WorldNetDaily obsessed over the alleged manifesto of the Nashville shooter and agitated for it to be released, all because it wanted to use the writings to demonize transgender people as violent psychopaths.
By Terry Krepel Posted 3/13/2024
Peter LaBarbera
Back in 2015, WorldNetDaily wasn't terribly interested in reporting on the racist manifesto of Dylann Roof, who killed nine black people in a South Carolina church -- perhaps because Roof's views largely mirrored those promoted by WND. When it came to the school shooting in Nashville, the revelation that the shooter allegedly had written a manifesto prompted WND to obsess over it and demand its release, presumably due to the fact that the shooter was allegedly transgender. Peter LaBarbera complained in a March 30 article:
The Nashville Metro Police Department caved to public pressure and has agreed to publish trans child-murderer Audrey Hale's pre-rampage "manifesto," but only after FBI profilers pour over the document first.
LGBT activist groups had urged Nashville police not to release the manifesto, but conservatives and others demanded that it be treated like other mass-murderer screeds that have been made public through the media in the past.
LaBarbera also whined that the transphobic intention of the right-wingers like him demanding the manifesto's release was being called out:
Meanwhile, as "progressive" Democrats used the trans killer's murderous, anti-Christian-school attack to crusade for anti-gun laws, LGBT leftists used conservatives' reaction to it to buttress their longstanding claim that most opponents of transgender and LGBT agendas are guilty of "hate."
"In a grotesque expression of their hate, the GOP's far-right extremists – which now extends to most of their party – used the horrific school shooting in Nashville yesterday to attack and smear transgender people," wrote homosexual radio talk show host Michelangelo Signorile, who bills himself as one who "fearlessly [takes] on the right wing, the main stream media, and the bigots with hard-hitting progressive talk."
LaBarbera accused the lack of its immediate release to be a "cover-up" in an April 19 article:
As millions of Americans wonder why the "manifesto" of Audrey Hale, the "trans"-identified mass-murderer of three children and three adults at a Nashville Christian elementary school, has not been released to the public, one "honest liberal" journalist is trying to do something about it.
Glenn Greenwald, the free-speech-crusading homosexual man of the left who regularly pillories the Democrat-subservient corporate media, said he is trying to hire a lawyer to pry the "manifesto" from the government's hands. Why? Because the public deserves to know what motivated Hale to commit what, in liberal media jargon, has all the characteristics of an anti-Christian "hate crime."
It has been 23 days since Hale, a woman who claimed the opposite-sex pronouns "He/Him" in a public profile, broke into the Covenant School in Nashville where she was once a student and fired a total of 152 rounds shooting to death three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members. Hale herself was fatally gunned down by quick-acting police before she could slaughter more innocents. After the murders, Nashville police revealed that Hale left behind a "manifesto" but neither released it nor promised its imminent release.
An anonymously written May 2 article hyped a lawsuit calling for the manifesto's release:
Before Audrey Elizabeth Hale stormed the private Covenant Presbyterian School in Nashville and killed three children and three adults, she wrote a manifesto.
But authorities still are concealing it, depriving the community of what might prove to be important information about the assault.
Note that the anonymous author erased Hale's reported transgender identity. Bob Unruh hyped another right-wing attempt to force the release of the manifesto in a June 3 article (while also erasing Hale's alleged transgender identity):
When mass shooter Audrey Hale, deceased, planned to shoot up a Christian school in Nashville, she wrote a manifesto.
Weeks after the massacre of six people, including three children, it's still being concealed.
And the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, in one of the cases seeking its release, is asking a court for an order that the FBI release it.
[...]
WILL's client is The Star News Network, which is based in Nashville and continues to investigate the motivation of the shooter.
The FBI has denied access to the manifesto, and so WILL sued.
LaBarbera returned for an Aug. 28 article that at least somewhat admitted that the demand for the manifesto's release is politically driven, further complaining that parents at the school are demanding to keep the manifesto unreleased:
Conservatives are outraged over the double-standard they see in the release of mass-murderers' "manifestos," contrasting the quick release of a Florida mass-killer's murderous, anti-black screed with the ongoing non-release of transgender-identified Audrey Hale's manifesto five months after she shot up a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.
Hale shot six people, including three students, dead at the Presbyterian Covenant School March 27, before she was gunned down by police at the scene. Ever since then, conservatives have been clamoring for authorities, including the FBI, to release of the information Hale left behind explaining her motives.
[...]
