Mass shooting coincides with a rise in racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism

Amid the national debate over gun control in the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 people dead, there’s one detail that has received too little attention: the fact that the mass killer repeatedly made white supremacist and Nazi-like comments on social media.

Was it a coincidence? Or was the latest massacre — and several of the previous ones — somehow related to a rise of racism in America?

Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old shooter who mowed down students and teachers at the Parkland school with a semiautomatic rifle, had made frequent racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic remarks in a now-deleted Instagram group.