The journey from the playgrounds of Westmoreland County to the “meme war” battlefields of the self-styled American Nationalist movement began, for Thompson in elementary school, when he watched coverage of the United States and its allies marching through Kuwait and into Iraq during the first Gulf War.

It was a moment when it was easy to conclude — as he still does — that the U.S. is “the greatest country that’s ever been created in the history of man.”

Now in his mid-30s, the Mon Valley father who sometimes uses the pseudonym Thompson knows that much of society would shun him as a “white nationalist,” or worse. His online comments have gotten him booted from Facebook, and he’s a Twitter fugitive, frequently creating new accounts to stay ahead of that social media platform’s police.

But he’s not an inciter of violence, he continually reiterated, as he spoke with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette under condition of anonymity to explain his “movement,” his path to it, and his view of acts like the Tree of Life massacre a year ago.

The accused Tree of Life shooter “was upset about immigration. That’s a reasonable thing to be upset about. But it’s not a reason to go shoot someone,” he said in one of two October interviews that followed lengthy email exchanges. “Every time something [violent] happens, we lose,” he said. “A lot of people lose more, but we lose.”

Thompson was one of scores of people who responded to an online request for input on far-right thinking related to the Tree of Life massacre and specifically on the alleged shooter’s final social media declaration: “Screw your optics. I’m going in.” The vast bulk of the other responses were snide, vulgar and insulting, and a few included veiled or explicit threats.

Thompson was raised in a small Westmoreland County town, in what he describes as a middle-class family including veterans and small business persons. (The Post-Gazette is withholding some specifics of his background because he contends that exposure could cost him his job.) In his late teens at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, he gravitated to the work of writer Michael Rupert, who, for a time, questioned the government account of that tragedy.

Mr. Rupert later distanced himself from the so-called “9/11 Truth” movement. So does Thompson. But the conspiracy theories — and exposure to broader ideas while attending community college — changed him.

“I had never even thought to distrust the media,” he said. Now he thinks all big media is slanted. But he also doubts what he sees online, arguing that if there is a different explanation for Sept. 11, the truth probably isn’t in the hands of “somebody on YouTube” or the likes of InfoWars.com personality Alex Jones, who he views as “a character” and not “a news source.”

Thompson said he viewed President Barack Obama as someone who “had the chance to put the racism thing in the rearview of the country,” but blew it by alienating whites. “I think that he did more to divide this country along racial lines, and Trump’s just coming along and pounding those same cracks.”

He said he’s disappointed at President Donald Trump, saying “he didn’t keep any of his promises,” but still prefers the Republican’s promised border wall to “infinity immigrants in America for the next however number of years.”

Saying he’s “not one of those go-back-to-where-you-came-from people,” (and expressing admiration for Democratic presidential contenders Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard, both Asian Americans), he nonetheless does not believe that multiculturalism can work.

“Nationalism as an idea works and multiculturalism as an idea never works,” he said, arguing that there’s no way people of “fundamentally different” backgrounds can peacefully share the same land.

That philosophy — expressed in the context of a conspiracy theory — is what got Thompson banned from Facebook.

In April, in the aftermath of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, suspicions circulated online that Muslims were responsible for the blaze. (Investigators have said it was probably caused by an electrical fault or a cigarette.) Thompson wrote on Facebook that Muslims were killing Christians in Europe, and then sarcastically suggested that the U.S. should continue admitting Muslim immigrants.

He was accused of violating Facebook’s community standards, and his account was shut down. Subsequent attempts to set up new Facebook accounts have failed, he said. His Twitter accounts have also been suspended, though he has managed to make new accounts.

“Twitter and Facebook, that’s basically the public square,” he said. “You just kicked me off because you don’t like what I have to say. I feel like that violates my freedom of speech.”

He’s aware that Facebook and Twitter are companies, but contends that “the Internet isn’t a private company.”

He argues — as do some academic experts — that bans only drive people to platforms in which they are less likely to experience other viewpoints, and thus solidify online echo chambers.

“That’s where this political violence comes from,” he said. “You just radicalized him for life, because you didn’t respect his constitutionally protected right to say what’s on his mind.”

Thompson said polarized media and social media “made me choose a side. And naturally, I chose the side that seemed to think like I do.”

He’s now embracing some of the language of crisis found on the edges of the political spectrum.

“Whether it is purposeful or not, there is a replacement of white people in America,” he contended. “Now you’re seeing it in immigration — in illegal immigration — big time.”

An unjustifiable crime

Tree of Life, though, was an unjustifiable crime, he said. The accused, Robert Bowers, 47, of Baldwin Borough, “wasn’t our guy.”

“The people who died in Tree of Life, they were innocents. They weren’t enemy combatants,” he said. “I don’t feel bad for the people who were killed because they were Jewish. I feel bad for them because they were innocent people who were just trying to live their lives.”

Thompson volunteered, though, that the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque massacre in March was “more palatable” than other shootings, because the accused gunman’s manifesto suggested that those specific places of worship were breeding grounds for terrorists.

Regardless of motives, his movement could never win a shooting war, he said. “We’d never have a chance.” His compatriots can’t even gather without being overwhelmed by demonstrators, antifa and police, he said. And if they speak out by name, their employers are deluged with phone calls until they are fired, he added. “Once you get outed as a White American Nationalist, that’s it,” he said.

There is one field on which he’s confident.

“We destroy the left in the meme wars,” he said, referring to images and words that are repeated and modified online, often serving as inside jokes for a given group. “If you want to say we make any progress or win in any way, that’s where it is — in the memes.”

He knows that memes — potent though they can be — may not turn what he sees as an overwhelming societal tide against him. But he is confident that nationalism will ultimately prevail. “I’ve heard a million people say that we might wither or die, but you’ll always have the idea that putting your own country first, or America first — that will survive.”

Rich Lord: rlord@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542.