For years, the FBI has talked about how you create violent extremists. They can view their own personal needs for power, importance, excitement, morality as superior to those around them. When compelled, they act out on these urges, willing to harm others because their needs are considered paramount in comparison to the needs of others. As the war against women continues, the radicalization of these young men against women and organizations that protect women continues to become corrosive and dangerous. While the damage here was vandalism and some minor exterior damage, the intent is far more dangerous, and the intimidation behind it shows where these extremists stand.
From Buzzfeed News:
Around 2:15 a.m. on Friday, Samuel Gulick walked up to the Newark Planned Parenthood facility located next to the University of Delaware, spray-painted the front wall with a known far-right phrase, and threw a lit Molotov cocktail–type device at the window, according to court documents.
Video surveillance captured the suspect driving by the building 10 minutes before the attack. A few minutes later, Gulick approaches the facility, pulls something out of a plastic bag, and scrawls “Deus Vult” in red letters on the front wall, right beneath a blue Planned Parenthood sign that reads "Health Care Happens Here." The phrase means "God Wills It" and started as a meme among Trump supporters in 2016, referencing a holy war between Muslims and Christians.
It is easy to summarize “Deus Vult” as God Wills It, the vague Latin translation. The Washington Post links to meme sites, selling materials connected to it, and on Reddit the terminology originally a phrase from the first crusades, became used in vile, racist and misogynistic memes. In the past, video game makers had used the phrase in games that featured the crusade, but the vile connection has caused many to remove the phrase from their games or future versions.
Why? Because the phrase has stopped meaning “God Wills It”, and has become not so subtle code for: everyone else is wrong, only my way is right. Youtube channels, which continue to push the narrative, like Nicholas Fuentes, continue to spout more than an “America First” argument, but an argument that says: believing we are right isn’t enough, we must force our will on you.
This toxic attitude is a big part of what led Guilick to firebomb a Planned Parenthood. Buzzfeed had linked to the cached copy of Gulick’s Instagram, and as you can imagine, it is a horror show.
Gulick will face up to 20 years in prison for his actions.