Many labels for Gavin Long have emerged from the rich digital footprint that he left behind — former Marine, antigovernment radical, alpha male, life coach. But one has stood out for its peculiarity, that of “targeted individual.”
Louisiana investigators have yet to describe a motive for Mr. Long’s carefully planned ambush that left three law enforcement officers dead and three others injured on Sunday in Baton Rouge, La.
But Mr. Long, who was killed in the shootout, said in online posts and videos that he was a victim of a vast government conspiracy that watches and harasses everyday Americans.
Numbering in the thousands, the self-described targeted individuals, or T.I.s, say that they are being tortured with mind-control weapons and put under surveillance by armies of covert agents known as gang stalkers.
Mental health professionals say a large number of people involved in the discussions appear to suffer from psychotic illnesses such as delusional disorder or schizophrenia. In the past, they might have suffered alone, but the internet has allowed like-minded people to easily share their obsessions with strangers around the country.
In the wake of the shooting, websites, Facebook groups and conference calls for people who believe they have been targeted have lit up with discussions about Mr. Long, with several members saying they had correspondence with him. They voiced concerns that the attack could set their movement back. An overwhelming majority say they are as appalled by violence as anyone else.
According to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist propaganda, Mr. Long appeared to have latched on to much of the targeted individual belief system, with a fixation on law enforcement officials as his persecutors.
Mr. Long, who also went by the name Cosmo Setepenra online, said in a recent post that he had been watched day and night as a targeted individual for the past 11 years.
In a blog he maintained, he shared an article that asserted that gang-stalking would better be described as “police-gang-stalking” because “99% of all gang-stalking” is perpetrated by the police, SITE said in a report released on Monday.
In one of his recent podcasts, he talked about being closely monitored by Marine Corps superiors who singled him out. He served from 2005 to 2010.
“Once they knew that I was a man and I would stand on my rights, that nothing they could do could scare me, that’s when they knew, they really, really had to keep a close eye on me,” he said.
Mr. Long suggested that the government had “blacklisted” him from employment after his military service ended, and he said that it had instructed friends to stay away from him. “Essentially, basically, it’s isolation,” he says. “Because they don’t want that spirit of courage to spread. Because their whole gimmick is fear.”
In a comment on a conspiracy-minded website, he urged “fellow T.I.’s” to keep their beliefs to themselves. Assume everyone they know — friends and family included — was in on it, he said.
Those remarks set him apart from people who identify themselves as leaders of the movement. They have increasingly sought to publicize their plight as a legitimate human rights concern, creating awareness campaigns and lobbying for their causes in courts and legislatures.
Mental health professionals note that people suffering from psychosis often spiral into isolation and depression but rarely resort to violence.
Yet Mr. Long’s attack represented at least the third recent mass shooting to be associated with people who believed they were being targeted by a government conspiracy. Myron May, who in 2014 shot three people at Florida State University, left behind videos in which he meticulously described his experience of being gang-stalked. And many members of the movement believe that Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013, also identified as a targeted individual.
Mr. Long, who sought to reinvent himself as a wellness coach and a “freedom strategist” after leaving the military, at one point volunteered as an emotional support contact for other people who believed they were victims, according to the former leader of a T.I. group, Derrick Robinson.
He once described his plight by drawing an analogy to a slave plantation. “I’m the one that’s freeing slaves. So what do you think they would do to the person that’s freeing slaves from the plantation?” he told a podcast interviewer in May. “You don’t think that they would target and harass that individual?”
Asked by the host, Lance Scurvin, to respond to people’s skepticism, Mr. Long said, “You just can’t put nothing past this society.”
“If you study history, you know that they’ll do anything,” he said. “That’s just the power of evil.”
Even so, Mr. Long played down the fear and urged others to reject the label of “targeted individual.” He told Mr. Scurvin: “That’s just a small aspect of me. I can tell people about it, but it’s not a complete picture of who I am. I’m infinite. You are infinite.”
After the show, Mr. Long posted a comment on the podcast website listing “7 gold rules to surviving Organized Stalking.”
Several weeks later, Mr. Long’s social media remarks became increasingly hostile, the SITE Intelligence Group said. In a YouTube video posted on July 8, the day after a sniper killed police officers in Dallas, he disavowed connections with any group, asserting that his only affiliation was with the “spirit of justice.” He wrote a similar note that was posted on Mr. Scurvin’s Facebook page.
Nine days later, dressed all in black and armed with two high-powered guns, Mr. Long died in the shootout with police officers. It was his 29th birthday.