Comment The road that led an attacker to the home of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) was long and winding, with evidence suggesting he dabbled in fringe movements of all kinds before embracing the right-wing vilification of Democrats. The complex story of accused attacker David De Pape’s radicalization unfolded over more than eight years and many different ideologies, from Green Party support and nudist activism to a hateful mix of racist, anti-Jewish and misogynist rhetoric, according to terrorism analysts who have studied his writings and social media posts. They say DePape’s evolving beliefs show how today’s extremist threat complicates easy left-right categorization, a shift that confuses the public and a bonus for trolls who exploit the turmoil to promote misinformation and justify violence. “You get things that are just counterintuitive, but when you understand how online exposure to propaganda works, it makes perfect sense,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, head of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University. “It’s a radical, choose-your-own-adventure type of thing.” When DePape, 42, allegedly broke into the Pelosis residence on Friday and attacked the 82-year-old Paul with a hammer, his writings were loaded with far-right messages that hinted at a dark, conspiratorial spiral. His blog posts in October were a mix of gory imagery and hate aimed at a variety of target groups including Jews, Black and transgender people, as well as Democrats. He also shared delusional thoughts about an invisible fairy that sometimes appeared as a bird. an alleged former romantic partner, Oxane “Gypsy” Taub, told reporters that DePape is “mentally ill.” These details were largely ignored by right-wing figures — including elected Republicans and MAGA stars with millions of followers — who instead reached out years ago to portray him as a left-wing “hippie” who gave out cannabis bracelets, perhaps part of a “ false flag”. business to blame the right for the attack. An alternative, unsubstantiated scenario that Depp and Paul Pelosi had a sexual relationship has been fueled by far-right news outlets, promoted by high-profile figures such as Elon Musk and reported by Republican officials. “That moment when you realize that nudist, hippie, male hooker guy on LSD was the reason your husband didn’t make it to your fundraiser,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) tweeted along with a photo of a distressed Nancy Pelosi. Analysts say such reactions are dangerous, bad-faith attempts to score political points while downplaying the seriousness of a violent attack targeting the most powerful woman in Congress. Federal prosecutors on Monday filed charges of attempted kidnapping and assault against DePape, noting that in addition to the hammer allegedly used to strike Paul Pelosi, authorities found “a roll of tape, white rope, a second hammer, a pair of rubber and cloth gloves, and zippers.” After being taken into custody, DePape told authorities his plan was to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and possibly break “her knees” to make an example of her as the “leader of the pack” of what he considers fake Democrats, according to court filings. documents. “To call this guy a left-wing bigot today is disingenuous when the path he’s chosen for the past eight years has clearly been Alt Right,” extremism researcher JJ MacNab wrote in a Twitter thread detailing her research into DePape’s far-right descent . DePape’s turning point appears to have come in 2014 with Gamergate, the vicious campaign of online abuse against female video game developers and critics that heralded the rise of concerted attacks from the right, or biased trolls. “How I got into it. Gamer gate was gamer gate,” DePape wrote, according to research authored by Erin Gallagher, research assistant at the Technology and Social Change Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Analysts say such shifts often occur not from a single seismic event, but through a gradual process, usually online, where people can click through a range of fringe ideologies, picking and choosing what resonates. Sometimes this leads to a fusion of extremism – such as white supremacists borrowing the phrases of Islamist militants – and other times it can lead to a complete reversal of the political spectrum, such as a shift from the far right to the far left, sometimes called “change side.” “Switching sides on mutually exclusive or hostile ideologies is really not that unusual,” said Daniel Koehler, a terrorism analyst in Germany who has written extensively on the transnational phenomenon. Koehler, founding director of the German Institute for Radicalization and Deradicalization Studies, has identified key “bridging areas” spanning different ideologies – chief among them anti-Semitism, misogyny and anti-government or anti-establishment beliefs. These bridges, he said, act “as a kind of ideological highway between these environments that are usually very exclusive and consider each other mortal enemies.” In Germany, Koehler said, he sees the blur these days in the anti-vaccination and Covid-19 denial movements, where far-left protesters have openly mixed with white supremacists. “There have been times when they produce memes and propaganda that calls on anti-fascists or anarchists to even form an alliance against democratic Western society,” Koehler said. “They believe they could join forces on the common premise of ‘We reject dualism, we reject democracy, we reject a free market society.’ “ Recent years have provided many examples of such bridges leading to conspiracies and violence, such as white nationalists overlapping with the misogynistic “incel” movement or borrowing left-wing climate talking points to stoke right-wing fears of racial competition for resources. The white advocates of the mass shooters in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso both dropped environmental issues into notes they wrote before their deadly attacks. One of the highest-profile cases involving shady influences was in 2020, when 22-year-old Army Pvt. Ethan Meltzer was accused of planning an ambush against his own unit. He had waded through ISIS and other jihadist propaganda and even leaked information to someone he believed to be an al Qaeda operative, according to prosecutors. However, they claim that his main motivation was violent white supremacy. A federal indictment accused Meltzer of passing sensitive military information to members of a satanic neo-Nazi network, the Order of the Nine Corners. The Justice Department described Meltzer’s beliefs as “a diabolical cocktail of ideologies.” Judith Faessler, an extremism analyst at the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a domestic intelligence agency for the German state of Bavaria, said the overlap can be used strategically to expand movements by finding mutual interests between “incoherent and sometimes contradictory ideologies”. Extremism may mutate, but the threat of mobilization to violence remains constant. “A demonized concept of the enemy is constructed, the worldview becomes dualistic — ‘us’ and ‘them,’” Fessler said. “They want to destroy us. Self-defense is the only way out.”
