Florida School Shooting Suspect Believed To Have Ties To A White Supremacist Group

Images via resist forever/YouTube and Broward County Sheriff's Office, Florida/Wikimedia Commons.

While the Trump administration has been busy trying to ban Muslims from entering America due to terrorism concerns, he’s ignoring the country’s largest terrorist threat: right-wing extremists. In 2017, 34 people were killed by extremists in America, with 20 of the murders carried out by right-wing extremists (white supremacists, members of the so-called “alt-right”).

Now, it appears the horrific Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, may be attributed to right-wing extremism as well. The leader of a Florida white nationalist group known as Republic of Florida (ROF) has claimed the accused shooter, Nikolas Cruz, has ties to the organization. The group refers to itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics.”

Jordan Jereb, the leader of the ROF, reportedly told the Anti-Defamation League that Cruz was associated with ROF, having been “brought up” by another member. He also claims that Cruz participated in at least one ROF training exercise. Jereb later distanced his group from the act of terrorism, telling the Associated Press that Cruz “acted on his own behalf” and is “solely responsible for what he just did.”

Ocean Parodie, a former classmate of Cruz, told The Daily Beast that Cruz was fond of wearing extremist attire. “He always wore like really patriotic shirts that seemed really extreme, like hating on the Islamic religion. For example, he would say things such as, like, he would degrade Islamic people as terrorists and bombers,” Parodie said. “I’ve seen him wear a Trump hat.”