Yesterday’s horrific shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, which killed 3 of the center’s employees, is the latest attack in the United States’ long history of violence against Muslims. Early reporting about the attack appears to indicate that the two teenage attackers were, at least partially, motivated by hate. Multiple news organizations reported that officers have recovered anti-Islamic writings, a suicide note from one of the attackers that referenced “racial pride,” and a weapon with “hate speech” scrawled on it.
The local police had not even held their first press conference by the time users on X had flooded the platform with something that has become all too familiar in the wake of hate-motivated incidents: celebration. It has been reported that since Elon Musk’s takeover of X, the platform has exploded as a haven of hate, bigotry, violence, and disinformation. Yesterday’s attack on the Muslim center generated more hate with X posts celebrating the attack, characterizing Muslims as a collective threat, and calls for further violence circulating freely across the platform.
Some users explicitly celebrated the shooting and the shooters. One user wrote that the shooters should be “awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously,” for targeting Muslims. Another questioned people’s sympathy for the attack, questioning “if they’re shooting at an Islamic mosque, isn’t that a good thing.”
Others opted to use the shooting as an opportunity to call for the expulsion of Muslim-Americans from the country, claiming that their religion posed a threat to the country, even though they were the victims of this attack. One user wrote that “Muslims have no right to be in White countries,” and another claimed Islam was not a “real religion” and that Islamic Centers “are forward bases for terrorist jihad.”
Some of the posts referenced Brenton Tarrant, the individual who attacked mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, killing 51 people and injuring 50 others. Tarrant livestreamed the attack for 17 minutes before it was taken down and left behind a manifesto centered around the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. The video of the attack is incredibly popular on both right-wing websites and non-ideological websites that celebrate violence.
The Christchurch attack has inspired a series of hate-fueled violence across the globe, including the 2019 El Paso, Texas, Walmart shooting, the 2022 Buffalo, New York, Tops Supermarket shooting, the 2022 Bratislava, Slovakia, LGBTQ+ bar shooting, the 2023 Jacksonville, Florida, Dollar General shooting, and the 2025 Moscow, Russia, school stabbing. Tarrant, the murders he committed, and the other attacks he inspired are idealized by many militant white supremacists online, and this was no different yesterday. Multiple users on X posted things like “Brenton Tarrant is back” and “Was today Brenton Tarrant day?” At least one user responded to a post that said “Somehow, Brenton Tarrant returned,” by saying “We aren’t that lucky.”
The posts weren’t just text-based either. Many users shared memes and images that depicted racist images of Muslims, derogatory comments about Islam, and calls for Muslims to be removed from America. One user posted an image that appeared to depict a praying Muslim being kicked by a girl with the words “MUSLIMS NOT WELCOME” written underneath.
This hate isn’t just present on the fringes and small accounts. Laura Loomer, long-time white nationalist and apparent unofficial advisor to Donald Trump, took to her X account to post a series of Islamophobic and hateful rants. Loomer authored at least 20 posts in the hours after the shooting, each one more horrific than the last. Multiple posts implied or outright claimed that the attack was a “false flag” engineered by supporters of Islam to gain sympathy or political power.
In other posts, Loomer seemed to imply that the mosque deserved to be a victim of violence, citing its loose connection to 9/11 and statements made by the Imam after October 7th as justification for an attack. Loomer also used language intended to demonize Islam and paint Muslims as a violent threat to the United States, writing that the mosque “had blood on its hands” and its attendees are “terrorists.”
None of this is surprising, though. Musk himself decided that his time would be best used amplifying stories of violence committed by individuals who happen to be Muslim or from the Middle East, rather than cracking down on the hate running rampant across his platform. He replied to three separate posts about crimes committed against white people by Muslims or individuals from the Middle East with “!!,” highlighting them for his followers and amplifying them across the platform. Musk was aware of the shooting, having responded to a post about the shooting, writing, “Who is the shooter?” Given Musk’s history of racist statements and posts, it is hard to believe the timing of these replies was coincidental.
Yesterday’s attack and the response it generated on X is a small part of a much larger problem. When a mass shooting targeting a religious or ethnic minority can be met with open celebration, blatant antisemitism, calls for further violence, and conspiratorial deflection, all without consequence, it signals a platform that has made a deliberate choice to tolerate hate and violence. It has happened repeatedly on X, most recently in the wake of the 2025 Bondi Beach shooting, and it will continue to happen again and again. When a platform’s owner uses his enormous megaphone to highlight crimes committed by Muslims while ignoring an attack on a mosque, that too is a choice. Those choices have real-world implications; the research is clear that online radicalization and the normalization of dehumanizing rhetoric contribute to real-world violence.
The victims of the Islamic Center of San Diego attack, their families, and their community deserve better. So does every marginalized community and religious minority who now logs onto a platform and finds that their deaths are being celebrated, their faith demonized, and their right to exist in this country openly questioned. Until there is accountability for the normalization of this hate, yesterday will not be the last time we write a piece like this one.
