Accused Pelosi attacker David DePape spread QAnon, other much-appropriate, bigoted conspiracies

For the record:
7:56 p.m. Oct. 28, 2022: A earlier model of this post referred to “Black Adam” as a Marvel motion picture. Black Adam is a DC Comics character.

In the months in advance of police accused him of attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s spouse Friday early morning, David DePape had been drifting even more into the environment of much-suitable conspiracies, antisemitism and dislike, according to a Times review of his on line accounts.

In a particular website that DePape preserved, posts contain these kinds of subjects as “Manipulation of Heritage,” “Holohoax” and “It’s Alright to be white.” He mentioned 4chan, a most loved information board of the far appropriate. He posted movies about conspiracies involving COVID-19 vaccines and the war in Ukraine being a ploy for Jewish persons to purchase land.

DePape’s screeds integrated posts about QAnon, an unfounded concept that previous President Trump is at war with a cabal of Satan-worshipping elites who operate a youngster intercourse ring and manage the world. In an Aug. 23 entry titled “Q,” DePape wrote: “Possibly Q is Trump himself or Q is the deepstate moles inside of Trumps interior circle.”

DePape’s daughter, Inti Gonzalez, explained to The Periods that her father wrote the site. She stated that she and her mother had been reeling from the information that DePape experienced been arrested in link with the assault on Paul Pelosi.

“I’m a tiny stunned,” she stated, “but not genuinely that shocked, in all honesty.”

Authorities have not exposed a motive for the attack at the Pelosi residence in San Francisco early Friday. But legislation enforcement resources reported the assailant shouted, “Where is Nancy? The place is Nancy?” just before confronting Paul Pelosi, and San Francisco Law enforcement Chief Monthly bill Scott referred to as the attack “intentional.”

Various lawmakers have blamed hyper-partisanship and divisive political rhetoric for an increase in political violence and stability incidents in new decades, in particular following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Scott mentioned soon after a 911 call to the Pelosi residence, officers located a male — later on determined as DePape — and Paul Pelosi “each holding a hammer.” The intruder pulled the hammer from the 82-calendar year-previous Pelosi and then commenced hanging him, Scott said. Officers tackled the suspect, disarmed him and took him into custody.

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DePape, 42, was taken to a clinic and later booked on suspicion of tried homicide, assault with a lethal weapon, elder abuse, theft and destroying a cellphone to stop someone from in search of enable, authorities reported.

Paul Pelosi underwent surgical procedures Friday following the attack. Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Nancy’s Pelosi’s workplace, said in a statement that Pelosi suffered a cranium fracture and critical injuries to his right arm and fingers. “His medical doctors hope a full recovery,” the statement mentioned.

DePape adopted a range of conservative creators on-line, together with Tim Pool, Glenn Beck, DailyWire+ and the Epoch Instances. He also followed an account on YouTube known as Black Pilled and reposted a number of of its films on his blog site. “Blackpilling” is internet slang for coming to consider supposedly unacceptable points about society, and the reposted movies include things like accusations this sort of as the FBI masking up kid rape.

Three of DePape’s family members — including his father — declined to be interviewed for this post. They stated they haven’t been in contact with DePape for a long time and that he’s not in get hold of with his loved ones. DePape grew up in British Columbia and moved to California additional than 20 years in the past, a person of them reported.

DePape was outlined in a 2013 San Francisco Chronicle write-up and was explained as a “father figure” to Gypsy Taub, a nudist who lived in a a few-bedroom Victorian condominium in Berkeley with her then-fiance and her a few youngsters. DePape, who was “a hemp jewellery maker,” was the very best man in Taub’s marriage ceremony.

When DePape was sounding off about QAnon, he posted: “Remember when the British isles arrested mom and dad for seeking to rescue their small children from currently being gang banged at pedo rape parties and f— Enable the pedo’s Continue their kiddie rape orgies,” he ongoing.

A different put up referenced “pizzagate,” a bogus conspiracy principle that posited that children were trapped in a sexual abuse ring in a Washington, D.C., pizzeria operate by Hillary Clinton and a chief aide.

“Pizza gate is connected to Epstien hahahahha,” a submit from Aug. 23 read through. “My close friends would be like pizza gate was debunked their is NO these point as elite pedophile intercourse rings and I am like Hello Epstein what earth are you on?”

In another, he identified as “equity” a leftist puppy whistle “for the systematic oppression of white people” and “diversity” a “dog whistle for the genocide of the white race.” In some others, he posted individual videos questioning the Holocaust and alleging Jewish bankers had been accountable for Hitler’s rise to electric power.

DePape also ran a WordPress site with the area “godisloving.wordpress.com,” which bundled racial slurs and considerably-right conspiracy theories, according to information stories. A spokesperson for WordPress.com, which is owned by Automattic, verified that DePape’s blog was taken down Friday “for violating our Phrases of Service.”

DePape also shared personal e-mail and texts with spouse and children users, peppering them with xenophobic ideas and conspiracy theories. Even nonpolitical posts, such as a person about a pay a visit to to a film theater to check out “Black Adam,” had been laden with conspiracy theories and concepts about racial stress.

“The critics are f— commie gate keepers,” reads a write-up created two times in advance of the attack on Pelosi. In it, he writes he “enjoyed” the superhero movie. “Fantastic performance by Mr. ‘The Rock’ he carried the movie.”

But the producing swiftly jumped to a conspiracy that the motion picture plot is not about the comedian superhero Black Adam, but an effort to push detest from white people. “The actual plot of the story was get rid of all white folks,” DePape wrote. “Black adams [sic] was just a plot machine for hollywood to force their white detest narrative.”

Times soon after Kanye West’s Twitter and Instagram accounts have been locked because of to antisemitic remarks, DePape established a subsection of his own web site focused to posts about Jewish individuals. He tried to debunk the Holocaust and recurring antisemitic sentiments in nearly 20 posts in excess of a 10-day period of time.

He also posted personal conversations with his daughter. Their chats occasionally were about straightforward moments, which includes whistling back again at birds, though other folks were being darker, angry times among DePape, Gonzalez and her mother.

Gonzalez mentioned she was conscious that her father posted some of their textual content discussions on the web site, but said she hadn’t paid out very shut attention to the rest of the information.

“I understood that he was submitting issues like that, but I did not know he posted all the stuff that I sent him,” she stated. “But I do not really care.”

She’d been in get hold of with her father, she reported, but claimed her loved ones did not want to talk about him at the second.

DePape posted films to Fb by MyPillow Chief Government Mike Lindell saying that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, in accordance to experiences.

He also linked to web sites with claims about the deadliness of COVID-19 vaccines.

“The demise prices being promoted are what at any time ‘THEY’ want to be promoted as the death rate,” a single post study.

DePape’s Fb page appeared to no more time be obtainable Friday. Facebook’s parent, Meta, failed to quickly reply to a ask for for information.

Occasions staff writers Noah Goldberg, Richard Winton, Alexandra E. Petri and Gregory Yee contributed to this report.

This story initially appeared in Los Angeles Situations.