Studying Plagiarism to Understand Radicalization

On May 14, 2022, an 18-year-old male with the initials PSG entered a Buffalo, New York supermarket and, as part of a racially motivated attack, killed 10 people and wounded 3 more.

Shortly after PSG was arrested, it was revealed that he had written and publicly posted a 180-page manifesto detailing his beliefs. The manifesto quickly became a key source of evidence against PSG in the criminal case against him, and was a focus for law enforcement in the aftermath of the shooting.

However, researchers also took an interest in this manifesto, hoping to learn more about the causes of such shootings. They hoped to better understand the radicalization process, including finding warning signs and methods for reducing it.

To that end, two researchers from Montclair State University examined the manifesto through an alternative lens: A plagiarism analysis. Their goal was to understand where PSG got his justifications from, in a hope to better understand what causes some individuals to become radicalized to the point of violence.

According to the article published in the Journal of Deradicalization, that study shined a strong light on the role of the internet in radicalization and casts doubt on existing theories that put a focus on in-person interactions.

Note: Though the full names of PSG and another connected individual are included in the research, I’ve opted not to use them here. Their names are not particularly important to the story, and I don’t wish to offer their views any more of my platform than absolutely necessary.

The Study

PSG’s manifesto was in four parts. According to the researchers, three of those four parts dealt with his rationale and one part dealt almost exclusively with tutorials and guides. As such, they focused their efforts on parts one, two and four, which detailed his worldview.

For those three parts, the researchers then performed both an examination of the text and the images that were included. However, almost immediately they faced challenges unique to this kind of work.

The greatest challenge was that commercial services for finding images and text routinely block or restrict access to hate speech material. This means that such material often doesn’t come up in results, even when looking for direct copies.

The researchers used Turnitin to analyze the text and, with that system, were able to identify widespread plagiarism in the work and then follow those passages to identify other works that were not included in the initial findings, likely due to filters.

With images, the researchers were forced to use Russian-based Yandex, which provides an image search option “without apparent limitations related to hate speech, conspiracy content and misinformation.”

The results were striking. According to the study, some 56% of PSG’s manifesto was copied and pasted from another racially-motivated mass shooter with the initials BT. Another 26% of the manifesto was plagiarized from a variety of other sources, leaving only 18% that is seemingly original. 

With the 62 images, only three of the examined works were not found elsewhere online. Nearly all were taken from sites that PSG has indicated that he frequented.

In both cases, the researchers suspect that there is even more copied content that simply wasn’t detected.

While this may seem like a strange analysis to perform on such a manifesto, the researchers hope that it can help us better understand why some people commit such horrible crimes.

Why It’s Important

To be clear, any allegations of plagiarism against PSG are unimportant. Compared to the actions he has already pleaded guilty to, plagiarism is at most a very small footnote.

However, a plagiarism analysis can tell you more about a work than whether or not it was plagiarized. It’s a means of understanding how a particular work was written and, in doing that, getting insight into the author.

That is what the researchers are hoping for here. The analysis aims less to determine whether PSG plagiarized and looks more at where he got his inspiration from.

To that end, the analysis made one thing very apparent: Nearly all, if not all, of PSG’s inspiration and radicalization came from the internet. This runs up against other theories that put a strong focus on the importance of in-person interaction in the process.

This was further backed up by PSG himself, who claimed to have received all the information and formed his opinions online, saying in the manifesto that, “There was little to no influence on my personal beliefs by people I met in person.” 

While there are serious limitations to this study, the largest being that it’s a case study focusing on a single individual and the fact that much of PSG’s engagement happened during the pandemic, making in-person contact more difficult.

That said, it is still an interesting insight and one that may help further researchers collect more data and that, in turn, may help guide better policies and better support systems to prevent future tragedies.

Bottom Line

A plagiarism analysis isn’t just about determining whether or not a work was plagiarized. Doing a thorough job requires digging into how a work was written. It can feel akin to an archeological dig, trying to understand a past civilization by looking at snapshots from a moment in their time.

As such, a thorough analysis may give you some insight into the mindset of the person who wrote it. You can better understand much of their thought process, the research methods they likely used, and they brought all those elements together. 

It’s only natural to use that approach to try and understand the mindset of those behind great tragedies. Though such understanding will likely never be fully possible, research can help guide the way to tools, policies and systems that can prevent future tragedies and save lives.

Even if that contribution is small, it’s likely still an approach worth exploring.