After New Zealand Shooting, Far-right, Racists Claim Victimhood, Hail Killer as Hero
Andrew Anglin found humor in the livestreamed video of a man in New Zealand storming into the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, then shooting and killing 49 people.
Anglin, who runs the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, noted that a video of the shooting was being taken down almost as fast as people could put it up.
鈥淭hat being said, of the mass shootings I have seen this is by far the funniest one of them all,鈥 Anglin wrote Friday morning, just hours after the mass killings. He continued:
This dude is already a folk hero to so many, and we have to agree that what he did was indisputably heroic in the classical sense. It is not an uncommon thing for heroes to act foolishly. The odds are people are going to crowdfund statues and memorials in honor of this guy. This dude is funny and joking around, which makes him seem far more funny and personable than the death cult invaders that he is slaughtering.
The shootings come at a high tide of global anti-Muslim sentiment. In the U.S., President Donald Trump鈥檚 鈥淢uslim Ban鈥 barring people from seven majority-Muslim countries from immigrating sparked fierce political debate. And far-right candidates and parties around the globe regularly demonize Muslims for political gain.
As the horror of the killings spread across the world, on the far right, reactions were a mix of celebration, victimhood and warnings that events such as these are the first steps toward a race war.
The responses were typical of the racist right, when a white attacker kills Muslims or other people of color: ugly, self-pitying and showing very little regard for the victims.
A silent gunman
The gunman livestreaming the attack from a head-mounted camera said he was a 28-year-old Australian called Brenton Tarrant. The footage showed him firing indiscriminately at men, women and children from close range inside the Al Noor mosque.
鈥淩emember, lads! Subscribe to PewDiePie,鈥 Tarrant said 颅颅颅鈥 in reference to a controversial Swedish YouTube star popular among the racist 鈥渁lt-right鈥 颅鈥 before driving to the mosque.
His guns and equipment were marked in white with white supremacist slogans, including the 鈥14 Words鈥 that are a common refrain among the far right and racist communities听补苍诲 were first coined by American white nationalist David Lane.
Footage filmed by the gunman at the Al Noor mosque showed him driving up to the front door, before taking weapons from his car, entering the mosque and firing at people inside.
On the video, Tarrant鈥檚 voice is rarely heard. He鈥檚 mostly present as hands holding a gun and pulling the trigger, with some heavy breathing in the background. After shooting multiple people at the mosque, Tarrant went outside and began firing down the street.
At one point in the video, a woman lying in the street after being shot can be heard yelling, 鈥淗elp me!鈥 before Tarrant shoots her several more times. The attacker ran over her with his car as he fled the scene.
Almost 15 minutes into the video, Tarrant is seen driving. He says: 鈥淚t鈥檚 time for the fuel. Let鈥檚 burn these f------ mosques to the ground,鈥 and 鈥淭here wasn鈥檛 really time to aim because there were so many targets.鈥
Tarrant also fired a shotgun through his windshield at someone and moments later blew out his passenger-side window with a shotgun blast aimed at a pedestrian.
Before the attack,聽Tarrant posted a 73-page manifesto titled 鈥淭he Great Replacement鈥 outlining his intentions and espousing far right and anti-immigrant ideology.
A celebration of optics
In typical fashion, Anglin stopped just short of openly applauding the shooter in posts on the Daily Stormer.
"Listen: no one gives a f--- about Moslems. These people kill us every day, they kidnap our girls, they overcome our countries and riot in the streets, and normal people are laughing their asses off that for once in history someone actually gave back what we鈥檝e been getting,鈥 Anglin wrote. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 support this attack, obviously 鈥 I am a man of peace. But it sure as hell wasn鈥檛 bad optics."
Andrew Auernheimer, a neo-Nazi and white supremacist hacker who goes by 鈥渨eev,鈥 echoed those sentiments.
鈥淓ven though it is bad behavior, it definitely feels really f------ good to watch,鈥 Weev posted Thursday night on the Daily Stormer.
A poster called 鈥淭heKidsAreAltRight鈥 also took to the Daily Stormer to validate the shooting.
鈥淚 think my thirst for vengeance has officially surpassed my fear of repercussions when it comes to events like this,鈥 he wrote. 鈥淚鈥檓 not endorsing violence, but when it happens to our enemies I鈥檝e reached the point where I can鈥檛 muster a single f--- to give.鈥
In the incel community, where men blame their lack of sex or relationships on women, 鈥淐ope With The Rope鈥 described himself as a 鈥渇----- person鈥
鈥淚 love bloodshed and seeing people suffer,鈥 he wrote.
