What the Mosque Attackers Believed: A Field Guide for Pastors, Youth Leaders, and Security Teams

Paid subscribers make this possible. Please consider upgrading your subscription to help us protect all churches.

Facebook | X | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn | Threads | TikTok

Who Needs to Read This With You

Last week’s incident review of the San Diego mosque attack was for your security team. This is the companion piece, and it is for your pastor, your youth ministry leader, your children’s ministry director, and the parent who is wondering what their fourteen-year-old has been doing on his phone for the last six months.

The two attackers left behind a document of roughly forty pages laying out exactly what they believed, who they followed, where they learned it, and what they thought they were accomplishing. That document is the most useful thing on the table right now, because it is the same playbook radicalizing other young men inside the same online networks at this very moment. If you can recognize the ideology, the symbols, and the language, you can spot it earlier in the children around you and intervene before this walks into someone else’s parking lot.

I am going to lay this out plainly, including the actual words these networks use. Some of those words are slurs and some are coded language a normal adult would never recognize. You need to see them, because your youth leader is going to hear them coming out of a teenager in your congregation, and right now most adults in the church world do not know what they are listening to.

What They Actually Believed

These attackers were not random and they were not aimless. They had a stated belief system and they wrote it down across roughly forty pages. The label that fits what is on the page is white supremacist accelerationism, with a heavy incel layer running underneath it.

White supremacist accelerationism holds that the existing political and social order is too far gone to reform, that white people are being deliberately replaced through immigration, and that the only path forward is to provoke societal collapse and a race war through acts of violence. The older attacker writes in the document that he is “an Accelerationist” who believes “accelerating towards the destruction of our current political system and towards an all-out race war for the purpose of a societal collapse is the only real way forward.” The younger writes that “the only solution to the current state of the world is to accelerate towards the complete and utter collapse of society” and that he wants to “burn this earth down and rebuild it into a new and better society.” Both name the same canon of books they want followers to read: Brenton Tarrant’s manifesto, James Mason’s Siege, William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf. That is the modern white supremacist terrorist reading list, and it is openly traded in their networks.

The incel layer is the misogynist subculture they fused with the racial ideology. The older attacker identifies with online incel networks dating back to 2022, venerates Elliot Rodger and what he calls “the Incel saints,” and writes a long section directly attacking women. The younger attacker writes a similar section. This fusion of white supremacist accelerationism with the incel subculture is the same pattern that drove the Buffalo grocery store attack and the Allen, Texas mall attack.

The recruitment is happening on platforms your kids are already using, and the document is open about that.

The Saint Culture

This is the single most important concept for a youth pastor or parent to understand, because it is the cultural marker that tells you a young person has crossed from edgy internet humor into actual radicalization.

These networks elevate past mass killers to “sainthood.” They literally use the word. They build shrines to them, write hymns about them, post their photos as memes, and rank them by body count. The older attacker’s document includes a list of roughly thirty so-called saints. The younger attacker’s section lists about twenty more. Both authors place the Christchurch mosque shooter at the top, calling themselves “Sons of Tarrant.”

If a child in your youth group ever says the word “saint” alongside the name of a mass killer, that is the warning sign. If you see the name “Brenton Tarrant,” “Patrick Crusius,” “Payton Gendron,” “John Earnest,” “Dylann Roof,” “Elliot Rodger,” “Robert Bowers,” “Anders Breivik,” “Stephan Balliet,” or “Brandon Russell” appearing on a teenager’s phone, social media, or notebooks in a reverential way, you are looking at active radicalization. These are not edgy jokes. Inside these networks they are religious figures.

The “Sons of Tarrant” framing the San Diego attackers used is itself an attempt to launch a new recruitment brand. Their goal, stated openly in the document, was to convince other young men to follow them. The document is a recruitment instrument as much as it is an explanation, and that is why it is being mirrored across these networks now.

Where They Live Online

The radicalization ecosystem for the San Diego attack and most attacks like it sits inside two platforms: Discord and Telegram. Both have voice chat, video chat, encrypted servers, and the ability to live-stream to small private groups in real time.

The image below is a screenshot from the San Diego live-stream itself.

***VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED****

[IMAGE 1]: Screenshot from the live-stream on Discord. The interface shown is Discord’s mobile voice and video channel screen. One participant has the camera on, showing what appears to be the interior of the attack vehicle. A second participant is listening with their camera off, identified by an anonymous handle and a hooded-figure avatar. The green border around the active speaker tile is Discord’s standard speaking indicator.