Nevertheless, the quick release of a manifesto of Florida mass-murderer Ryan Palmeter's manifesto, which police called the "diary of a madman" for his stated goal of killing black people, has led critics to say this is only the latest example of a two-tiered justice system and biased media coverage that repeatedly favors narratives on the Left. Palmeter allegedly killed three black people inside and outside a Dollar General store in Jacksonville on Saturday before turning his gun on himself.
This, by the way, is the only reference to Palmeter at WND, which otherwise censored all mention of his manifesto.
LaBarbera also complained that parents at the school object to releasing the manifesto, and he leaned into denying their rights in favor of so-called "transparency" (which, of course, is really all about right-wing activists desiring to smear all transgender people as wannabe killers):
However, there is a complicating factor in the comparison between the two senseless slaughters: parents representing more than 100 families with children at Covenant School are suing to keep the Hale documents – journals, laptop files and other materials that collectively comprise what is called the killer's "manifesto" – private.
They argue that a full release of the documents could "traumatize survivors of the attack or inspire copycat shootings," as USA Today reported in June. Media companies and groups favoring transparency in government are fighting in court to release the documents.
[...]
As WKRN reported in late May, parents of Covenant School students are urging the court to release only selective documents from Hale's manifesto, while shielding most of her writings from the public.
“This Court can shield Jane Doe and John Doe from a lifetime of abuse and harassment by the shooter from beyond the grave,” the attorneys for the parents say in the court filings, obtained by WKRN. “The Parents believe that the large tranche of documents they do not object to will provide the public with the information needed to understand this horrific crime.”
"We are in 'uncharted waters' because we have a unique opportunity following a mass murder at an elementary school to prevent the shooter’s writings and anything else that is likely to inspire future attacks from being released and causing pain and suffering to the victims," the lawyers write, according to WKRN.
But transparency advocates say shutting down information could set a dangerous precedent for controlling the public's access to information in future criminal cases.
LaBarbera didn't explain why the rights of the parents don't matter here when they usually are defended by WND in most other circumstances.
That concern-trolling continued in an Oct. 17 article by Bob Unruh:
Students now have been scheduled to return to classes at The Covenant School in Nashville early in 2024, less than a year after a shooter killed three children and three adults in an attack on the educational facility at Covenant Presbyterian Church last March.
Audrey Hale, 28, shot her way through glass doors into the school, and fired more than 100 more rounds and destroyed the lives of Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, each 9, and Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.
Covenant students have been attending classes at Brentwood Hills Church of Christ since the attack.
But the fight over the violence, even though Hale was killed by police officers, is far from over, as there are groups that have insisted on her rantings in writing be released so the public may have the fullest information about a motive, and lawyers for parents and school have claimed releasing them would cause "harm" to students.
David Rausch, of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, said the writings are "journal-type rantings" but they remain secret, even though open-government advocates have explained state public records laws require their release.
The Tennessee Star bluntly reported that those lawyers contend the information would be so damaging to students that it would '"lead to suicides."
Unruh somehow forgot to mention that the movement to demand the manifesto's release is centered around Hale's transgender identity and largely comes from anti-LGBTQ groups.
When right-wing garbage human Steven Crowder somehow got a hold of a few pages of Hale's notebook -- not really a manifesto -- and leaked, them, Unruh was happy to hype it as "political terrorism" (and make a bit deal of and Hale's transgender identity) in a Nov. 6 article:
The long-concealed "manifesto" of Audrey Hale, 28, the transgender woman who shot up a Christian school in Nashville earlier this year, killing three children and three adults, reveals that she hoped for a high "death count," according to a report from social-media personality Steven Crowder.
He posted images online of what he said were copies of the document that has been withheld by authorities who say they are investigating.
[...]
The fact that the document has not been available already was pointed out by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who said, "Every shooter’s manifesto should be public. There is absolutely no reason to hide this. Unless of course our government wants to hide the fact that these shooters are on SSRIs and usually brainwashed by leftist’s propaganda."
Crowder explained in an online video the manifesto was leaked. Authorities said Hale once attended the school, and died at the scene of the shooting.
[...]
Commentator Andy Ngo wrote on X, formerly Twitter,, "BREAKING: I have reviewed the manifesto of the Nashville trans school shooter (scoop first obtained by @scrowder). Audrey 'Aiden' Hale expressed a violent hatred of those 'little crackers" [children] with "white privilege.'"
X user DC_Draino said on the platform, "This is why the DOJ suppressed the Nashville Manifesto. It shows how Leftist ideology radicalized a Trans shooter to murder Christian children. This was political terrorism & the Biden regime tried to cover it up We will not be silent after these children were slaughtered."
Police earlier said Hale's document would be released, but that has not happened but has been delayed several times, the latest over "pending litigation."
