CHRISTCHURCH - The alleged shooter in the New Zealand mosque massacre was a globe-trotting young Australian and avowed racist who immersed himself in an Internet subculture of extreme anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, white supremacist ideology.
The video showed unspeakable slaughter as the shooter moved through the house of worship, saying nothing, shooting as many people as he could. He visited Pakistan and North Korea, where he was photographed in a group tour of a national monument. The weapons the shooter carried were covered with the names of men who murdered Jews and Muslims in Europe.
More than perhaps any other mass shooter in recent times, the author of this manifesto spells out the roots of his extremism in detail. In the manifesto, the line between self-revelation and trolling is never straight."From where did you receive/research/develop your beliefs?" he asks.His world view seems cobbled together from scraps he found on the web, and other details about his life indicate that he was deeply involved in online subcultures that attract extremists of various sorts.
But Tarrant also mentioned in social media posts that he had been living off money he inherited after his father, Rodney, who worked as a garbageman and was a competitive triathlete, died in 2010.He said in the manifesto that his was a"working class, low income family". But unlike some recent mass shooters who sought to become famous, Tarrant claimed that he expected to"be forgotten quickly. Which I do not mind."Once again, the shooter wore tactical gear, adopting the identity of what academic researchers call a pseudo-commando.