Before opening fire in a Bend, Oregon, grocery store in August 2022, Ethan Miller expressed his hatred toward “EVERYONE & EVERYTHING.” Bearing this out, his rambling online posts displayed racial animus and extreme misogyny. He also railed against the U.S. government’s coronavirus response, police, religion, and technology. To Miller—whose attack killed two people—the 1999 Columbine High School shooters were icons and role models. But though Miller’s journal and online posts exhibit a range of extreme and targeted sentiments that seem to qualify the attack as a form of ideologically motivated violent extremism, he explicitly rejected being labeled a white supremacist or incel (involuntary celibate). Given the range of disparate sentiments that Miller expressed, if he were indeed a violent extremist, what kind should he be understood as?
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