Jacksonville Shooter’s Newly Public Writings Reveal White Supremacist Beliefs

On August 26, 2023, Ryan Christopher Palmeter shot and killed three Black people at a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida, before killing himself. On January 19, 2024, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department released the shooter’s “manifesto,” which he left behind for his family to find. The vitriolic, hateful writings show that Palmeter held white supremacist beliefs and demonstrated a wide range of hate, including racism, extreme anti-LGBTQ+ animus, xenophobia and antisemitism.  

Based on his writings, Palmeter appears to have considered himself a martyr and a link in a chain of white supremacist mass killers, specifically citing Timothy McVeigh, Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant. 

Palmeter appeared to be particularly taken with Tarrant -- the white supremacist who murdered 51 people in his 2019 attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand -- citing him as the “main inspiration for [his] methods…and targets.” He frames his actions as a continuation of Tarrant’s, writing, “If you ever see this, Brenton your vindication is finally here. The time you have predicted is fast approaching.” Palmeter’s screed directly echoes Tarrant’s in its use of verse at the start of the document (lyrics to the song “We’ll Have Our Home Again” by Pine Tree Riots) and the use of a Question/Answer format.  

Palmeter clearly wanted his actions to serve as inspiration for others. He wrote: “If somebody like myself can take down as many n*****s as I do while out-of-shape and with no knowledge of culling n***** herds, relying solely on the hope of inspiring a better tomorrow; imagine what somebody who is physically fit and versed in combat could do.” He later adds: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I have taken that first step. I urge those reading to take the rest.” 

White Supremacy 

While Palmeter’s expression of white supremacist ideology is not particularly sophisticated, suggesting that he may be relatively newly radicalized, he was fixated on eliminating Black people from American society.  

He expressed a desire to bring about “total n***** death” (TND), theorizing, that while many white people have “decided that the n***** must go” but “no meaningful action has been taken.” Despite suggesting that a lack of organization among “proponents” of TND will lead to “fruitless ‘lone-wolf’ attacks,” Palmeter appeared to believe that his actions and manifesto would serve as a call to action. This self-aggrandizement is a common thread among white supremacist killers.

• While Palmeter parrots racist claims frequently used by white supremacists as justification for his actions, including shorthand references to racist propaganda claims against Black people to depict them as savage and criminal in nature, he also chillingly alleges that Black people cannot experience empathy, writing: “n*****s do not have the capacity for empathy that other races do.” Racists and other bigots frequently attempt to dehumanize their “enemies.” 

• Palmeter also mentions the “Day of the Rope,” a reference to a scene in The Turner Diaries, a white supremacist novel written by neo-Nazi William Pierce, in which “race traitors,” or white people who have married or live with non-white people, are publicly hanged.  

• Palmeter appeared to be aware of white supremacist online culture, tropes and memes. The title of his screed, “White Boy Summer to Remember,” is a reference to a white supremacist meme popularized in the summer of 2021. 

Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate 

Anti-LGBTQ+ hate played a significant role in Palmeter’s writing and ideology, as evidenced by the title of the document, “I Killed a Bunch of N*****s and F*****s (And That’s a Good Thing!).” Later he writes that Black people and the LGBTQ+ community (which he referred to using a slur) are the “deadliest symptoms” of “advanced societal decay present among every Western nation,” and claims that the trans community poses a threat to children. Palmeter also wrote that gay and trans people “deserve extermination.”  

Antisemitism 

Though Palmeter expresses some doubt that there is a centralized cabal of Jews conspiring to control the world, he does promote antisemitic tropes and conspiracies. This includes, most notably, the claim that Jews control the media and use this power to conceal evidence of Black crimes. He also utilizes the antisemitic echo symbol multiple times in the manifesto. 

Racism 

Palmeter, like most white supremacists, was explicitly xenophobic, employing a racist calculus for determining the “worth” of various populations.  

• While Palmeter was primarily focused on Black people, he also denigrated Arab and Latino people, writing that they are “by no means peers to the White Man or Asian Man” [sic]. Though Palmeter praised Asians generically, he claimed that Han Chinese (who comprise more than 90% of the Chinese population and over 17% of the whole world’s population) are “less human” than other East Asians, describing them as a “slave race” with “no capability to question authority.”

• Palmeter wrote of Middle Eastern populations (referring to them as “Arabs”) that while they “pose no real imminent threat’ to the U.S., in Europe they are “wreaking havoc as the n***** does in America.” He later writes, “The arab [sic] is to Europe as the n***** is to America. The White Man’s fight is the same on both sides of the Atlantic; the only difference is exactly just how dark the enemy’s skin color is.”   

• Palmeter describes Latino people as “a literal joke race,” commenting that he “wouldn’t mind keeping xhem [sic] around in little cages as a race of court jesters where xhey [sic] can't cause harm to the White Man.”  

Conspiratorial Beliefs 

In addition to promoting hate, Palmeter also held numerous disturbing conspiratorial beliefs, including the belief in the existence of an “elite cabal.” He also promoted unfounded conspiracy theories about ritualistic child abuse, such as the harvesting of adrenochrome and the “frazzledrip” video.