Suspect who fatally stabbed black man in Pennsylvania 'liked' nearly 50 racist alt-right Facebook pages
A 24-year-old man is with homicide in the early Sunday morning stabbing death of Dulane Cameron Jr. of Monaca, Pennsylvania. The suspect, Joden C. Rocco, also has a聽social media presence that suggests he was steeped in the racist 鈥渁lt-right.鈥�
Surveillance footage shows Rocco attacking Cameron and his friend, according to the criminal complaint, before confronting the group a second time with a knife. The medical examiner said the cause of Cameron鈥檚 death was 鈥渕assive bleeding.鈥� 聽
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Monday that an undated, 16-second Instagram video showed Rocco defiantly using racial slurs in a bar. 鈥淲e鈥檙e playing a game,鈥� Rocco said in the video. 鈥淗ow many times we can say [N-word] to the bartender before we get kicked out.鈥� It was unclear whether the video was made the night of the murder.
On Facebook, Rocco 鈥渓iked鈥� nearly 50 pages that traffic in memes and slang favored by the alt-right and the broader white nationalist movement.
Rocco subscribed to pages like 鈥淎lt-Right Meme Magic,鈥� 鈥淪mash Cultural Marxism,鈥� and 鈥淟azer-Beamed Memes with Fashy Themes,鈥� as well as a scattering of聽motivational speakers and other pages dedicated to body building. Rocco subscribed to the page of Identity Dixie, an 澳彩开奖-designated neo-Confederate hate group.
While Rocco followed larger pages that have promoted alt-right ideas or personalities 鈥攍ike Breitbart, Milo Yiannopolous, and FOX News鈥� Tucker Carlson 鈥� 40 of the pages he subscribed to had fewer than 20,000 likes.
Setting aside the larger page of The Red Elephants (332,373 Likes), a far-right media outlet that has given a platform to white nationalists in the past, the average number of likes on alt-right pages Rocco subscribed to was around 12,500. The large number of small, esoteric pages Rocco followed suggests a sophisticated and committed engagement with the racist subculture.
A review of Rocco鈥檚 recent activity confirms this engagement. In the week before the murder, Rocco liked 12 different posts on alt-right related pages, including a post from Australian hardcore white nationalist Blair Cottrell and a meme from the Facebook page 鈥淪ons of the West鈥� that features a quote from the interwar period聽British fascist Oswald Mosley.
Rocco also liked two videos from the Facebook page 鈥淥mniphi鈥� that featured speeches from William Pierce, the late leader of what was once the most influential neo-Nazi organization聽in the U.S., the National Alliance.
On Saturday August 18, the day before the murder, Rocco liked a post from a Facebook group called 鈥淢ediocre Memes and Ethnostate Dreams鈥� featuring an illustration of a 1950s suburban neighborhood with the comment 鈥淩emember what they took from you.鈥�
The facts around the Sunday's violence recall the May 2017 fatal stabbing of Richard Collins III, a young black man on the University of Maryland campus. The alleged murderer, Sean Urbanski, who is white, fatally stabbed Collins in an attack authorities 鈥渢otally unprovoked.鈥�
It was later revealed that Urbanski subscribed to a Facebook page called 鈥淎lt Reich: Nation", which聽was removed by Facebook after the murder. Urbanksi was included in the February 2018 澳彩开奖 report on alt-right inspired killers. Hate crime charges have since been against Urbanksi.
