How was the "shooter on the extreme right" story born?
On Saturday evening, a few hours after the massacre in Krakow, Interior Minister Marcin Kirwinski told reporters "everything indicates that" the woman was fascinated by far-right ideologies. In the same breath, he admitted that this was a "rough initial analysis" that still needed to be verified. The search at the shooter's house is still ongoing, and the police said an hour earlier that the motive is unknown.
This warning did not survive the news cycle. By Sunday, NBC reported that the shooting was "motivated by far-right views, authorities say," with CNN, France 24 and others framing it the same way. All this stems from the one unverified comment.
So what is actually known about Michal O.?
His Facebook accounts were removed after the attack, so the public cannot verify Kirwinski's claim. But screenshots circulated before they disappeared show nothing resembling Polish nationalism: a mugshot profile picture of Pope John Paul II with a beer, a joke mocking Jesus and a picture of him in a gas mask holding a rainbow flag. In a country where the nationalist right is deeply Catholic, it's a strange fit.
Former classmates describe something completely different. They say he drew wars, put figures and school bombings in his notebooks, and they used to joke that he would kill someone one day. Neighbors describe a withdrawn young man who hardly spoke and walked around wearing a mask.
Before going to Krakow, he shot dead his parents and his 21-year-old sister, a painting student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. An unconfirmed claim in X says that his father was active in a small right-wing party. If this is true, Ben Mardan turning away his right-hand father would fit the evidence at least as well as the government's version.
None of this proves what motivated him. Prosecutors have opened a terrorism case, and he has not yet been questioned because of his injuries.