This is what radicalization looks like in 2026. It is not a hooded man in a basement reading books. It is a teenager on his phone in his bedroom, on a Discord voice channel with eight or ten other young men who go by anonymous handles, listening to music and trading propaganda edits while one of them eventually decides to act and the rest watch it happen live.

Discord is the daily-driver platform. Voice channels, video, screen share, small-group chat. The networks operate as private servers that are nearly impossible for an outsider to access, recruit through smaller public servers, and graduate promising members into the inner servers. The San Diego attackers were streaming the attack itself to a Discord channel of fellow believers when they were stopped.

Telegram is the propaganda and reading library. Encrypted broadcast channels with thousands of subscribers, archives of every manifesto, edited videos of past attacks set to music, PDFs of every banned book, and step-by-step ideological training. Counter-terrorism researchers refer to the network of these channels as “Terrorgram.” The older attacker writes that he found his radical reading material on Telegram.

There are several other platforms in the ecosystem your youth leader should at least know by name: 4chan and its successor boards (Sharty, Soyjak.party, 8kun, EndChan), where memes and propaganda are workshopped before being pushed to Telegram and Discord; Roblox and Steam group chats, where teenagers are first approached; and various less-known video-game-adjacent chat networks where children as young as twelve are pulled in by older operators. The 764 network specifically operates across many of these platforms.

If a young person you know is suddenly spending six to ten hours a day on Discord, has multiple accounts under anonymous handles, refuses to let any adult see their server list, and has a Telegram app they did not have a year ago, that is the ecosystem. Not all of those kids are radicalizing. The ones who are, are in it.

The Symbols You Will See

These are the visual markers a youth leader, parent, or security team member needs to recognize on a phone case, a hoodie, a notebook, a school binder, or a Discord profile picture. They are not subtle once you know them, but they look like meaningless internet art if you do not.

[IMAGE 2]: The Sons of Tarrant cover from the San Diego manifesto, showing the Black Sun (Sonnenrad) symbol with dog tags featuring the Kolovrat at center.

The Black Sun, also called the Sonnenrad. Twelve lightning-bolt-shaped rays arranged in a circle around a center. Originally an SS occult symbol installed in the floor at Wewelsburg Castle by Heinrich Himmler. It is now the single most-used white supremacist symbol on earth and was central to the Christchurch attacker’s iconography. The San Diego attackers used it as the centerpiece of both their group logo and their second manifesto cover. If you see this symbol anywhere, it is not a coincidence and it is not aesthetic. It means what it means.

The Kolovrat. An eight-armed Slavic sun wheel that looks like four or eight swastikas linked in a circle. Used inside the dog-tag center of the Sons of Tarrant logo. Sometimes claimed as a “pre-Christian heritage” symbol but in modern use it is a coded white supremacist mark.

The swastika, often hidden. Direct swastikas are common in these networks, but they also get embedded into other imagery to dodge platform moderation. In the San Diego manifesto, swastikas are placed inside the eye sockets of a skull mask on one of the cover images. Look for it in skull eyes, in geometric patterns, inside other symbols.

The skull mask and Atomwaffen aesthetic. Balaclavas, skull-printed face coverings, all-black tactical kit, propaganda imagery built around faceless armed figures. This look comes from the Atomwaffen Division and its successor groups. It is the visual language of accelerationist terrorism. If a teenager is suddenly drawn to this aesthetic in his profile pictures, his clothing, or his art, that is a flag.

[IMAGE 3]: The “MisanthropistCEL” manifesto cover, showing the so-called fashwave or neon-fascist aesthetic. Cyberpunk grid background, glowing skull in a tactical helmet with swastikas embedded in the eye sockets, banner reading “Accelerate your hate.”

Fashwave, also called neon-fascism. Vaporwave 1980s aesthetics, hot pink and electric yellow gradients, computer grid backgrounds, anime-style mascots, all combined with Nazi symbols and slogans. Phrases like “Accelerate your hate” are signature. This is what the propaganda actually looks like in 2026. It is designed to look cool to a fourteen-year-old, and it works.

[IMAGE 4]: The “Death to the World” cover, showing the Black Sun with a radioactive trefoil at the center, signaling nuclear accelerationism.

The radioactive trefoil paired with white supremacist symbols. This signals what the networks call “nuclear accelerationism,” the wish for nuclear war as a tool of societal collapse. The combination of the Black Sun and the radiation symbol is a specific marker of this faction.

