The New Zealand shooter’s manifesto, which will not be linked to here, is a mix of avowed white supremacist sentiment and suggested tactics to fellow extremists — including his declared intention to exploit racial, cultural, and political divisions in the U.S.
According to his manifesto, the shooter — who massacred civilians at two mosques in New Zealand’s city of Christchurch — appears to subscribe to a number of ideologies. The document is riddled with white nationalist talking points, and the shooter describes himself as a “fascist.” He also castigates Muslims as “the most despised group of invaders in the west.”
Yet elsewhere in the document, the shooter describes himself as a socialist, “depending on the definition.” The shooter also declares his support for “environmentalism,” “worker’s rights,” and “responsible markets.”
On the one hand, the manifesto presents the political left as an enemy that conducted a “march through the institutions” and describes Antifa, communists, and Marxists as “anti-white scum.” Elsewhere, the shooter writes that “under some definitions,” he is both on the right and the left.
Elsewhere, the shooter disparages conservatism and declines to identify with it, writing that “conservatism is dead, thank god,” and calling it “corporatism in disguise.” Conservatives, he says, “don’t even believe in the race, they don’t have the gall to say race exists” and “don’t even care if it does.”
“The notion of a racial future or destiny is as foreign to them as social responsibilities.”
Parts of the manifesto appear to be insincere trolling, aimed at sowing confusion about his motivations. At one point, the shooter blames his action on popular video game titles, saying “Spyro the Dragon 3 taught me ethno-nationalism” and that “Fortnite trained me to be a killer.”
Elsewhere in the document, the shooter identifies black conservative Candace Owens — obviously neither a white nationalist nor a supporter of violence — as the “person that has influenced me above all.” In a video posted online, the shooter also tells viewers to “subscribe to PewDiePie” — the pseudonym of Felix Kjellberg, a comedian and video game streamer who runs the most-subscribed channel on YouTube and whose content is majority non-political.
In both cases, the shooter attempts to link high-profile individuals — who have little in common with his stated ideology yet command large online followings and are frequently the target of unfair media hit pieces — to his attack. If it triggers a war of words between the media and their frequent targets, the result of this tactic would be more publicity for the shooter.
