!
Our very first terrorist. We're going places boyos. Just hope this doesn't bring like minded people here, especially since reddit banned that sub, and Lemmy's is still up.
We're still so young, we haven't even killed anyone yet.
quick edit: I do have suggestions tho
I bet he was an Arch user!
What the fuck is wrong with you? This guy bombed a clinic, and you are joking about the distro he used?
Found the Arch user.
Fedora actually. Regardless, work on that whole cynical tween thing and try not to spend too much time trying to be edgy by misreading Nietzsche. You're better than that.
You got “cynical tween” and “misread Nietzsche” from a four word joke about Arch users? Okay, sure buddy…
He did some damage for sure, but thankfully I don't believe anyone was seriously injured.
Wait, is this not the guy who killed someone by bombing a fertility clinic? Did I just make the assumption that this was the same guy???
The someone he killed was himself. He blew himself up on a day that the area of the clinic nearest him wasn't really in use and wherever the eggs are was not in range. He certainly could have killed someone, he just didn't happen to.
Of course he was a .worlder lmao. That instance is really never beating the allegations.
People fighting over instances is fucking stupid.
卄乇ㄥㄥ ㄚ乇卂卄
Aww, but stirring shit from a third instance is fun!!!
Not really tho. Some instances talk a big game about their cOnCeRnS when defederating from the explicitly leftist instances but then let fascists of every ilk say the wildest shit as long as it's directed to whomever is the villain of the month for libs.
I'd agree except it's the biggest one, so fair game imo.
It's like Hamiltonians taking swipes at Toronto.
I signed up for it when leaving reddit just because it was the biggest, what’s wrong with .world?
...That it's no better than reddit and doesn't ban right wingers? Like that IndictEvolution account is still up lmfao
So is the [email protected] community he was a mod of
So what? I don't think we need to worry about his future posts.
Spouting blatantly ecofascist rhetoric should have had him banned and his comments removed. Instead the community he modded is still up and still posting ecofascist shit with zero pushback from admins.
My echo chamber noooo
Liberalism is the dominant ideology in western society, banning the Marxists but keeping the liberals is more of an echo-chamber than a Marxist instance banning liberals could hope to be. Liberals never have to engage with Marxism if they don't want to, Marxists must engage with Liberalism on a daily basis.
.world is ideologically liberal on average, so a lot of people on the fediverse take issue with that as Leftists tend to be more prominent by ratio than on Reddit. It's also the largest instance, and gets hate for that, as a lot of people like the decentralized aspects of the fediverse.
Not much, its just has most lemmy users/communities so its a big point of failure.
Truly the cesspit of Lemmy
Truly the /pol/ of the fediverse
Holy shit the jokes just write themselves. It'll be amazing if .world doesn't try to censor this.
Man I am just glad I never made an account there.
Where should I go?? I thought .ml was bad
Lemmy.zip and lemm.ee have been consistently the best so far.
And anyway, the main reason not to use lemmy.world is just that it's the most popular. The whole point of coming to the fediverse is to decentralize so joining LW kinda beats the purpose.
If you want my personal opinion, it depends on how you want lemmy.
.ml is held by Marxist-Leninists. Most users there aren't, but if you care about that, its either for you or isn't for you.
.world is held by centrist liberals. Most users don't care about that, but if it matters to you, there ya go.
My instance is for anarchists. There's ones for queer people. Or people who speak German. Or Italian. Or French. Some are made for being NSFW, some are made to shitpost, some are isolated by choice or massively de-federated.
But most instances don't care who you are or why you're on it, just don't break the rules.
So far lemmy.cafe lemmy.zip sopuli.xyz all seem fine, I don't recall a constant issue with the userbase.
Lemmy.ml is seen as "bad" on Lemmy.world because the average opinion of Marxism-Leninism on Lemmy.world is negative, but that's not the case everywhere. If you aren't hostile to MLs, Lemmy.ml is fine.
It really depends in what you want in an instance, though. My favorite instances are the niche ones that stick to a common subject or theme, mander.xyz is a good example of a science-focused instance, or Hexbear.net which is focused on Left-Unity and anti-Capitalism.
Hexbear is an interesting beast. It tends to be really insular because it is defederated by a lot of the bigger instances. But it does have a strong sense of community, and a lot of its own in-jokes. From the outside looking in, it often looks like a dumpster fire. But the reality is that it’s more like old 4chan, where it always looks like a dumpster fire on the surface… Then when you dig deeper and start understanding some of the memes, you realize it’s actually a really interesting community ^surrounded^ ^by^ ^a^ ^dumpster^ ^fire^
Most people are mad at hexbear because their moderation policies are consequentialist not deontological and thus more stringent against stupid online shit. As a poster you don't have a "right" to post on hexbear, however the community has a right to be protected. As such it's one of the better places if you don't want to read reams upon reams of lib coded bigotry.
