© RJ Sangosti/The Denver PostAn investigation continues at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colo., on Sept. 10, 2025. At least three students were injured, including the suspected shooter, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
The Evergreen school shooting and the Charlie Kirk assassination took place almost simultaneously. Kirk was shot at 12:23pm and the first 911 call reporting an active shooter at Evergreen High School was made at 12:30pm. Unlike the widespread media coverage of other recent school shootings - the Annunciation Church school shooting in Minneapolis, the Antioch High School shooting in Nashville, and the Abundant Life Christian School attack in Madison, Wisconsin - the Evergreen High School shooting was barely a blip on the radar. Early reports were scant, but it was reported that 2 students were in critical condition and that the shooter had died. The chaos of the day made it very difficult to follow both stories as they unfolded.
The shooter was eventually revealed to be 16-year-old Desmond Holly. Holly brought a revolver and ammunition to the school and waited until lunchtime to begin shooting. He reloaded his revolver multiple times as he made his way through the school, shooting at walls and doors and any student who crossed his path. Officials said that Holly encountered roadblocks in the form of locked doors which prevented him from reaching more students. Officers arrived at the school within two minutes of the shooting and encountered Holly within five minutes. Defeated, Holly turned the revolver on himself.
16-year-old Desmond Holly
Holly's digital footprint had ties to online subcultures like the True Crime Community (TCC) and Order of Nine Angles (O9A) influenced groups like 764 and NLM, drawing obvious parallels to the recent shootings perpetrated by Solomon Henderson in January and Natalie Rupnow in December. This footprint has been referred to by the FBI as Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE) and points to a decentralized web of online influences that intersects with harmful groups such as 764, NLM, and Com.
What do these words mean?
I am constantly seeing this question beneath my posts on the subject. Unfortunately, these terms are still not common knowledge, and I often forget that some people may be seeing my posts about them for the first time. This is an incredibly difficult position to be in. I don't have time to explain to every single person the nuanced and highly convoluted NVE landscape, nor do I have the space in my tweets to define these terms every time I post.
So, here is a brief overview for the uninitiated.
The Order of Nine Angles is a fringe, pseudo-Satanic cult that was founded by a British man named David Myatt in the 70s. O9A texts, written mostly by Myatt, teach that history can be viewed as a cycle of periods called "aeons". O9A cultists aim to increase the amount of evil energy in the human realm through rituals and transgressive acts, with the goal of invoking Dark Gods who will overthrow the current Christian world order and plunge the world into a new aeon of evil and chaos.
O9A is a unique cult in that its design encourages the formation of small, decentralized cells called "nexions". The decentralized structure allows adherents to progress through the cult initiation process (called The Sevenfold Way) independently and with limited oversight. Those who can make their way to the highest levels are promised power, self-enlightenment, and ultimately, immortality. Along the way, initiates undertake "insight roles" - a form of entryism in which they infiltrate groups such as churches, political extremist movements, or the military, in order to subvert those institutions. This tactic blurs the line between occult practice and real-world actions, and over time, has turned the O9A into a formidable threat to the West.
O9A perfectly embodies a concept known as militant accelerationism. Militant accelerationists employ tactics such as infiltration, subversion, and real-world violent actions to destabilize society and accelerate the collapse of the current world order. Modern O9A adherents aim to accelerate the apocalypse by infiltrating online groups and inciting their members to commit violent or otherwise transgressive acts. The preferred tactic for most militant accelerationists is to invoke political infighting between the American right and left wings. This strategy poses one plausible explanation for why such acts are being increasingly carried out by threat actors espousing controversial political views such as white supremacy or far-left politics. In the same sense, it also explains why transgender people are being provoked to commit mass shootings - They want us to fight.
In the age of the internet, O9A adherents are able to spread influence at a rate never before possible. Several key figures associated with O9A, such as Kaleb Merritt, Rohan Rane, and Angel Almeida, began to spread influence within a broad cybercriminal network known as "Com". Short for "Community", we can think of Com as a dark web-style network that organizes and operates on social media platforms like Discord, Telegram, and other apps. One branch of Com, called Extortion Com, is known for targeting kids online and grooming them into committing sexual or violent acts on camera. The predators' demands soon escalate to extortion, in which they threaten or blackmail their victims into producing more and more horrific content. In many cases, the victims are groomed to become abusers themselves.
It's hard to think of anything more transgressive and evil than this. So, while classic O9A adherents have been trying to distance themselves from this particularly evil mutation of the cult, there's no denying this is exactly what their cult was designed to do. O9A undeniably inspired online child exploitation groups within the Com ecosystem. The most infamous of these groups is called 764. Over time, 764 has evolved into a wide network of splinter groups and has even branched off into groups such as No Lives Matter (NLM) which has a distinct focus on provoking kids to commit mass shootings, stabbings, and other terrorist actions.
