Brenton Tarrant’s manifesto: the delusions of a white supremacist

What he wanted, more than anything, was to turn his world white. Not the entire world, just the world that the Australian gunman behind the Christchurch mosque massacre frequented.

What he wanted, more than anything, was to turn his world white. Not the entire world, just the world that Brenton Tarrant frequented. Like many white supremacists, they are happy if people of colour and non-Christian religions continue to exist — so long as it’s back ‘where they come from’.

Tarrant’s “Great Replacement Manifesto”, written two weeks before the Christchurch attack and designed to be read in the aftermath, runs to 73 pages and is a study in intolerance, hatred and the profound overriding fear that whites are facing “genocide”.

Disturbingly, it is also a document of the utmost single-minded clarity.

“Mass immigration will disenfranchise us, subvert our nations, destroy our communities, destroy our ethnic binds, destroy our cultures, destroy our people,” Tarrant wrote. “We must crush immigration and deport those invaders living on our soil. It’s not just a matter of prosperity, but the very survival of our people.”

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Facebook image of Brenton Tarrant. Picture: Supplied

Twitter images posted by shooter Brenton Tarrant display ancient Nordic runic sun god symbols co-opted by modern white supremacist groups.

Describing himself as “an ordinary White man”, aged 28, born in Australia to a low-income working-class family, Tarrant says he did not attend university, invested in cryptocurrency and worked as a part-time “kebab removalist”, which sounds like a sinister joke that may imply he has harmed other Muslims.

Addressing the question of why Christchurch happened, Tarrant is clear: to terrify Muslims from shifting to Western shores; and to incite violence and retribution by Muslims against Western nations for what he did, thus embedding ever deeper the existing frictions.

#ChristChurch Terrorist attacker wore body armor/Ammo vest with White Supremicist “Black Sun/Sonnenrad (SunWheel)” symbol patch. It is a runic symbol & to some signifies the perpetual swastika. These flags & symbols are sold on StormFront chat rooms & @Ebay pic.twitter.com/TqHt8wNMgz

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) March 15, 2019

Tarrant said the massacre was also to avenge Ebba Akerlund, aged 12, who was run down in Sweden in 2017 by an Uzbek man who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State.

Another intention, he said, was to further the divide between those who would weaken Second Amendment gun laws in the US and those fighting for the right to bear arms. This, he said, would cause the “balkanization” of the US along “political, cultural and most importantly, racial lines”.

Again, showing detailed knowledge of modern history, albeit with a twisted and self-serving interpretation, Tarrant wrote how if the US became fractured, it together with NATO could never again do what they did in Kosovo: fight alongside Muslims against those Christians “attempting to remove these Islamic occupiers from Europe”.

Ammunition magazines and equipment carried by Tarrant was festooned with the names of murderers of Muslims from Europe and North America, as well as historical generals and admirals who fought Muslim nations in past centuries. Picture: Twitter

This is not a young man trying to solve a local problem. Far from it, the delusion is so grandiose that he sees himself changing the world. And, unfortunately, he has transformed a small and peaceful New Zealand city into the world’s terror-central — at least for now.

Tarrant’s writing features language often heard among young men who gather in groups on weekends across Australia for intense discussions on the collapse of Western society at the cost of the supposed Muslim invaders, who produce too many babies and will drown us out.

These young men, like Tarrant, have detailed knowledge of the politics and the wars of the world. The knowledge quickly transforms into hard-boiled strictures of hatred, where anyone who disagrees is seen as weak and disengaged.

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One group I met in a Victorian pub several years ago were most despondent that Australians were ignorant to the invasion in their midst. Tarrant likewise describes his fellow Australians as “apathetic”, showing interest only in “animal rights, environmentalism and taxation”.

He decided to awaken himself while travelling in Europe at the time Ebba Akerlund was murdered. “These were attacks on my people, attacks on my culture, attacks on my faith, and attacks on my soul,” he wrote. “They would not be ignored.”

Guns, bags and fuel containers found inside one of the Christchurch attacker’s vehicles.

Likewise, the concurrent French general election won by an “internationalist, globalist, anti-white ex-banker” (Emmanuel Macron) caused him grief. “Despair set in. My belief in a democratic solution vanished.”

He described sitting in a car watching “invaders” entering shopping centres and outnumbering (in his view) the local French people. He hatred grew and he was becoming extremely dangerous though, by his own account, was not a member of any neo-nationalist group, which might explain how he avoided detection.

He did claim to have received a blessing for the attack from the “reborn Knights Templar”, to which Anders Breivik — whose 2011 Norway attacks killed 77 people — also claimed allegiance. To Tarrant, Breivik was his “true inspiration”.

He chose New Zealand, he said, because though only living their temporarily soon found it was as “target rich an environment as anywhere else in the West”.

Consistent with the message of all white supremacists, Tarrant said he did not hate Muslims living in their homelands, but those living “on our soil”.

Tarrant leaves almost no question unanswered in his astonishing manifesto, so loaded with self-importance he believes it will serve as a bible to others.

Is he racist? Yes. Did he believe he might have killed innocents? There are no innocents among those who colonise another’s land. Was the attack Islamophobic? Yes. Did he intend to kill police? No. Are you a neo-Nazi? Doesn’t think so. A terrorist? Yes.

He allows no place for people of different colours and faith to share the same suburban block. It’s us and them. That’s what Tarrant’s despicable stand was all about.

It is a sorry document and the question is: can you learn anything from reading it? Not about history, not about civilisation, nor about humanity, but certainly everything that ever needs to be said about Tarrant.