SS lightning bolts and runes. The double-lightning ⚡⚡ of the SS, the Othala rune, the Sig rune, the Tiwaz rune, the Algiz rune. These appear in usernames, profile pictures, and tattoos. Single thunderbolt and arrow combinations are also used as coded versions.

The Celtic cross and the sun cross. An equal-armed cross inside a circle. Historic Christian symbol that has been appropriated as a white nationalist mark and is now a primary identifier in these networks.

The numbers. 14 stands for the so-called “fourteen words,” a white supremacist slogan. 88 is HH for Heil Hitler. 1488 combines them. 109 refers to a debunked claim about how many countries have expelled Jews. 13/50 or 13/52 is a racist crime statistic trope. If a young person uses any of these numbers in usernames, gamertags, or shorthand, that is not a coincidence.

The Language You Will Hear

This is the section to read most carefully. Symbols can be hidden. Language is harder to hide, because teenagers talk. Every term below appears in the San Diego manifesto. Every one of them is in active use in these networks today. If you hear any of these words coming out of a young person in your congregation, you have your warning.

Saint. Used as a title for past mass killers, as covered above.

Sons of Tarrant, SOT. The new self-applied brand from the San Diego attackers, named after the Christchurch killer. May not stick. The category will.

Accelerationist, accelerate. Used as both ideology label and command. “Accelerate your hate.” “Total Dropout Revolution.”

Day of the Rope. A genocidal scenario from The Turner Diaries in which “race traitors” are mass-hanged. When a teenager uses this phrase, he is referring to a specific fantasy of mass killing.

Helter Skelter. Charles Manson’s framing for the race war. Now used by these networks to mean the same thing.

ZOG. Stands for Zionist Occupied Government, an antisemitic conspiracy term for the United States and Western governments generally.

Groyper. A specific subset of the far-right online movement, named for a frog meme. Not all groypers are violent. The pipeline from groyper humor to accelerationist violence is documented.

Chud. Originally an insult thrown at right-wingers, now reclaimed inside these networks as a badge of honor. The older attacker uses it this way explicitly in the manifesto.

Goyim, goy, shabbos goy. Antisemitic conspiracy language treating non-Jews as a despised category and using “shabbos goy” to mean a non-Jew who serves Jewish interests in their worldview.

NPC, normie, sheep, goyslave. Terms for anyone outside the network. Dehumanizing by design.

Race traitor, race mixer, cuckservative. Slurs aimed at white people who do not share the ideology.

Foid, femoid. Incel terms for women, designed to dehumanize.

Hypergamy, looksmatch, Chad, volcel, incel. The incel vocabulary. If a young man in your group starts using these terms, the incel layer is active.

Hyperborea. An esoteric Nazi reference to a mythical white-origin homeland. Code for the ethnostate end goal.

Screw your optics, I’m going in. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter’s last words on social media before the attack. Now a venerated quote in the networks, repeated in the San Diego manifesto.

The slurs themselves. I am listing these because your youth leader needs to recognize them when they come out of a teenager’s mouth: kike (anti-Jewish), nigger (anti-Black), spic (anti-Hispanic), chink (anti-Asian), f****t and fag (anti-gay), tranny (anti-transgender), shitskin (anti-non-white), muzzie and goatfucker (anti-Muslim). Every one of these appears repeatedly in the San Diego manifesto. Every one is in active use in these networks. A young person picking up the language is the audible warning siren.

The music and reading list. Genres named in the manifesto: Nightcore (legitimate genre, weaponized by these networks for propaganda edits), Hardtekk (same), and what they call “Incelcore” (a fringe subgenre that is itself a radicalization vector). Bands named in the manifesto: Blackmagick SS, Edelweiss, Curta’n Wall, and the broader NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) scene. Books named: The Great Replacement by the Christchurch attacker, Siege by James Mason, The Turner Diaries by William Pierce, Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Industrial Society and Its Future by Ted Kaczynski. If you find any of these in a young person’s possession, that is not curiosity reading. That is the syllabus.

Warning Signs in a Young Person

Pulling this together into a practical checklist your youth leader can use.

Look for the symbols above appearing on his phone case, his clothes, his binders, his social media profile pictures, his gamertag, or his bedroom walls.

Listen for the language above coming out of his mouth, in person or in his text messages if a parent has access. One slur dropped at school is one conversation to have. The full vocabulary appearing across weeks is the warning.

Watch for changes in online behavior. Six to ten hours a day on Discord. Telegram appearing on his phone. Multiple anonymous accounts. Refusal to let any adult see his screen or his server list. Switching to anonymous handles that include numbers like 14, 88, 109, or 1488.

