455
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/news@lemmy.world

Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Colorado Springs, Colorado, also wrote in notes he left on his cellphone that he needed to “cleanse” his mind “of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.” Livelsberger served in the Army since 2006 and deployed twice to Afghanistan.

“This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives,” Livelsberger wrote in one letter found by authorities and released Friday.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Snapz@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I mean, we live inside of bullshit town, so it's less unbelievable each day that something like the following is actually true:

  • They killed a guy or the guy decided to "die for the cause" as a cult member

  • Remotely drove his dead body in a cybertruck (like the fake FSD "taxi" demonstration from musk the other month)

  • Parked at decrepit old trump hotel with arrival and lobby area in desperate need of repair, but in a place that would assure press coverage for brand and to stoke bases's victimhood complex

  • Remotely detonated explosive when it was clear of most people and in a way that was loud and showy, but without extreme loss of life

  • Cops at first won't name cybertruck directly as involved vehicle as they "investigate" and then immediately cop starts talking in specific detail (uncharacteristic of cops) mentioning truck by name and how that specific brand model truck contained blast probably

  • Weird press articles about musk response being a "masterclass" in crisis management PR

  • trump will fundraise a lot off of the "attack" and also make a huge fraudulent insurance claim ridiculously inflating costs of ruined assets and remodeling "there was van Gogh in the lobby, you couldn't see it, but it was there

  • dead person's writings will serve to radicalize more nutjobs ready for the slaughter as soon as their divorce finalizes.

(Keep in mind that while you were reading all that, musk is on Twitter now admitting, after being publicly caught and humiliated, that he has had fake Twitter accounts for years where he personally goes to his own posts and comments on how great he is, to himself, as the world's richest person, on paper.)

[-] exploitedamerican@lemm.ee 7 points 1 day ago

Is everybody just ignoring the email he sent to sam shoemate and instead going to trust the corporate owned msm reporting on this?

If he really was a right wing extremist then why would he detonate explosives outside of a trump building and cause property damage to one of the rights most symbolic moron leaders? Something doesnt add up in the mainstream narrative ,

[-] Drusas@fedia.io 27 points 1 day ago

This was also terrorism and occurred only shortly after the terrorist attack in New Orleans, and yet somehow it's the brown Muslim getting all of the attention for being a terrorist.

Yes, the white guy who lit fireworks off in a Tesla said it wasn't terrorism, but he also said that it was to send a message ("a wake up call")--that's terrorism. He was a right wing extremist terrorist but because he was white and not an Islamist, it's just glossed over.

It doesn't matter that he was a decorated soldier. He was a terrorist who literally wanted non-Republicans to be hunted down and forced out of the government.

[-] DrFistington@lemmy.world 85 points 2 days ago

Read the note... This guy must have had some TBI from his deployments. I mean he gets to the top of the forest, but then refuses to see the trees.

Yes billionaires and the 1% are a cancer on society... So the solution is to put two of them in charge? Like holy shit, you literally just fucking said they didn't care about us, and that we're cattle to them. Oh except for these two, the illegal immigrant that made a fortune over staying his visa and pays no taxes, and the rape ape who's been convicted of fraud multiple times, who hires illegal immigrants, refuses to pay overtime, and also pays no taxes. Those two are the shining exceptions...

I can't even fathom the cognitive dissonance he must have lived with daily. If this guy were in Jones Town he would have cut in line for his Kool aid even after seeing people start to drop dead.

Thank you for your service, and for showing yourself out.

[-] Drusas@fedia.io 6 points 1 day ago

His former girlfriend who was an army nurse also said that she thought he had a TBI.

[-] socsa@piefed.social 13 points 2 days ago

I know "false flag" is a meme at this point, but this is just what it looks like when an accelerationist asshole thinks he's clever.

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 43 points 2 days ago

Found the reason why.

The writings found on Sergeant Livelsberger’s phone suggest that he had been increasingly concerned about politics. In one note shared by the police, Sergeant Livelsberger said that people should “try peaceful means first but be prepared to fight” to get Democrats out of the federal government.

So this isn't necessarily a problem with Trump, this guy was just another "democrats are the problem with the Real America™" Republican that happened to have mental issues driving him to be a suicide bomber.

He wasn't even anti-Musk, he seems to have worshipped the authoritarian.

