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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Technology
Justin Ling

‘Cheering section’ for violence: the attacks that show 4chan is still a threat

A hand holds a large flag with a stars-and-stripes adorned 'Q' on a black background. Above the 'Q' are the words 'Where we go one, we go all!'
The extremist online forum 4chan gave birth to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is combating a cabal of leftist pedophiles. Photograph: Kyle Grillot/AFP/Getty Images

When police in Washington DC burst into a fifth-floor apartment building on 22 April in search of a man who allegedly had shot four people at random, they found Raymond Spencer dead by his own hand, a cache of guns and ammunition, and a poster with an ironic white supremacist meme.

The poster invoking the meme, popular on the extremist online forum 4chan, was a stark reminder that this attack blamed on Spencer, 23, was only the most recent mass casualty attack to spawn out of the ugly extremist culture of unregulated internet message boards such as 4chan.

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