Facebook quickly removed the profile page of a self-described “follower of Farrakhan” shortly after media identified him Friday as the assailant who was shot dead after driving into U.S. Capitol Police officers and lunging at them with a knife.
Describing himself on the since-deleted page as a follower of the Nation of Islam, the 25-year-old African American man from Indiana (name here removed per Daily Wire policy) effusively praised the radical Farrakhan and his predecessor, Elijah Muhammad, as incarnations of Jesus Christ whose teachings changed his life.
Explaining the social media’s company’s reason for the deletion, a spokesperson for Facebook told The Daily Wire: “After this horrific event, our thoughts are with the Capitol Police and their loved ones. We have designated the incident under our Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, which means we have removed the suspect’s accounts from Facebook and Instagram, and are removing any content that praises, supports, or represents the attack or the suspect. We are in contact with law enforcement as they conduct their investigation.”
According to the policy the spokesperson cited, Facebook does not allow anyone, living or dead, to maintain a presence on the platform if they are a mass murderer or if they attempt mass murder. “We consider an attempted mass murder to be one where an individual uses a weapon or vehicle to attempt mass harm in a public space or against more than one person,” the policy says.
As The Daily Wire noted, MSNBC’s Jesse Rodriguez tweeted reporting from NBC’s Pete Williams about the suspect’s identity at 3:43 p.m. Journalists Ian Miles Cheong and Andy Ngo scoured the suspect’s Facebook page almost immediately, taking screenshots and posting them to Twitter until 4:15 p.m., by which time Cheong reported that the page was gone. “Facebook just confirmed the identity of [the suspect] by yeeting his page,” Cheong wrote. “It’s gone.”
To “yeet” something is a slang term that means “to discard an item at high velocity,” according to Urban Dictionary.
At 4:16 p.m., Ngo tweeted the same observation, writing, “I only had seconds to look at [the suspect’s] Facebook page before it was deleted. He was living in Norfolk, Va. From what I saw, many of his posts were of a religious (Islamic) nature. He appeared to be a deeply devout follower of the Nation of Islam.”
The suspect’s Facebook was replete with posts detailing how he was struggling in life and how the radical views taught by the Nation of Islam had helped him. As The Daily Wire reported:
Long posts detailed the suspect’s life struggles and religious views, which include his belief that Farrakhan is Jesus. “I am currently now unemployed after I left my job partly due to afflictions, but ultimately, in search of a spiritual journey,” he wrote in part.
“I haven’t had much to lean on in the past few months,” he continued. “I’ve been faced with fear, hunger, loss of wealth, and diminution of fruit. My faith is one of the only things that has been able to carry me through these times and my faith is centered on the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Jesus, the Messiah, the final divine reminder in our midst.”
He went on to describe Farrakhan as his “spiritual father,” without whose guidance he would have “been unable to continue.”
In another post, he encouraged his readers to study the Book of Revelation regarding signs of the end times. “[S]tudy who the beast is, study who the anti-Christ is, study who the false prophet is, and study the created images during these times.”
“The Minister is here to save me and the rest of humanity, even it means facing death,” he continued. “Be willing to deny yourself and follow him, pick up your cross.”
He died on Good Friday.
Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee said in a press conference Friday afternoon, before reports emerged identifying the suspect, that the attack did not appear terrorism-related. Contee emphasized that officials would “continue to investigate to see if there’s some type of nexus along those lines.”
Related: Capitol Attack Suspect Identified; Claimed To Be ‘Follower Of Farrakhan,’ Admired Malcolm X
Editor’s Notes: The name of the suspect has been removed from this article in accordance with Daily Wire’s policy of not naming mass killers. A link has been added into the quote from the Facebook spokesperson regarding their “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy.”