鈥淚 think we can see two different strategies at play from Breivik and Tarrant,鈥 a commenter going by 鈥淧sychopathic Anime Nazi鈥 wrote on the Daily Stormer, referring to Anders Behring Breivik, a far-right terrorist in Norway who killed 77 people in 2011. 鈥淏reivik did the big brain targeted elimination of traitors in the making. Tarrant attacks people anyone can recognize as invaders. It seems like the public is finding Tarrant more palatable than Breivik.鈥
Self-pity and a war
In the hours after the deaths in New Zealand, the names of right-wing shooters returned to news stories: Dylann Storm Roof in Charleston, South Carolina, Robert Bowers in Pittsburgh听补苍诲 Breivik.
Those names and that of Tarrant prompted not self-reflection on the far right, but self-pity and victimhood.
鈥淐an you imagine always being blamed for things that you have absolutely no control over? Can you imagine always being asked to apologize for these things?鈥 Mike Peinovich, a white nationalist and antisemitic podcaster, wrote on Twitter. 鈥淐an you imagine being hated whether or not you do apologize? This is what being a White person in America today feels like.鈥
Since the beginning of the recent wave of far-right killings that began in 2014 with Elliot Rodger鈥檚 murderous rampage through Isla Vista, California, the movement has been actively trying to rationalize acts of mass violence inspired by white supremacist ideology.
In his manifesto, Roof wrote that the nine murders he committed in a Charleston church in 2015 were inspired by information he read on the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC)聽website about an apparently rampant but underreported black-on-white crime problem. Jared Taylor, acting as the CCC鈥檚 spokesman, said that the website simply 鈥渆ducated [Roof]. Our site told him the truth about interracial crime. What he then decided to do with that truth is absolutely not our responsibility.鈥
鈥淚f there were awareness of the proportion of black-on-white crime, if this were considered a problem that people agonized over,鈥 Taylor said in an interview with the Austin American-Statesman, 鈥減erhaps this guy would not have killed people.鈥
In response to more recent attacks, voices within the radical right have doubled down on their efforts to shift the blame away from their own hateful ideology. Violence, they claim, is inevitable in multicultural societies. 鈥淵es, [Robert] Bowers did something evil and stupid,鈥 white nationalist Greg Johnson聽wrote after the 2018 shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue left 11 people dead. 鈥淏ut Bowers鈥 underlying motive 鈥 fear of white race replacement 鈥 is not irrational or insane. It is a healthy reaction to objective facts.鈥
Johnson called Bowers and others like him 鈥渃anaries in a coal mine鈥 鈥 harbingers of what is to come if we continue to live in racially heterogeneous societies. Pittsburgh marked a moment when leaders in the radical right appeared less interested in disavowing violence than they were in justifying it.
On Gab, Bowers communicated with several far-right figures, including Bradley Dean Griffin, who runs the Occidental Dissent website and posts as 鈥淗unter Wallace.鈥
Griffin, in the hours after the shootings, said whites need to 鈥渟teer clear of these people and violent, nihilistic, self-destructive behavior,鈥 because it will push for more calls to punish the far right.
鈥淭he bloodshed in New Zealand will simply be used to further demonize Whites, deplatform pro-White voices from social media and fuel the push for gun control,鈥 Griffin wrote Friday morning. 鈥淚t will be used as fodder to further stigmatize nationalism and prop up multiculturalism.鈥
Racist 鈥渁lt-right鈥 commentator Stefan Molyneux聽took to Twitter on Friday to distance the movement from Tarrant.
鈥淭he NZ shooter hated Conservatism. He called himself an 鈥榚co-fascist.鈥 His favourite government was Communist China,鈥 Molyneux wrote. 鈥淗e claimed to be as equally Left as he was Right. Please do some research before polarizing this horror.鈥
Some, though, saw the shooting as the latest volley in the prelude to a violent race war.
A user calling himself 鈥淲oodkerne鈥 posted on the neo-Nazi site Stormfront聽on Friday morning that elections and politics will mask what is happening temporarily, but a 鈥渞acial war is inevitable.鈥
鈥淭his will become the norm through our homelands. Some will say this is terrible and harms our cause. 鈥 Only violence and bloodshed will solve our problems in the long run,鈥 Woodkerne wrote. 鈥淭he satanic hordes have been very active in these early stages of this war. When the awoken and enraged white man takes the stage we will clear them all out. THE FIRE RISES 14.鈥
鈥淢ovnforward,鈥 who posted to Gab, the far-right social media channel popular with racists and neo-Nazis, said on Friday that the coming war will leave people with 鈥渘o pleasant meadow鈥 in which to rest and wait for everything to end.
鈥淒o not expect to survive, the only thing you should expect is a true war and to die the death of a true soldier. EXPECT A SOLDIERS FIGHT AND A SOLDIERS DEATH,鈥 Movnforward wrote. 鈥淵ou will find no reprieve, not in Iceland, not in Poland, not in New Zealand, not in Argentina, not in Ukraine, not anywhere in the world. I know because I have been there.鈥
Photo illustration by 人兽性交
