The individual in question was quite obviously Latino. His photos were plastered all over the news. He very well might have had far-right, extreme and racist views, but it's rather hard to believe that he specifically subscribed to an ideology that hated him. But the media really likes the tagline "white supremacy", so that made it into all the articles regardless of the specific factual accuracy.

> Garcia himself was not white but Latino, something that occasionally bothered him. He wrote that there “was a time when I was ashamed of being Hispanic.” However, he added, “I’m Hispanic whether I like or not. I’ve made peace with that.” In another incident, Garcia claimed someone asked, “Are you Hispanic?”, to which Garcia allegedly replied “Yuck, don’t remind me.”

https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/allen-gunmans-writings-re...

Latino isn't a race. You can be white and Latino. This person may have considered themselves white, for all we know. In many countries he would be regarded as white.

In any case, if you just want to make a distinction between 'white supremacist' and 'far right, extremist and racist', then are you not splitting hairs somewhat? We know which race the people who liked swastikas favored, and it wasn't the Mayans.

But whacky far-right racist beliefs always find a way. Here's an amusing line from the Wikipedia article on a Mexican fascist movement that I linked in another comment:

>Rodríguez claimed that blood tests carried out by ethnographers showed that Mexicans and Nordic peoples were racially equal.

What sort of reception would Mr. Garcia have received had he attempted to interact with white supremacists in real life? For some reason I don't think they would accept his census self-identification...

Sure, it is a fairly fine distinction, but an awful lot of people saw a news story about a Latino "white supremacist" and just uncritically believed it. Despite the sheer inconsistency of such a thing. Yes, crazy people do exist, but it's important to critically examine news particularly when it is ridiculous. And that's really what the original parent post was about: the ability to convince people of something ridiculous simply by saying it. Elon doesn't have that power, but in many cases the media as a collective does. Eg. The media acted as cheerleaders for the war in Iraq, fabricating the WMD story which should have collapsed under even the slightest scrutiny.

If anything, Elon seems to be usually out of step with the legacy media consensus. That's a good thing if it makes people stop and consider what they are believing and why, on a more frequent basis.

The shooter was Latino and was a white supremacist.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/mauricio-garcia-wh...

> Thanks to Elon Musk, I found a Garcia post where he tells the story of a “PC” Jewish chemistry teacher who tried to reason Garcia out of his Hitler worship by insisting that he isn’t white but Hispanic. He repeatedly taunts the poor woman, greeting her by saying “white power”, “Final Solution”, and giving her Nazi salutes.

Musk thought he was being very clever because he thought ‘Latino white supremacist’ was like ‘square circle’. It’s not. You can keep insisting that it’s a contradictory concept, but we have an instance.