Unruh made sure to quote another right-winger making the transgender link to violence more explicit:
At RVM News a commentary said, "Authorities have had this information for quite some time. While you’re looking at the disgusting thoughts of a mentally ill transgender murderer, ask yourself why they would keep this hidden from the public…"
Jack Cashill -- who loves nothing better than a good conspiracy theory, no matter how bogus or implausible -- spent his Nov. 8 column obsessing over the manifesto pages and blaming critical race theory for it:
Presuming that the manifesto fragment leaked this past week to podcaster Steven Crowder is legitimate, the answer may be that young white people like Hale have been taught to hate their own race.
At the core of critical race theory, CRT, is the notion that white people are, directly or indirectly, responsible for all the evils of the world. Complicating matters is that CRT-influenced educators are quick to assign an "identity" to students based not on their character but on their race.
Kids get the message. Either in school or through social media, they hear repeatedly that white people enslaved blacks, killed Indians and despoiled the earth.
For people of color, this message is reassuring. It absolves them of responsibility for their own personal failures and encourages them to project blame on to the white people in their midst, their fellow students included.
For white students, the message is onerous. Says Chris Rufo, the nation's most effective CRT foe, "This ideology, critical race theory, is a cynical, pessimistic, fatalistic, entrapping ideology."
Cashill is doing Rufo's bidding here; he once wrote in an now apparently deleted tweet that his goal was to "put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category" and, thus, "to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think 'critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.” It's also worth noting that Cashill has been leaning more toward race-baiting content of late, having written a VDARE-endorsed book seeking to absolve white people of racism for fleeing cities in the 1960s.
Cashill did work right-wing transgender hate into his column, declaring that by refusing to release the manifesto, "The FBI was not protecting an investigation. It was protecting a narrative":
According to an FBI study, only 3.8% of mass shooters have been female. To prevent future such shootings, it would have been helpful to know whether Hale was taking any hormonal drugs that might have caused her to flip out.
We will likely never know. Other than Twitter, the major social media sites are blocking posts about the manifesto. To the degree that the major media talk about it at all, it is to cheer on the hunt for the "leaker."
Hale's entry ends: "I hope I have a high death count. Ready to die ha ha Aiden." She/her Audrey got the death count she hoped for, but the major media and the FBI refuse to give he/him Aiden the time of day.
Cashill didn't explain why he thinks "hormonal drugs" turn transgender people into violent killers.
Hate-crime complaint
WorldNetDaily isn't just exploiting the alleged manifesto by the Nashville shooter to smear all transgender people as wannabe massacre commiters. It also wants to use it to whine about poor, oppressed white people. Bob Unruh complained in a Nov. 13 article:
The shooter who gunned down three children and three adults earlier this year at the Covenant school in Nashville said, in her manifesto, she hated the victims' white skin, their light features, their "privilege," their "fancy schools," their "mop yellow hair" and the fact they were "cr*ckers."
But two key federal law enforcement agencies have refused to recognize the murders as a hate crime.
It's according to a report at the Federalist.
The publication reported it asked "the nation’s top federal law enforcement agencies, which had access to the notebook [shooter Audrey Haley's manifesto] ever since March 27, if either had plans to classify the shooting as an anti-white hate crime or political violence spurred on by the proliferation of left-wing racism in schools and government, the DOJ ignored the request and the FBI claimed it did not have a comment."
That, the report noted, "sharply contrasts how both department and agency have treated other race-based shootings."
For example, "When a gunman in Buffalo, New York, opened fire in a grocery store, killing 10 in 2022, the DOJ used the shooter’s racist social media posts as justification to deem the act 'a hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism' worthy of several federal hate crime charges. The Justice Department extended the same treatment to Dylann Roof and the Texas mass shooter who killed 23 people at an El Paso Wal-Mart."
"Yet when it comes to investigating the Nashville shooting, which was rooted in the shooter’s disdain for people based on their skin color, as a hate crime against white Christians, the DOJ and FBI refuse," the report noted.
Unruh is so sloppy that he couldn't even spell Audrey Hale's name correctly. He's also repeated right-wing narratives about the massacre (while making sure not to reference the fact that Hale's possession of guns made the massacre possible).Meanwhile, others have pointed out that those calling for the massacre to be a hate crime have voted against anti-hate crime laws. Indeed, the Federalist has repeatedly lashed out against hate-crime laws.
Of course, Unruh failed to tell his readers about any of that. He's a stenographer, after all, not a journalist -- and all he did here was rewrite a right-wing opinion piece and present it as "news."
