Paranoia, racism: German killer drew on conspiracy tropes

A woman setting a candle near the bar scene where several people were killed late Feb 19 in Hanau, Germany. After a 43-year-old German man shot and killed nine people at several locations in a Frankfurt suburb overnight, his website and YouTube channel came down almost immediately, as German authorities tried to prevent his rant from spreading across the Internet and morphing into an extremist rallying cry, as happened after the mosque killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, last March. — AP

BERLIN: He mixed extreme paranoia about secret state surveillance with far-right conspiracy tropes, misogyny and racist vitriol.

The gunman who killed nine people in the Frankfurt suburb of Hanau left behind a 24-page rambling screed calling for the "complete extermination” of races he considered inferior; a video blending far-right diatribes, delusional musings and an infamous quote by Adolf Hitler; and an English-language video statement that echoes themes of child sacrifices and disdain for mainstream media found in the QAnon conspiracy theory.