A police officer stands guard near one of the Mosques. ABC News/AFP.
A mass shooting in Christchurch New Zealand targeting Muslims ends with 49 people dead and more than a dozen wounded. ABC News. The gunman, who has not been officially identified, was armed with multiple long guns and wore tactical gear. He also had a camera and live-streamed the attack on the internet. The attacker also released a manifesto claiming a the attack was a reaction to white genocide and Islamic terror attacks. The footage and manifesto have spread wide and far on the internet despite efforts to censor them. The attack took place at two different mosques and additional people have been arrested though it is unclear at this time how they were involved. World leaders have condemned the attack as an obvious and despicable act of terrorism.
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My Comment:
A quick note. I'm not using this guys name for a couple of reasons. First, his name hasn't been released by the government of New Zealand, so I don't want to get anything wrong. Second, his name isn't really that important in the first place. Because of these concerns I won't be calling him by the name that has been widely spread on social and traditional media.
This attack will likely go down as one of better documented ones as the attacker left a wealth of evidence and motivation behind. Unlike the Las Vegas shooting there will be almost no doubt on how this attack happened and why it occurred. I have reviewed much of the evidence that was left behind. I have now seen the entire 17 minute video of the attack and read as much of the manifesto as I could stomach. I will not post either of them here, more due to fear of having my blog removed for violating the terms of service than moralistic reasons. The video and manifesto are widely available but most people won't want to see them but I think it would be helpful to summarize both. Obviously, the next few paragraphs are going to be fairly graphic and more sensitive people may want to skip them.
The video shows the attack on the 1st Mosque, the Masjid al Noor. The attacker is initially in his car listening to the "remove Kebab" song (more on that later, but it's a reference to a meme) and then arrives at the mosque. After readying his weapons he fires on the entrance with a shotgun, which he empties and throws away. He then closes in on the rest of the victims in the building and fires on them with some kind of semi-auto rifle (hard to tell but might be some kind of AR?).
At one point as he is reloading, a man charges at him and comes within inches of tackling or running past the attacker. This man actually managed to knock the attacker off of his feet but unfortunately he managed to shoot the brave man, obviously killing him. It just goes to show that even if you are in an impossible situation, you should always fight as this man came very close to saving multiple lives. Regardless of the politics and religious aspects of this attack, I hope that if I am ever in a situation like this if I display even half the courage the young Muslim man did I can die happy.
The attacker then reloads and keeps firing until his first rifle runs dry and he runs out of magazines. He returns to his car and gets another rifle, shooting at some pedestrians as well. He then goes back into the mosque and finishes of any survivors that he could find and then exits the building. He shoots and kills one more Muslim woman, who was begging for help, and runs over her body. He then fires through the windows of his car at other pedestrians and eventually the video cuts out.
As an aside, I do have to point out that magazine bans would have done nothing to stop this attack. The attacker had already taped his magazines together and it would have simply meant he would have had to tape three of them together instead of two. Reloading wasn't the problem for this guy, it was the fact that he was clumsy and stupid.
Years of watching the aftermath and commission of terror attacks, mostly for this blog, have left me fairly desensitized to this kind of thing. It still has an effect, but it also no longer shocks me to see people die like this. The main difference is the quality of the video and the fact that it spread so rapidly. It's sad to say that in the world we currently live in, I have seen worse things.
That being said, the attacker clearly took inspiration from ISIS and their high production value propaganda. Indeed, the only major difference was the fact that the person shooting the unarmed Muslim civilians was a that it was a white guy from Australia instead of ISIS.
Some analysis of the attack. First of all, though the guy had a plan he actually got very lucky. He mishandled his weapons pretty badly and ended up dropping his spare magazines and having several jams as a result. He was running back and forth looking for the ones he dropped and he almost was stopped because of it. Though people are saying he looked professional, watching the entire video tells me he was actually very nervous and may have been stopped if more people had been willing and/or able to attack him
He was also extremely lucky that the police response time wasn't faster. The only police presence I detected was sirens in the distance after he had already fled. The actual attack probably didn't last more than a few minutes (I could of course count it up, but I have no desire to watch the video again), but it was more than enough time for him to kill dozens of people. Had there been anyone armed there, they might have been able to stop this attack much quicker. Indeed, there have been rumors that one of the people arrested was an innocent Muslim man who returned fire against the attacker. How true that is remains to be seen, but I do hope that it is correct and not fake news.
As for this guys politics, if the social media accounts are legit, and they almost have to be at this point, he was some kind of hybrid far-right and far-left extremist. We are talking way out there on the fringes. He described himself as an ecofacsit which is a term that makes very little sense to me. His manifesto was all over the place and included some VERY obvious trolling, so it's hard to be sure what is real and what is fake. He's also pretty clearly an explicit and obvious white nationalist and a racist, and not just being slandered as one (he even points that out in his manifesto which is funny in an extremely dark and disturbing way).
He did do some things that were pretty obviously made to make certain people look bad. He started the video by saying people should subscribe to Pewdiepie, a youtuber that is extremely popular and is often (unfairly) called a racist. He also said he was radicalized by Candice Owen, the leader of the Blexit movement in the United States of America. Neither of those people would agree with what the attacker did and it seemed like a very obvious attempt to discredit them. He also said that the video game Spyro 3, a children's platformer game, radicalized him as well, which is obviously a complete and total lie. Indeed, it looks like an obvious attempt to mess with just about everyone.