These groups aren't limited to the US. Members can be found in all corners of the world, from Canada to Australia to the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In Ukraine, a particularly nefarious cult called the Maniac Murder Cult (MKY) emerged as a collection of serial killers who provoke violent attacks against "mundanes". Attacks from this group target the elderly, homeless, and other soft targets. As MKY's influence grew, it merged with O9A ideology and eventually found its way into Com. MKY is an example of a foreign terror group that has found a way to influence kids across the globe to commit violent acts in the name of misanthropy.
Various Com groups emerge, evolve, and coalesce within a network of Discord and Telegram channels. These groups share members who promote other channels within the network, which leads to the migration of members from one group to others. So, a troubled teen who began with a mass killer fascination may join a Telegram channel connected to TCC (a mass killer fandom) and soon find their way into a 764 or NLM channel. The Venn diagram representing various extremist communities within Com is quickly becoming a homogenous circle.
As the 764-network has evolved, threat actors have begun to circulate propaganda and "kill guides," which provide explicit instructions on committing terror attacks such as bombings, car rammings, and mass shootings. These channels often feature a mosaic of O9A and neo-Nazi aesthetics, edgy memes, and various contradictory political rhetoric. It's a confusing environment which glorifies violence, gore, and hatred. Prior mass killers are canonized and sometimes referred to as Saints or Martyrs. This chaotic online space, which is laced with ironic memes and edgy, sometimes contradictory extremist aesthetics, is often referred to as "Larpercore".
A meme showing some common aesthetics and tropes used in Larpercore communities
Learn more about the O9A-Com/764 praxis here.
Desmond Holly's digital footprint
Desmond Holly was described by his peers as quiet and increasingly withdrawn. He had no prior criminal history but exhibited signs of distress in the preceding months, including social isolation and an escalating obsession with violent content online. The announcement that Holly was radicalized by an extremist network comes as no surprise at all. Despite this, police have not released much evidence related to the shooting. There is no word yet on whether or not Holly had left behind a manifesto or other physical evidence.
The scant information released by investigators contributed to broad, unwarranted speculation by the online creator space. As per usual, conservative outlets immediately began searching for any evidence that Holly was transgender or transitioning, ultimately settling on an unconfirmed rumor that he had a transgender family member. Leftist outlets, including the notoriously biased ADL, responded in kind by asserting that Holly had espoused neo-Nazi views and therefore must have been motivated by white supremacy.
This dichotomous spin is not an anomaly, but rather, a hallmark of US school shooting aftermaths, where tragedies become ideological battlegrounds. Disinformation proliferates thanks, in part, to algorithms that prioritize engagement through sensationalism, rewarding viral disinformation and easy answers over the more complicated and nuanced truth. Such distortions erode public trust and impede the progress of research into fringe, online subcultures. Fact-checking is usually an afterthought as creators rush to be the first to report sensational information. Corrections are occasionally made and posts containing incorrect information are sometimes deleted, but it's too late. The disinformation has already become truth for many.
What's more, although people are becoming familiar with terms such as O9A, 764, and TCC and their connections to mass casualty attacks, these concepts are still widely misused and misunderstood. For example, people will commonly assert that a young shooter was a member of O9A. In fact, O9A has no real membership, and true O9A cultists seldom commit crimes by their own hand. Even more confusing, O9A cultists have increasingly attempted to distance themselves from edgy Larpercore subcultures, ironically referring to such activity as "mundane" and degenerate and insisting that the O9A texts explicitly forbid child abuse.
***
Keen observers with an understanding of the Com/764 threat landscape immediately understood that the right and the left were both wrong in their initial assessments of Holly's motive. His social media accounts, which were quickly uncovered by online sleuths, paint a very clear picture that Desmond Holly was just another vulnerable youth who was corrupted by the violent and confusing Com/764 ecosystem.
Specifically, Holly's accounts on TikTok and X show an emphasis on TCC and Larpercore influence. On X, Holly ominously posted a picture of the revolver he would use to commit his attack just minutes before it unfolded. Such pre-attack posts on X have become a common signal among shooters. Both Samantha Rupnow and Solomon Henderson took photos of themselves geared up in a bathroom stall minutes before their attacks. A few of the accounts he followed on X stood out as being members of a notorious self-harm community often seen in connection with TCC and 764.
Post made by Desmond Holly just minutes before the attack.
TikTok posts made by Desmond Holly prior to his attack.
One of the TikTok accounts followed by Holly, indicating a connection to NLM/MKY and an obsession with mass killers.
Another account followed by Holly was a known 764 threat actor who posted O9A motifs such as the Septenary sigil and the "Drill Sgt Grey" alien character.
A mutual of Desmond Holly makes the "Ok" hand symbol and alludes to a pending attack.
While the right wing obsesses over transgenders (they are still calling Samantha Rupnow trans, despite that rumor being thoroughly debunked) and the left wing obsesses over white males and Nazis (Despite Rupnow being female and Solomon Henderson being black), the few honest researchers who are trying to prevent these attacks have been screaming at the top of their lungs about online radicalization and the growing "NVE" threat. And yet, after 6 school shootings in a row attributed to this problem, we fear that no one is listening.
Comment:
FBI has opened 250 investigations tied to violent online network '764' that preys on teens: Top official