Hexbear was its own thing for years before federating, that's why it has a stronger site culture than most other instances. It's unapologetically Communist, so those who are hostile to that quickly defederated from them once they started federating.
Lots of instances defederated because of the tendency to brigade. Since Hexbear was already a fairly large instance before federating, it meant it tended to dominate a lot of conversations on other instances. People have similar complaints about .world these days too. But fairly early in the first Reddit exodus, there were a few cases of Hexbear brigading smaller instances, and the Hexbear mods/admins clearly didn’t have any interest in stopping it. So not all of the defederation is purely politically based. Politics may have helped swing the decision, but it certainly wasn’t the only reason.
I don't really think it's brigading to participate on threads you're federated with. If comments on threads federated with Hexbear are active, Hexbear users see them, and as Hexbear is a large instance, this appears as brigading, but is just a natural element of participation in federation. Some instances are hostile to Communists, so they didn't want a bunch of Communists on every thread, so they defed.
Yeah. The "it was just because they hate communism" descriptions of hexbear defederation are just making up a story of oppression to explain why it wasn't actually their behavior that got them locked out. People don't hate communism, they hate trolling, tankies (in the literal sense with the Ukraine invasion), and brigading (referencing their fights with the libs and then a bunch of commenters swarming).
I could take or leave the lemmygrad defederation, but hexbear absolutely made its own bed.
What a colorful modlog you have, frequently suicide baiting and complaining about Marxists. Always funny to check the modlogs of people most upset about Lemmy.ml.
Lemmy.ml is generally seen as fine, or positively among instances like Hexbear.net and whatnot. Users hostile to Marxists tend to also be hostile to Lemmy.ml, users pro-Marxism tend to be fine with it.
I mean, you've been banned many times for telling other users to kill themselves, tried to claim calling a user "guy" isn't misgendering them, and seem to just be generally toxic. It's nice as a bit of confirmation that those who complain the loudest about Marxists also generally are toxic people. I wouldn't call the mods removing your suicide baiting comments and transphobic remarks "shitty."
Hexbear.net is worse regarded among people who hate Marxists, yes. As a Marxist, I don't really hold the opinions of those hostile to Marxists as particularly important, the driving divide is in people's position on Marxism. If I went into a MAGA conference, I would expect to be hated as well, but I wouldn't care much either. Anti-Communism is the biggest division, those supportive of Communism tend to be okay with the Marxist-aligned instances.
https://join-lemmy.org/instances
Just look around and join whichever looks interesting. It's not a contract, either - you can change your mind whenever you want.
This (slrpnk.net) is my third instance.
Well, that depends on what you want. Lemmy.world leans right and harbours transphobes and racists, hence the nazi.world jokes. Personally I think such users should just be allowed to make fools of themselves, but if you find that disturbing you can join another instance. lemmy.ml leans left, lemm.ee is fairly centrist, and sh.itjust.works is mildly right. But all are great instances.
CIA plot confirmed
Least fascist lemmy.world user 💀
I think I am a world user, it was just the top of a drop down menu when I created my lemmy. God damn it.
You've got nothing to worry about. It's the largest instance. There's no particular stigma for users on it. Unlike there is for the more ideologically selected instances, like .ml.
Lemmy.world is also ideologically selected, they deliberately defederated from the larger explicitly Marxist-aligned instances. Lemm.ee is an example of an instance that tries to be more ideologically neutral, .world is openly liberal aligned.
It's also run by Europeans so they decided to stomp down on discussions of jury nullification around the time somebody (I didn't believe it was Luigi) ventilated that healthcare CEO's head. Which is why I changed instances. Jury nullification is the last tool available to an oppressed citizenry to fight back against unjust laws and/or unjust applications of law.
They're a huge instance most people joined by default. No one sane thinks a .world account means anything about the person posting under it, except maybe they just went along with the pseudo-default.
You guys think there's a big rivalry and anyone who hasn't rebelled against the unjust persecution of the tankiest instances must have cast their lot in with the enemy, but in reality no one really thinks about it at all.
I don't judge people based on their instance at an individual level, that's not my point. Like you said, most on Lemmy.world picked it because it's the largest instance. However, the moderation and admins do have an ideological bent, and over time this filters out users that don't "fit in" with that, leading to an "average user" with views aligning with the average mods and admins.
I don't really care ahout inter-instance drama, it's not that deep. But I do notice trends and I understand how soft-censorship works and how consent is manufactured. Plus, there are terminally online users on Lemmy.world that do see all Marxists as enemies and wish to take down Lemmy.ml, so that does exist, and is tolerated by Lemmy.world mods and admins.
Then there’s me, who joined .world because it was the largest, is a Marxist, but has no idea how to even switch instances or access .ml where I would like to be 😂
I chose my instance because it wasn't defederated by .world and hadn't defederated from hexbear or .ml https://midwest.social/instances
I like my leftism but I also like my slop.