In another, he said that “masculinity is good and men must be leaders,” adding that people should rally around Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive and a top donor to the Trump campaign.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/las-vegas-tesla-explosion-soldier-ptsd-notes.html

[-] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 66 points 2 days ago

Since some news sources are afraid to state his stance:

In one letter, he tells “fellow service members, veterans and all Americans” it’s time to “wake up” because the country’s leadership is “weak” and “only serves to enrich themselves.”

Source

Given the location and vehicle, I say he is clearly mad at a certain side, can you guess which one? /s

[-] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 35 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Surprisingly (or maybe not), he's a Trump supporter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_International_Hotel_Las_Vegas_Tesla_Cybertruck_explosion#Perpetrator

Livelsberger and his first wife divorced in 2018 in part due to political ideological differences, in particular his support for Donald Trump.

Livelsberger's family revealed that Matthew intended to vote for Trump in the 2024 election.

EDIT: I just saw your /s, I'm a fool

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Xanthobilly@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

I’m not here to support the dude’s pro-trump stance. I do, however, believe class consciousness starts when we recognize we share some of this veteran’s grievances, such as Musk’s relationship with Trump. We’re all getting screwed right now.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

He said Musk should be supported...

[-] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 95 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Did not even take a megacorp CEO with him. What a failure.

load more comments (15 replies)
[-] Nougat@fedia.io 162 points 2 days ago

Livelsberger’s letters covered a range of topics including political grievances, societal problems and both domestic and international issues, including the war in Ukraine. He said in one letter that the U.S. was “terminally ill and headed toward collapse.”

Do you notice how the side he takes on those grievances is not mentioned? I wonder what that means.

Edit: Oh wait, he was a "Trump-loving supersoldier patriot," I know exactly what that means.

[-] Doubleohdonut@lemmy.ca 51 points 2 days ago

Yeah it's been hard to parse what his actual goal was. Like, you want to wake people up. To what, exactly? I can make assumptions, but haven't seen facts outlining this yet. It sure sounds like he was in a really bad place mentally though.

[-] Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 66 points 2 days ago

They always want us to wake up, but they never want us to be woke...

[-] Zementid@feddit.nl 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The neutral contents are valid and I feel empathy for him. Then I read your comment and now I ask myself how often they had to redact the N-Word from his text,....and now I'm angry and sad.

So much energy towards a common goal wasted for stupid fascist shit. Propaganda works my dudes...

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] rational_lib@lemmy.world 125 points 2 days ago

My Elon-brainwashed relative alerted me to the fact that on twitter, the main rumor is that he killed himself to bring attention to the drone sightings being a secret Chinese gravitic propulsion technology.

God I hate that site.

[-] harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 2 days ago

Twitter doesn't exist anymore. It's Xitter. It's full of xeets.

[-] aesthelete@lemmy.world 49 points 2 days ago

I prefer to deadname the site.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago

Obviously an excellent reason to kill one's self. And he made his reasoning so clear too.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] garretble@lemmy.world 107 points 2 days ago

Not to be a big asshole or anything, but we’ll forget about this by Monday.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 107 points 2 days ago

No, they'll keep overanalyzing and rehashing every detail, because it keeps Luigi Mangione out of the news.

[-] RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 1 day ago

That makes me wonder if that's why he did it.

"If I blast myself for GOP causes writ large, I will be the new Famous Martyr!"

load more comments (6 replies)
[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 66 points 2 days ago

Why are they withholding exactly what he meant with his list of grievances? Probably because its’s right wing AF, he’s white, and had lots of guns. When are they going to play the “mental illness angle?

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 47 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I mean, he's got regrets about lives he took, so chances are he realised he's been lied to his whole life and has done terrible things "for his country".

But maybe I'm being too optimistic here. We really need news agencies to release the full letter instead of selectively quoting. They did the same with Luigi Mangione until Ken Klippenstein released the entire thing. Hopefully he gets his hands on this one as well.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[-] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 60 points 2 days ago

The summary shows his warning.

The following is the terrorist attack ...

Tesla engineers, meanwhile, helped extract data from the Cybertruck for investigators, including Livelsberger’s path between charging stations from Colorado through New Mexico and Arizona and on to Las Vegas, according to Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren.

“We still have a large volume of data to go through,” Koren said Friday. “There’s thousands if not millions of videos and photos and documents and web history and all of those things that need to be analyzed.”

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 34 points 2 days ago

Goddamn. So it's just constantly filming and listening 24/7 the entire time.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] rayyy@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago

We all know that a certain orange someone will write this off as just another sucker and loser gone.

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
455 points (99.6% liked)

News

23748 readers
2836 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS