In a manifesto, Alexandros Paporakis identified as “a sociopathic white supremacist Neo Nazi filled with hatred, fantasizing about mass murder nearly every day,” according to court records.
Prosecutors say Paporakis, 19, spent two years planning a mass shooting and had been targeting a Hindu worship center in Aurora for two months.
But Sunday, when the day came to carry out the attack, Paporakis’ AR-style rifle jammed as Paporakis tried to shoot a man from a car, prosecutors said in a proffer.
Paporakis sent messages to a co-worker at a Taco Bell in Arlington Heights, saying the man was “certainly saved by his God today,” prosecutors said.
That co-worker and another employee called 911, and Paporakis was found in the parking lot of a Palatine apartment complex, prosecutors said. A search of Paporakis’ apartment uncovered a rifle, bullet magazines, 300 rounds of ammunition and a gas can, as well as Nazi ephemera, they said.
* US Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi and his family were at the temple Sunday. He joined other officials today to condemn the attempted attack. From his remarks…
Sunday, October 11th, was a beautiful fall day. It also happened to be the start of Navaratri, one of the most important holidays in the Hindu religion. Countless families visited the Balaji Temple in Aurora, Illinois, to celebrate the start of this festival. Included among those families was my own. My 80-year-old mother and 87-year-old father were singing Hindu bhajans and prayers. And myself and others were in attendance to watch them and to celebrate.
Little did we know that a 19-year-old shooter was in the parking lot with an AR-15 style weapon, as well as 300 rounds of ammunition in his car, waiting to commit a massacre, he took one shot at a passerby, and according to the police, his gun jammed. He then left the scene, returned home, and researched on the internet how to un-jam his weapon. He called a coworker to tell him what had happened, and that he was planning to go back to the temple to finish the job. The coworker then informed the police, and thanks to their speedy action on the part of the Palatine Police Department and the Mount Prospect Police Department, the shooter was arrested.
The shooter hated Indians, but his hate did not discriminate. According to court documents, the manifesto that he wrote described Indians, Jews, Black people, and other minorities as “subhuman.” He called himself “a sociopathic white supremacist neo-Nazi filled with hatred.” Hate toward minorities is not new in America. However, the explosive growth in hate toward Indian Americans is astonishing. According to a recent report, 50% of South Asian adults now report that they have actually experienced a race-related discriminatory action. This is not confined to in-person encounters. We see it on the internet and social media.
In fact, Bo French, a Republican statewide candidate for railroad commissioner in Texas, recently tweeted a photo of students of South Asian descent, mainly Indians and Pakistani kids, watching a Texas Longhorns football game, and said, “Foreigners were displacing Americans.” Of course, the vast majority of the people in that photo were people born in Texas. But his problem was not with their immigration status; it was the color of their skin.
I myself have been, I myself have experienced this too. A Florida elected official two weeks ago called for me to be deported, and said, “Take your curry and go home.” Our own government, the Trump administration, recently put out a tweet of a gentleman they called Mr. Singh, and said to Mr. Singh, who was wearing a turban, clearly a Sikh American, “deport yourself, or find out the consequences.” One week later, predictably, a man named Mr. Singh, a truck driver of Sikh descent, was stabbed 17 times at a truck stop in Wyoming.
So where do we go from here? I look back on Sunday. I don’t know how the shooter’s gun jammed. I don’t know how my family and others escaped. I don’t know how I happened to be there, but I believe that one purpose was so I could be here. I could speak out about hate, and that has become one of my life’s visions. So, what do we do about this?
First, babies are not born to hate. Children are not born to hate. They are taught to hate. This shooter was radicalized by his environment. He was radicalized by social. Social media, until he told a coworker, he “could not wait to kill Indians.”
Secondly, the anti-Indian hatred online and on social media has got to stop. According to a recent report, anti-South Asian social media posts have skyrocketed. They’ve they’ve grown by more than 240 percent. Big tech profits off this hate. Big tech will not police itself. We must police big tech. We must close the loopholes that allow them to be protected from the consequences of their actions. Third, public officials of all stripes must condemn this hate.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s directed at Indians or Muslims or Jews, or Sikhs, or Hindus. It doesn’t matter if it’s directed at blacks or Latinos or gays or women. We must stand in solidarity and speak with one voice. We must hate hate. Instead, unfortunately, we see silence from too many people, and worse, we see people fanning the flames. MAGA social influencers recently held a podcast, and the and the title of the podcast is “What to Do About the Quote Indian Question.” If that sounds Eerily similar to the “Jewish question,” it is the natural consequence of hateful rhetoric directed toward anybody is violence.
Fourth, I will be calling upon the FBI to investigate this shooting, this alleged mass shooting, as a hate crime. However, the FBI needs to do much more. They must finally measure. They must disaggregate the data and measure the hate directed toward individual subgroups, including Indians. They must also direct resources away from what I believe to be fruitless exercises, such as “uncovering election fraud,” toward the threat that exists in the homeland, and that is domestic violent extremism. Domestic violent extremism is on the rise, and I call upon Director Kash Patel. You must protect the American people against this domestic violent extremism directed toward numerous communities, including Indians, but not limited to them.
Finally, to Indians and Hindus, I say happy Navarati. I also say to you and to everybody else, whether you’re a Muslim, a Sikh, a Jew, a Christian of Indian descent, or any descent, be yourselves. Practice your beliefs. Practice your religion as you see fit. Because the attackers want us to change who we are and to change our behavior, but to do so would only be yielding to them and yielding to fear, and we will not do that.
