The Baton Rouge shooter was an egotistical madman who referred to himself as an “Alpha Preneur” and “life coach” in a series of rambling YouTube videos — including a chilling tirade in which he urges black Americans to “fight back” against police.
Gavin Eugene Long, a black separatist and self-described former member of the Nation of Islam, regularly used the pseudonym Cosmo Setepenra online — touting himself as a “nutritionist, dietitian, personal trainer, author and spiritual adviser” who spent two years in Japan and did one tour in Iraq as a sergeant in the Marines.
The 29-year-old had several websites and social media accounts registered under that name, including on Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
He has posted at least three clips to YouTube in the past about oppression and the police protests in Baton Rouge — and could be seen cruising around the Louisiana city just days before his rampage.
“Let’s just go with the numbers, let’s go with the history,” he says in an ominous clip posted July 10 in which he defends the Dallas gunman.
“One hundred percent of revolutions, of victims fighting their oppressors, from victims fighting their bullies, 100 percent have been successful through fighting back, through bloodshed. Zero have been successful over simply protesting. It has never worked and never will. You’ve got to fight back. That’s the only way a bully knows to quit. He doesn’t know words. He can’t understand words. He doesn’t understand protests.
“If y’all wanna keep protesting, do that, but for the serious ones, the real ones, the alpha ones … We know what it’s gonna take. It’s only fighting back or money, that’s all they care about. Revenue or blood … Nothing else.”
In a cryptic video posted July 8 — a day after Micah Johnson shot and killed five Dallas police officers — Long urges his followers to not make assumptions about his affiliations and motives if he were to also act out in the near future.
“If anything happens with me … Don’t affiliate me with nothing,” he says. “I’m not affiliated with the black business school, even though I might promote they business. Any of my friends, any of my associations, those are just associations, I’m not affiliated with it. Yea, I was also a Nation of Islam member, [but] I’m not affiliated with it … Don’t affiliate me with nothing … I was a Christian, I was in Africa. Don’t try to say, ‘Oh, he was African, he was this and that.’ No! They’d try to put you with ISIS or some other terrorist group. No! I am affiliated with the spirit of justice … Nothing more nothing less … I thought my own thoughts. I made my own decisions … I’m the one who has to listen to the judgment and my heart is pure.”
Long had previously described himself as a “warrior” of the streets who was simply fighting for his rights in a video posted to YouTube on July 5.
“We are built for sacrifice. We are built to overcome fear,” he says. “This is what we live for and die for.”
On July 7, Long retweeted a picture of a man shooting a pistol into the front seat of an NYPD squad car with a caption that read, “They gone be mad when n****s start doing this.”
A day later, he tweeted a photo of Micah Johnson, and said: “The shooter was NOT WHITE, He was one of us! My religion is Justice.”
Early Sunday, just hours before the shooting, Long once again took to Twitter to give his followers some prophetic words of advice.
“Just bc you wake up every morning doesn’t mean that you’re living. And just bc you shed your physical body doesn’t mean that you’re dead,” he wrote.
Kansas court documents show that Long successfully applied to have his name legally changed to Cosmo Ausar Setepenra in May 2015. On his application, he claimed to be a member of the Washitaw Nation, a group of African-Americans claiming to be a Native American nation in the United States.
“When the Native Americans, when they were extinct by the same people that run this country, at what point should they have stood up,” Long asks in a video posted to YouTube on July 12. “That’s something for y’all to think about. I’ve already [meditated] upon it.”