Personally, I try to stick to instances that will only defederate from others if there are major, serious issues, like illegal content and what not, and that are also not largely defederated by other instances. That way, I get to have a more complete experience of Lemmy / the threadiverse without missing out on major chunks of it. I think it's counterproductive that the majority of instances defederate major, legitimate instances, especially now that the Lemmy software allows each individual user to block entire instances if they wish to. This only serves to weaken the threadiverse as an alternative to other major discussion sites. It's even possible for instances to issue default instance blocks on new accounts if they are worried about the new user experience, removeable by the users themselves if they so wish (like lemmy.zip seems to be doing).
The main instances that I've found so far that seem to follow this "defederation only as a last resort" philosophy are the following:
If you would like to keep contact with the broader range of Lemmy instances, these are the ones I would look into. You can check which instances any Lemmy site defederates from by visiting /instances and clicking the "Blocked Instances" tab.
You can just make an account! Go to Lemmy.ml, or whichever other instance you'd like such as Hexbear.net or Lemmygrad.ml, and apply for an account. You can't really swap over, but you can create a new account and log in that way.
I do think it would be better if people spread out a bit more though. I don't believe it's healthy for our communities to have any instance approaching "default" startus.
I feel a little bit like I was duped by ml. Chose it because the devs were here, but I haven’t thought about the top level domain until I saw their profile pictures. Now, I’m no stranger to leftist views, but I’m pretty far from being ml. I might switch if things get ugly, but I can take some minor stigma for a while longer.
You could also use it as a learning opportunity, explore Marxist thinking and viewpoints.
I have been exploring Marxist thinking deeply in the past but not for the past few years. True, it might be something to go back to sometime.
.ml used to feel similar to .world in that it mostly indicated you just joined a pseudo-default, but it feels like it's getting more ideological over time. The devs run two instances, .ml and lemmygrad, and lemmygrad was the explicitly Marxist instance, but since lemmygrad got defederated from some large instances it feels like some of those users might be moving to .ml so they can maintain access.
I wouldn't worry too much about it impacting your experience or what people assume of you in the near term. It's still generic enough that a .ml handle doesn't automatically mean something. It's more like a confirmation when someone is already posting some extreme things.
Oh there's a stigma alright.
The irony is almost too much coming from a .ml account...
Irony is when anti fascists call people fascists, apparently
Great deal of propaganda comes from trying to make anti fascists as bad as fascists themselves
Blackshirts and Reds is extremely relevant.
It's a propaganda technique that dates back to the Nazis themselves
Uneducated ramblings about horseshoe theory have entered the chat…
Inb4 muh red fascism.
? This instance has been doing a pretty good job banning reactionaries so far
Least racist lib
Holy shit, that is just pure racism. Good way to prove their point, you dingus.
Here's one for example
Preemptively bombing a fertility clinic as a last resort.
These people are like the photo-negitive of Eugenicists.
anti-natalists present with reactionary ideology since they're obsessed with what other people are doing with their bodies. And they advocate for a totalitarian state to regulate that. But then they're also obsessed with environmentalism?
Maybe their lefty misanthropes? I don't get it.
If you read some of the other comments here, it's more like they're the two sides of the same coin. Eugenicists want to kill poor and other disadvantaged people and antinatalists (at least going by the bomber's comments) want primarily poor people not to have kids, although they seem to try to dress it up as not wanting anyone to have kids. Who knows, this is all pretty fringe stuff.
He personally was the fringe, but antinatalism is product and offshoot of neomalthusianism and eugenicism which are in the core of imperialism. Just the big scale ones do not bomb a clinic, they bomb and starve entire nonwhite countries.
Maybe the term is being taken over by eco-fascists, but I've considered myself an anti-natalist for many years and I'm only playfully misanthropic.
I don't go in for the Malthusian claptrap. I just think it's more ethical to adopt an existing, actual real child rather than make a brand new one. I think this is a really really compelling point, and I wish more parents would seriously consider it before choosing to follow their biological imperative.
It's like with nihilism, where everyone agrees life is ultimately meaningless, but some people are real babies about it (pun intended).
His last comment contained "and that wellness is hard to measure since society does not allow people to express how they truly feel about things."
Too true.
Hmmm, how did they find out?
You mean the reporters? I wondered about that, but then realized that the guy tended to use the same online nickname on various sites. Searching the web for that nickname probably turned up a bunch of his accounts and then they could read the comments to determine if they were likely the same person. Pretty good reporting, I thought.
Ah, good reason to always make new usernames for each site/service that is signed up for. 😉
Yes, definitely a good privacy and security practice. Different passwords is important too. Different email addresses as well, if possible. There are services like simplelogin and anonaddy that make the email part simple.
Hitler subscribed to vegetarianism.