Jane Coaston, writing in Vox, argues that there is a clear connection in the language used on the part of the Christchurch mass murderer, on the one hand, and "white nationalist" writings around the world.
An argument has been made that because the mass murderer endorsed Communist China, something other than white nationalism must be at play. Coaston argues that this is not the case, implying that the "shout out" to Communist China in his manifesto is a distraction from his central themes.
Here is the shortened version of Coaston's piece which takes a wider, contextual view of what Brenton Tarrant has written in his so-called Manifesto:
There is a lot we don’t yet know about what motivated the 28-year-old man charged with murder in a shooting that killed 50 people and injured at least 50 others in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
But his writings suggest that the white nationalist ideas behind violence and attempted violence in the United States and elsewhere influenced him deeply. The shooter reportedly left behind a 74-page manifesto. It’s the kind of document instigators of mass violence often write to inspire copycat attackers (which is why I chose not to link to it).
Still, the document is worth understanding in context. There are throughlines in the manifesto that are similar to the ideas described by other shooters or those who have attempted shootings in recent cases in the United States and around the world.
In February, a “white nationalist” Coast Guard lieutenant in Maryland was accused of planning attacks on members of the media and left-leaning politicians. (The attacks may have been stymied because of his web searches related to drugs and violent extremist acts.) The Christchurch shooter and the Coast Guard lieutenant used similar language, made similar references, and most disturbingly, revered the same people for their use of horrific violence in the furtherance of white nationalism.
A word on terrorist manifestos
The reason it’s important to both understand the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto and refuse to spread its contents without context is that a manifesto is a published and public declaration of intent or belief — and the critical term to remember is “public.” The Christchurch shooter wrote his manifesto with the clear intention of it being shared widely after he committed an act of mass murder.
That means that historically, terrorist manifestos have never been accurate documentation of either their belief system or the planning that went into their attacks. The main intention of terrorist manifestos is not to help everyday people understand how they became terrorists — it is to create new terrorists.
In this particular manifesto, the author is not attempting to provide a fully factual history of himself or his reasoning behind his actions. Much of the first 10 pages of the manifesto are the shooter responding to questions he’s posing to himself about who he is (“just an ordinary White man” and why he decided to kill (“to show the invaders that our lands will never be their lands, our homelands are our own and that, as long as a white man still lives, they will NEVER conquer our lands”). The manifesto intersperses details about why the shooter targeted New Zealand with self-aggrandizing rhetoric about the shooter’s own personal bravery. . . .
Manifestos aren’t honest. Manifestos are for mass consumption.
But that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful for people who study terrorist movements, particularly white nationalism. Rather, connections between manifestos and the terrorists who write them — what they say, how they say it, and who they mention — tell us about the international flow of white nationalist ideology.
The common language of white nationalism and white supremacy
Modern white nationalism has a common history and a common language that transcends borders. The Christchurch shooter’s manifesto uses it, as do others who have either committed or attempted to commit mass violence in the name of white nationalism.
While it has its own American history, white nationalism is an inherently global movement. As researcher J.M. Berger detailed in a paper on the impact of the white nationalist screed The Turner Diaries on the movement:
And the Christchurch shooter notes this in his manifesto, describing himself as European by blood because Australia is “simply an off-shoot of the European people” right alongside his discussions of eco-fascism. The Coast Guard lieutenant who planned to kill politicians and media personalities felt very much the same. In a deleted email recovered from his computer, he wrote:
It is clear that the author is not thinking of himself as an American citizen but as a white person, united with all other white people against everyone else.
On Friday morning, I spoke with Kathleen Belew, a University of Chicago historian and author of Bring the War Home, which traces the white supremacist movement’s relationship with the Vietnam War. She told me about how white nationalist groups like Aryan Nations sent their materials around the world, and how groups like Wotansvolk and the World Church of the Creator set up chapters in dozens of countries — mainly those with large white populations, including Canada, France, and yes, New Zealand.
“As you can see,” Belew said, “these places map on to an idea of whiteness that transcends national boundaries, which is part of why I argue for calling this “white power” rather than white nationalism. The nation in white nationalism is the Aryan nation, not the US or New Zealand.” [Emphasis, ours]
She added, “Scholars have documented how these flows took materials, propaganda, training, language, and weapons to other countries, often those, like New Zealand, considered by the movement to be part of a white world that could be salvaged from racial others.”
The common language of white nationalism is rife throughout the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto. For example, alongside Nazi imagery, the Christchurch shooter made frequent reference to the concept of “white genocide,” writing of immigration as an “assault on the European people” and adding, “This is ethnic replacement. This is cultural replacement. This is racial replacement. This is WHITE GENOCIDE.”
The concept of “white genocide” — the idea that nonwhite immigration or mixed-race relationships that result in multiracial children poses an existential, genocidal threat to white people around the world — was coined by an American white supremacist named David Lane. As I wrote last year:
The 14 words? Also of apparent importance to the Christchurch shooter, who recites them in his manifesto and reportedly posted images of a gun with the number 14 drawn on it on Twitter.
David Lane was himself inspired by William Pierce, an American white supremacist and author of The Turner Diaries, a book that has become a white nationalist staple since its publication in 1978. (Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 168 people in April 1994 in Oklahoma City by bombing a federal building, was a huge fan.)
And The Turner Diaries was also allegedly part of the inspiration for Anders Breivik, who murdered more than 75 people, mostly teenagers, in a series of terror attacks in Oslo, Norway in 2011. Breivik also wrote a manifesto to “explain” his actions, a document that stretches more than 1,500 pages. Parts of it are extremely similar to passages from the Diaries (while also citing Kaczynski’s manifesto as well). And now, Breivik has become an inspirational figure himself, with his name reportedly cited by both the Christchurch shooter and the Maryland Coast Guard lieutenant.
The Maryland Coast Guard lieutenant reportedly used Breivik’s manifesto as a guide to help plan his attack on political figures and media members, even using Breivik’s classification system to determine his “priority targets,” in Breivik’s terms. And in the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto, he describes Breivik (or as he writes, “Knight Justiciar Breivik,” most likely an elaborate joke aimed at his friends on 8Chan and Reddit) as a figure taking a stand against “ethnic and cultural genocide.” Another person listed as an inspiration in the manifesto: Dylann Roof, an American white supremacist who murdered eight black people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015 and has now become a sainted figure in some right-wing circles.
The role of America, and America’s racial past
America has a central role in the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto. He claims he used guns to stir up America’s debate over gun rights versus safety in hopes of dividing the country over racial and cultural lines, writing, “This balkanization of the US will not only result in the racial separation of the people within the United States ensuring the future of the White race on the North American continent, but also ensuring the death of the ‘melting pot’ pipe dream.” (He also expresses some anger about the United States’ involvement in the 1990s war in Yugoslavia.)
In general white nationalist rhetoric, Europe is “lost” in racial terms because of nonwhite immigration and low birthrates among white Europeans across the continent. But America — alongside New Zealand and Australia, to some within the movement — is viewed as perhaps the last hope for white nationalists to create an idealized “white homeland.” . . . .
The Christchurch shooter was seemingly influenced by dozens of other white nationalists before him, whose names and ideology created the common framing he and other committers of racist violence have continually used. And through his manifesto, the Christchurch shooter, like the Coast Guard lieutenant, hoped to do the same for someone else.
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