Journalism of Courage
In the 74-page manifesto he left behind after gunning down 49 people who were attending Friday prayers in two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand, 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant talks about an “invasion” from India, along with China and Turkey, and defines the three countries as “potential nation enemies in the East”.
The manifesto, titled “The Great Replacement”, also stated that “the invaders must be removed from European soil, regardless from where they came or when they came. Roma, African, Indian, Turkish, Semitic or other. If they are not of our people, but live in our lands, they must be removed.”
From the shooter’s social media accounts and his 74-page manifesto published online before the attack, it appears that he was inspired by extreme right-wing ideologies that thrive on the Internet. He wanted to target immigrants for allegedly invading his soil and, like Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, he wrote a manifesto citing right wing personalities and military battles glorified by white nationalists.
The document was uploaded on a document cloud and social media and sheds light on Tarrant, an Australian who New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called a “terrorist”, the state of his radicalised mind and how he planned the attack.
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Page 63 of the manifesto states, “If we wait until the majority of the boomers begin to pass (between 2028-2038 depending on individual nations and life expectancies)than it will be too little, too late. As by this time the invaders and occupiers of lands, non-Europeans, numbers will be swollen to a staggering size, due to both mass immigration and the differing birthrates between the native European people and these invaders.”
“Also, relying on this time period for our victory holds a second major disadvantage, that being vulnerability to foreign invasion,most likely from the east, specifically China;Turkey;India or some combination of the three. This time of possible instability will also be a at a time where our potential nation enemies in the East will be reaching their own zeniths of power. We must not be in a chaotic, life or death civil war at a time when our rival nations are at their peak of dominance. The risk is too great.”
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The manifesto details, in question and answer format, his plan and choice of mosques. He claims to have begun “planning an attack roughly two years in advance and an attack at the location in Christchurch three months in advance”.
The attacker said that “the best time to attack was yesterday, the next best time is today”, but does not mention reasons. “The attack was planned to allow enough time to train, form a plan, settle my affairs, write down my views, then enact the attack”.
About choosing New Zealand, he said that “New Zealand was not the original choice for attack, I only arrived to New Zealand to live temporarily whilst I planned and trained, but I soon found out that New Zealand was as target rich of an environment as anywhere else in the West.”
“Secondly, an attack in New Zealand would bring to attention the truth of the assault on our civilization, that nowhere in the world was safe, the invaders were in all of our lands, even in the remotest areas of the world and that there was nowhere left to go that was safe and free from mass immigration.”
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On choosing the two mosques, he claims that “originally the mosque in Dunedin was the main target”, “the Christchurch and Linwood mosques had far more invaders, in a more prominent and optically foreign building, with less students,more adults and a prior history of extremism. Attacking these mosques also allowed for an extra planned attack on the mosque in Ashburton, whilst I am unsure as of this time of writing whether I will reach that target, it was a bonus objective.”
According to the manifesto, he “chose firearms for the affect it would have on social discourse, the extra media coverage they would provide and the affect it could have on the politics of United states and thereby the political situation of the world.”
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He also said that he could have chosen any weapons or means, and counted as available an explosives-filled truck or plane attacks. “I had the will and I had the resources”, he said.
