Alleged Australian Christchurch mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant’s roots
Brenton Tarrant has been described as a shy, yet friendly, young man. So what went so horribly wrong that he would shoot up innocent people at a Christchurch mosque?
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Deranged Brenton Tarrant lost direction in life after his father Rodney, a fiercely competitive marathon runner, died from cancer in 2010.
He embarked on a world tour for several years soon afterwards, telling his family he needed time to himself.
He boasted to anyone who would listen he was “top of the class in marines”, a “sniper” a “kebab seller” and in the “US armed forces.”
Tarrant travelled more frequently in the last two years on what he boasted were reconnaissance trips to mosques, working out which to target, according to a detailed manifesto he wrote spelling out sickening reasons for the mass Christchurch executions.
He even planned his own demise online: “Goodbye, God bless you all and I will see you in Valhalla.”
One friend said Tarrant was obsessed with TV series Vikings, watching for hours repeats.
Australian police are now probing his background to piece together what triggered Tarrant, a shy, yet friendly, young man born in Great Marlow near Grafton, to become an angry extremist intent on wiping out non “white” cultures.
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Tarrant grew up in a small weatherboard home on Morrison St, Grafton where neighbours were horrified to see his familiar face appear on news coverage of the attack.
“I’ve known him since he was a baby,” a woman who was his neighbour at Morrison St, said.
“He was a good kid, a normal, happy kid.
“I’m just in shock.”
The Tarrant family moved out of the home 10 years ago.
His mother Sharon, an English teacher at Maclean High school, would admit to friends that growing up her son struggled to integrate with pupils at Grafton High while his more outgoing sister thrived.
Tarrant’s father was only 49 when he passed away.
An obituary published in Grafton’s Daily Examiner newspaper described Rodney as “a dedicated family man” and “competitive athlete”.
A neighbour in Morrison St, Grafton, where he grew up, recalls an affable young man who was “friendly enough but very quiet.”
“He always said hello but he would never look you in the eye, he always walked with his head down,” said Mr Fuller, who asked not to give his first name.
Tarrant worked for several years as a personal trainer at a gym in Grafton before leaving to travel the world.
His former boss Tracey Gray said she was in shock after learning he was the gunman.
“He never showed any political, extremist, religious or racist views,” she said.
“There wasn’t anything he did that was out of the ordinary, no weird sort of conversations we had, certainly not to the extent that I thought ‘ew’.”
She described Tarrant as hard-working and approachable and said he was passionate about personal training and running group fitness classes.
He decided to travel and “left on good terms” about six years ago, she said.
“I think in the years he has travelled, his experiences or something, someone’s got to his head.”
Ms Gray said everyone in Grafton was “absolutely shocked”.
“I’m a New Zealander myself, I’ve got family in Christchurch. It’s horrific. There are so many victims who’ve lost their lives, families have lost loved ones. You can’t imagine it’s someone who worked for you at one point in time.”
In October 2018 Tarrant pasted a bragging Facebook account of his visit to Pakistan in which he is claimed to ingratiate himself with the locals writing: “Pakistan is an incredible place filled with the most earnest, kind hearted and hospitable people in the world, and the beauty of hunza and nagar valley in autumn cannot be beat (sic).”
But in his manifesto, he claims he wishes different people of their world all the best regardless of their ethnicity, race, culture of faith — but adds, “if they seek to come to my peoples lands, replace my people, subjugate my people, make war upon on my people, when I shall be forced to fight them, and hold nothing in reserve”.
A supporter of Donald Trump and “renewed white identity” then justifies killing children. “Children of invaders do not stay children, they become adults and reproduce, creating more invaders to replace your people,” he writes.
By his own admission he was an “ordinary white” Australian from a working-class family, with a regular childhood — but he claims dropping birthrates and fertility levels in “white nations” was allowing for “ethnic replacement” by immigrants, labelling it “white genocide”.
The Black Sun symbol is reproduced within the manifesto, a symbol employed by neo-Nazis and used by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS in Nazi Germany and one of the key architects of the Holocaust.
Tarrant describes himself as a “nationalist” right-winger who carried out his terrifying attack in his own name with no direct influencers but it was that holiday that changed his views.
To the question of why he targeted Christchurch, he writes: “They were an obvious, visible and large group of invaders, from a culture with higher fertility rates, higher social trust and strong, robust traditions that seek to occupy my people’s lands and ethnically replace my own people.”
A murdered Swedish deaf girl, a car tour across Western Europe and the election of French President Emmanuel Macron have also been cited by Tarrant’s motivation for his “revenge” slayings massacre in Christchurch.
Critically, he said his target was not to be in New Zealand where he went to prepare for a slaughter but decided three months ago it was as representative of the West as any other city in Australia or elsewhere.
But hours before his horrific action the 28-year-old Tarrant took to social media to appeal in a short message to others to watch his live stream of his carrying out an “attack against the invaders”.
“If I dont survive the attack, goodbye, godbless and I will see you all in Valhalla,” he wrote before providing a link to his writings.
In one 73-page document he posted prior to what he described as his “racist” “anti-immigration” rampage, Tarrant raves about birthrates and migration and what he saw as “white genocide” with the decline of fertility rates by Europeans.
It was this one-month long trip in April-May 2017 to Spain, Portugal and France that he cites as raising his anger to the point he felt he had to do something about it.
He described himself as a “nationalist”, right wing who carried out his acts in his own name with no direct influencers but it was that holiday that changed his views.
During this time there was a terror attack in Stockholm where an Uzbek asylum seeker hijacked a truck and drove it into crowds on a shopping trip killing five people including 11-year-old Ebba Akerland who was walking home from school when she was struck and killed.
“Young, innocent and dead Ebba,” Tarrant wrote.
“Ebba death at the hands of the invaders, the indignity of her violent demise and my inability to stop it broke through my own jaded cynicism like a sledgehammer. I could no longer ignore the attacks.”
He said the second event behind his actions was the French General election where he was in despair at the election of Macron who he described as a “globalist, anti-white ex-banker”.
He added driving through the French towns and cities he saw first-hand immigration whom he described as invaders outnumbering other locals.
At a World War I cemetery in front of hundreds of crosses he concluded: “It was there I decided to do something, it was there I decided to take action, to commit to force, to commit to violence to take the fight to the invaders myself.”
He claimed before he went on his spree he contacted reborn Knights Templar for a blessing. He wrote he did not do it for fame, he represents no political or social group and he left it two years so as he could train and prepare and settle his affairs.
He said it was nothing against foreigners necessarily as he had travelled widely and was greeted by warmth from various nations but he saw them in the West as invaders.
His writings also aimed to incite including attacks on people like London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
- additional reporting Josh Fagan
Originally published as Alleged Australian Christchurch mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant’s roots
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