A black man from New Jersey was charged in federal court with threats after allegedly planning a mass murder of white people, who he said were privileged.
In December 2022, federal prosecutors say Joshua Cobb wrote online that he wanted “to cause mayhem on the white community,” according to court records filed late last week.
“The reason i specifically want to target white people is because as a black male, they will NEVER understand my struggles,” Cobb wrote, according to the prosecutors. “Same way I will never understand their struggles, but I don’t care to. I want to erase them. All of them really, but in this case as many as I possibly can.” Cobb added that he had “officially began planning my attack” to occur in New Jersey during “an important holiday to their race,” and that he had “already acquired 2 of the 4 firearms I plan to use for my attack.”
The next year, Cobb attended Marine Corps basic training in South Carolina. He was stationed at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California this year.
In April 2024, FBI agents interviewed Cobb on base and he “provided detailed information on three locations he chose as possible targets for his attack,” and said he “continued to have homicidal ideations and still harbored feelings of contempt towards those whom he perceived as privileged white people.”
Cobb was arrested Friday, May 10, and was also discharged from the Marine Corps that day, according to court affidavits. He was charged with transmitting threats in interstate commerce, which could bring up to five years in prison. According to court records, he is being held in jail and is represented by a public defender.
He allegedly told investigators that one location he targeted was a gym or a grocery store, where “you just see all these f—ing rich-ass white people,” or simply a “rich white area and just like start shooting. That was like all my little ideologies.”
He said he had access to weapons through “my boy” since “it’s no secret guns are in bad areas.”
When the FBI told him it was confiscating his cell phone, he said, “this is why people like me shoot people.”
The military has struggled with recruiting and talent after the Biden administration fought efforts to promote based on merit rather than race.
It was slated to spend $270 million on DEI programs over three years, and has faced severely waning interest from white, blue-collar men as the military put on events like drag shows.
Perhaps no federal agency has embraced radical and divisive rhetoric as the Department of Veterans Affairs, even though its workforce is disproportionately black. The agency said, pursuant to a Joe Biden equity directive, that it wants more black veterans to be declared mentally disabled so that they could receive government checks — even though black vets already get those disability checks at twice the rates of whites.