Pelosi attacker's conspiracies, hate speech spikes on Twitter & another QAnon murder

A man broke into the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacked her husband with a hammer – and he also shared far-right conspiracy theories on his blog. A study found hate speech spiked on Twitter in the run-up to Elon Musk buying the site. And there's been yet another murder committed by an adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

It's the week of extremism.

Pelosi attacker's online postings

David DePape, the San Francisco Bay Area man who is now charged with breaking into Pelosi's home last Friday and attacking Pelosi's husband, maintained a blog containing hundreds of bizarre posts, including dozens focused on far-right conspiracy theories and issues recently promoted by far-right extremists.

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• The blog, which has now been removed, contained a lot of very weird stuff. DePape, who told police he planned to kidnap Nancy Pelosi, wrote on the site about having a friend who was a magical fairy and posted imagery including a picture of Hilary Clinton as a zombie.

• Despite the apparent randomness, however, DePape's posts contained a clear thread of far-right propaganda and conspiracy theories. He ranted about Jews and Black people and became increasingly obsessed with public debates over trans rights and outspoken antisemites.

Latest in a pattern: DePape is far from the latest person to carry out a political attack after falling into online rabbit holes. Perhaps most notably, in 2019 Cesar Sayoc mailed pipe bombs to several prominent Democrats including Barack Obama and Clinton. Sayoc was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2019.

Hate speech spikes on Twitter

The number of Tweets containing hateful terms and promoting racism, antisemitism, or other forms of hate spiked in the days leading up to Musk's purchase of the social media platform last Friday, according to researchers from Montclair State University in New Jersey.

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• The researchers monitored how many times users tweeted using a range of terms including "Vulgar and hostile terms for individuals based on race, religion, ethnicity, and orientation."

• They found "an immediate, visible, and measurable spike in hate terms on Twitter after Musk took over as CEO."

• The seven-day average use of those terms was never more than 84 times an hour. From midnight on Oct. 28 to noon, the terms were used 4,778 times with a potential reach of 3 million users. Musk took over as Twitter's CEO on Oct. 27.

Civil rights groups who met with Musk this week said they were alarmed by a dramatic rise in hate speech, racial slurs and antisemitism: “Our concern is the platform is not allowed to be used as a place where individuals who are promoting hate speech against any community are allowed to be on and, secondly, that individuals who have been de-platformed are not easily let back on it,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson told USA TODAY.

Next steps: Musk tweeted he won’t allow anyone back on the platform until he’s established a clear process “which will take at least a few more weeks.”

Yet another QAnon-linked murder

Last Friday, the same day a man whipped up by far-right conspiracy theories broke into Pelosi's home, another California man was found guilty of murder in the latest slaying connected to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

• Rory Banks, a 44-year-old resident of Wheatland, California, was found guilty of breaking into the home of 55-year-old Ralph Mendez and shooting him in the head.

• Evidence presented in the case showed that Banks planned on murdering every registered sex offender in the town of Wheatland. Prosecutors said Mendez was on Banks' hit list.

• His attorney told the court Banks was obsessed with QAnon, which centers around the disproven conspiracy theory that high-profile liberal politicians and business leaders are running a global pedophile ring.

• Banks, who had a QAnon sticker on his vehicle, spent a lot of time "doing research" online and on the encrypted messaging service Telegram, a hotbed for QAnon believers, prosecutors said.

• Crime map: You can view a map of QAnon-related violence here.

 Contributing: Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: David DePape's online posts; hate speech on Twitter and a QAnon murder