Why would he do that? If there was one theme I found in the manifesto besides the white genocide stuff it was the idea of accelerationism. This is a belief common on the fringes that the best way to change things for the better long term is to change them for the worse in the short term. Make things so bad that there is not choice but for people to rise up and fight and overthrow the system in favor of... well whatever the hell ecofacism is.
Essentially the attacker's goal, as outlined by the manifesto, was to incite left wingers in the United States to crack down further on gun rights and free speech so that the right would end up having to revolt. In his mind that would lead to a civil war that would secure the future for white people. How such a conflict would help white people when it would kill millions of them is beyond me. And why he would think that it would be his obscure ideology that would emerge victorious from that war is also a mystery.
I also want to point out the just complete absurdity of this. An Australian citizen visits Europe and gets pissed off about terror attacks and all the immigration. He then plots an attack on New Zealand, which has a tiny Muslim population, in order to affect the politics of yet another country, the United States, in order to start a war. It's all completely insane.
But the worst part? It actually makes quite a bit of sense. Already people are spouting off on twitter and attacking the people named in the video and manifesto. Already there are calls for gun control and censorship. And it seems very clear that he did successfully splash a huge amount of gasoline onto a culture war inferno that was already out of control. He's sitting in a jail cell right now knowing for sure that he's at least getting some of what he wants. And that is more Facebook and Twitter drama, more people spouting off hatred and more people being convinced that it's just not possible to live with each other anymore.
That being said, it also seems pretty clear that the attacker did in fact hate Muslims, despite saying otherwise in the manifesto. He himself claims he was motivated by the massive wave of terror attacks that hit Europe in the past few years as well as the various sex scandals involving Muslims as well. And it's very clear that he wants Muslims in Muslim lands, not in Europe or other white areas of the world.
This is what I had always feared when it comes to terrorism. I have long predicted that there was going to be blowback from the wave of terrorism that struck Europe and here it is. And I also said that immigration, and opposition to immigration, would be one of the most important things happening in the early 21st century and beyond. Reprisals were inevitable after the horrific and deadly attacks in Paris, Nice, London and Stockholm. The Stockholm attack, specifically the death of Ebba Åkerlund, an 11 year old girl, was stated to be the attackers final straw. Given how horrible that little girls death was, and how controversial it became to even mention her, it's not surprising that it would incite something like this. That's not a defense mind you, but once you cross the line into killing children people will want revenge, even if it's against totally innocent people that had nothing to do with it.
The great fear is now we may be locked into a cycle of revenge. This attack will likely (and totally understandably, these people were worshiping) outrage Muslims and may convince a few that they should be radical as well. In return, they may launch new attacks which will radicalize non-Muslims and soon everyone is killing everyone. That was this attackers goal and it was of course ISIS's goal as well. If people don't find away to break this cycle then the world is going to be heading to some very dark places very soon. I have been saying for years that the culture war has a risk of turning into a real one and there is a real chance that this could be the first shots. I'd love to find a way to pump the breaks on the culture war but I'm at a total loss here and if there is anything I have taken away from this even it is this. We are in some serious trouble if we don't find a way to avert the cycle of revenge...
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this attacker seems to be knee deep into chan culture and memes. Much of the music he played during his attack (itself a surreal thing) was related to 4chan and 8chan memes. These references will likely go over the head of people outside of chan culture but for people with a passing familiarity, it's extremely obvious he's part of that culture.
A quick perusal of 4chan's /pol/ board shows that they are freaking out about it. It's an absolute circus of trolls, people panicking over their rights, worried that everything will be shut down and furious that the attacker damaged right wing politics and various examples of the very nastiness that the attacker wanted to stir up. It's utter chaos and probably the most attention 4chan has gotten in years. /k/, 4chan's weapons board, is more calm but there are dozens of threads there as well, which makes sense as the "remove kebab" meme came from them first.
Does it actually mean anything though? I doubt it. I mean the guy also posted on Reddit, Twitter and Facebook and those places aren't going to be attacked for this. Plus he was attacking chan culture as much as any other right wing group when he committed this attack. Indeed, though the victims were mostly (all?) Muslims, it seems who he really hated was everyone on the right that didn't think the way he did. Don't get me wrong, he hated Muslims too, but to him they were nothing more than a means to an end. He likely hated chan culture for the same reason he hated all right wing groups. They aren't actually the right wing killers the left portrays them as. He wished that the actual conservatives had beliefs as vile and dangerous as the warped version that so many on the left think they are.
Indeed, if there is anything notable about this man is that he was essentially a nihilist. He said he wanted a future for white people but it's probably the biggest lie in his manifesto. He hated them just as much or even more then the immigrants he said they wouldn't fight. Though he said he wanted accelerationism, instead I just think he wanted to watch the world burn. And since he was captured alive, he may live to see his goal...
This will probably be my final word on this subject and I may even take a day or two off from blogging. I work overtime this weekend but even so, this post and the research I had to do to write it took a lot out of me. It may be good for my mental health to take a break and just do something else for awhile. It's never a good thing when I have to write a post like this and though I do feel writing about it is important, it doesn't mean I can't take some personal time with it...
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