The lawsuit alleges that the then 18-year-old Payton Gendron “was not raised by a racist family” and “had no personal history of negative interactions with Black people.” Gendron was motivated to carry out the attack at Tops Friendly Market “by racist, antisemitic, and white supremacist propaganda recommended and fed to him by the social media companies whose products he used,” according to the lawsuit.
“Gendron explicitly acknowledged that the racist, antisemitic, and violence promoting material he encountered on social media caused his radicalization, motivated him to commit racial violence and provided the training, equipment, and expertise to plan and implement the massacre of May 14, 2022,” according to the complaint.