When all else fails, then turn to the Wiki:
Roof was born in
Columbia, South Carolina, to Franklin Bennett (called Bennett) Roof, a carpenter, and Amelia "Amy" Cowles, a bartender. His mother is a descendant of
Hartford, Connecticut founder Timothy Stanley.
[5][6][7][8][9][10] His parents had divorced but were temporarily reconciled at the time of his birth. When Roof was five,
[11] his father married Paige Mann (née Hastings) in November 1999, but they divorced after ten years of marriage. Bennett Roof was allegedly verbally and physically abusive toward Mann.
[12][13][14][15][16] The family mostly lived in South Carolina, though from about 2005 to 2008, they temporarily moved to the
Florida Keys. There is no information about Roof attending local schools there.
[17]
According to a 2009
affidavit filed for Mann's divorce, Roof exhibited "obsessive compulsive behavior" as he grew up, obsessing over germs and insisting on having his hair cut in a certain style.
[13] When he was in middle school, he exhibited an interest in smoking
marijuana, having once been caught spending money on it.
[11]
In nine years, Roof attended at least seven schools in two South Carolina counties, including
White Knoll High School in
Lexington, in which he repeated the ninth grade, finishing it in another school. He apparently stopped attending classes in 2010 and, according to his family, dropped out of school and spent his time alternating between playing video games and taking drugs, such as
Suboxone.
[11][12][13][18][19][20] He was on the rolls of a local
Evangelical Lutheran congregation.
[21]
Prior to the attack, Roof was living alternately in Bennett's and Cowles' homes in downtown Columbia and
Hopkins, respectively,
[14][22][23] but was mostly raised by his stepmother Mann.
[13] For several weeks preceding the attack, Roof had also been occasionally living in the home of an old friend from middle school and the latter's mother, two brothers, and girlfriend.
[15][23][24] He allegedly spent his time using drugs and getting drunk.
[23] He had been working as a landscaper at the behest of his father, but quit the job prior to the shooting.
[11]
His maternal uncle, Carson Cowles, said that he expressed concern about the
social withdrawal of his then-nineteen-year-old nephew, because "he still didn't have a job, a driver's license or anything like that and he just stayed in his room a lot of the time."
[25] Cowles said he tried to mentor Roof, but was rejected and they drifted apart.
[25] According to Mann, Roof cut off all contact with her after her divorce from his father. When his sister planned to be married, he did not respond to her invitation to the event.
[15][16]
A former high school classmate said that despite Roof's racist comments, some of his friends in school were black.
[19]
.........................................
Broken family at the time of his birth. Educational failure (having to repeat a grade in high school, and dropping out). Drug use to the point of addiction (suboxone is used to combat opiate use). Alcoholism. Chaos in family relationships. Vocational failure. Poor connections with the rest of humanity (video games are a poor substitute for human conduct).
Does anyone want his life history?
.........................................
On June 20, 2015, a website that had been registered to a "Dylann Roof" on February 9, 2015,
lastrhodesian.com, was discovered.
[49] Though the identity of the domain's owner was intentionally masked the day after it was registered,
[49] law enforcement officials confirmed Roof as the owner.
[50] The site included a cache of photos of Roof posing with a handgun and a
Confederate Battle Flag, as well as with the widely recognized
neo-Nazi code numbers
88 (an abbreviation for the salute
"Heil Hitler!") and
1488, written in sand.
[49][50] Roof was also seen spitting on and burning an American flag.
[49] While some photographs seemed to show Roof at home in his room, others were taken on an apparent tour of slavery-related historical sites in North and South Carolina, including
Sullivan's Island, the largest slave disembarkation port in North America, four former plantations, two cemeteries (one for white Confederate soldiers, the other for slaves), and the Museum and Library of Confederate History in
Greenville.
[49][51][52] Roof is believed to have taken self-portraits using a timer, and his visits were not remembered by staff members working at the sites.
[52]
The website also contained an unsigned, 2,444-word manifesto apparently authored by Roof,
[53] in which he outlined his opinions, all methodically broken into the following sections: "Blacks", "Jews", "Hispanics", "East Asians", "Patriotism", and "An Explanation":
[51]
Quote:I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.[49]
The manifesto states that its author was "truly awakened" by coverage of the
shooting of Trayvon Martin:
Quote:I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words "black on white crime" into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on white murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on white murders got ignored?[49][50][54][55]
The manifesto also mentioned as another source of influence the Northwest Front, a
Seattle-based white supremacist organization infamous for its participation in the 1979
Greensboro massacre.
[56]
According to web server logs, Roof's website was last modified at 4:44 p.m. on June 17, 2015, when Roof noted, "[A]t the time of writing I am in a great hurry."
[49]
According to court documents filed in August 2016, Roof drafted two other manifestos, one in 2015 and the other in jail, recovered from his vehicle and jail cell, respectively. He also made a list of churches and a "selection of victims", along with other writings.
[57][58][59]
.............................
And who is attracted to violent white racism? Today it is mostly losers. Garden-variety racists cavil at the idea of doing something that might get them jail time because they see something to lose if they go on a racist rampage. What did Dylann have to lose? If he hadn't killed others first, he would have been a suicide risk. He found something -- people to blame for his failure as a person. Lacking the wisdom with which to make suitable choices in life, he found something powerful. An ideology that killed millions of a successful minority?
He could be a Nazi-Confederate synthesis. Someone who had trouble staying in school writing a 2,444-word manifesto? He finally found a motivation. He thought that he was onto something spectacular. Maybe lacking judgment, he could think it a great masterpiece of thought.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
