What the Christchurch Killer’s Manifesto Tells Us About the Radicalization of White Men
The Australian terrorist who just murdered 50 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand would like for you to know that he considers himself “ordinary.”
“Who are you?” Brenton Tarrant asks himself in the mock interview portion of his 74-page manifesto. “Just a ordinary White man, 28 years old.” He then goes on to describe his upbringing: “I am just a regular White man, from a regular family.” His parents, we are told, “are of Scottish, Irish and English stock.”
But “ordinary” white men don’t enter houses of worship and open fire on unarmed people, while using a helmet camera to live-stream the act on social media like they’re in some kind of first-person shooter. Or do they?
In the United States, mass shootings are basically an everyday phenomenon. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there has only been one calendar week since 2013 without a mass shooting. Hate crimes, too, are on the rise.
There is always a risk of amplifying hateful ideologies by drawing attention to them, and yet leaving them unanalyzed and unchallenged poses a different kind of risk. We are powerless to counter what we do not understand, and Tarrant’s manifesto is loaded with clues about the dynamics of 21st century internet…