Watch for music shifts into the genres named above, and for any name on his playlist that appears in the manifesto’s musical references.

Watch for reading material from the named books, especially if he is trying to hide them.

Watch for the “saint” language about any past mass killer.

Watch for sudden interest in the skull mask aesthetic, the all-black tactical look, or anime characters being used in profile pictures that have been edited with Nazi symbols.

Watch for the misogynist incel vocabulary in conjunction with any of the above. The fusion is what produces attackers.

Watch for fixation on collapse, on race war, on the Christchurch attack specifically, or on the Buffalo, Pittsburgh, El Paso, Charleston, or Poway shootings.

None of these individually is proof of anything. Two or three together is a conversation. Several together is a serious problem that requires the parents, the pastor, and likely outside resources.

Biblical Perspective

The church has always had a charge over the minds and hearts of its young. Scripture does not leave it ambiguous.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (ESV): “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

This is the foundation, and it is the thing every parent and youth leader in the church needs to take seriously right now. The instruction is not to outsource the formation of a child’s worldview to a Sunday morning hour and hope it holds. The instruction is constant. When you sit, when you walk, when you lie down, when you rise. The reason this commandment is given in such intense terms is because the alternative is not nothing. The alternative is that someone else fills that space. In 2026 the someone else is a Discord server, an algorithm, a Telegram channel, and a thirty-year-old in another state with a handle and an agenda. If the home and the church are not actively forming the young person’s mind and heart, that vacancy gets filled by the people on the other side of this article.

Proverbs 4:23 (ESV): “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

This is the charge to the young person himself, and it is also the charge to the adults responsible for him. The heart is not a neutral space. What goes in shapes what comes out. A young man who pours six hours a day of accelerationist propaganda into his heart will eventually pour something out, and that something will not be small. The vigilance Proverbs commands is active work, not passive hope. A youth ministry that takes this verse seriously is a youth ministry that knows what its kids are watching, listening to, and reading, and is prepared to step in when something poisonous shows up.

The men who attacked the mosque in San Diego were the product of a vacancy that something else filled. The work this article is asking your church to do is the work of refusing to leave that vacancy in your own young people.

What to Do When You See It

If a young person in your congregation is showing the signs above, do not panic and do not confront him with an accusation in front of his peers. That will end the conversation and push him deeper into the network. The network rewards being misunderstood by adults.

Do bring his parents in privately. They likely do not know what they are looking at. Use this article to walk them through what you are seeing.

Do bring your pastor in. This is a spiritual problem before it is anything else.

Do ask the young person open questions. What are you reading. What are you listening to. Who do you talk to online. Who are these people. Do not show alarm at the first answer. Listen.

Do offer a real, present, named relationship with a man in the church who can take the time to actually know him. Most of these young men are not radicalizing because they hate. They are radicalizing because they are lonely, mocked, drifting, and finally find a network online that tells them they are special, that their grievances matter, and that they can be heroes. The church can offer something truer to that hunger than Discord can, but only if the church actually shows up.

Do escalate to law enforcement if you see any of the following: explicit threats against a specific person or place, weapons in combination with the ideology, expressions of intent to act, planning behavior, a manifesto being drafted, or a reference to a specific date. The local FBI field office handles domestic terrorism tips at 1-800-CALL-FBI and at tips.fbi.gov. They take these calls seriously and have a clear process for them.

Do not assume someone else will see it. The mother of the older San Diego attacker called police roughly two hours before the attack, and the warning still did not reach the parking lot in time. If the warning is in your hands and you do not act on it, no one else is going to.

Final Assessment

The men who attacked the mosque in San Diego were not anomalies. They were the visible tip of an online network that is recruiting teenage boys in every state in this country right now, including in the children sitting in your pews on Sunday morning. The ideology has a name, the symbols are identifiable, the language is documentable, and the platforms it lives on are not secret.

The church’s youngest people are inside the targeted age range. The church’s security teams will eventually face the graduates of these networks at their own doors. The work of identifying the early signs and intervening before a teenager becomes the next so-called saint is the work of pastors, youth leaders, parents, and security teams together. It is not separate work from church security. It is the upstream half of it.

Share this with the youth ministry leader in your church this week. Read it with your pastor. Sit down with your own teenager. The conversation is uncomfortable. The alternative is worse.

Leave a comment

If you have seen any of these signs in a young person you know, or if you have a question about identifying something specific, leave it in the comments. Share this article with your youth leader, your pastor, and your team leader. The next teenager headed down this road may be one your church can still reach.