California, and opened fire on the Jewish congregation.
The shooting was the first deadly attack linked to the massacres at two mosques in Christchurch – but not
the last. On 3 August, a man who declared himself a “supporter of the Christchurch shooter and his
manifesto” murdered 22 people in El Paso. A week later, a gunman who hailed Tarrant as a “saint”
launched a failed attack on a mosque in Norway.
Several other suspected plotters have been arrested in the US and New Zealand, while a man was stabbed in
an alleged terror attack in the UK a day after the Christchurch massacres.
Vincent Fuller, 50, had watched Tarrant’s livestream and news coverage of the attack before launching a
rampage armed with a baseball bat and a knife. “Vincent got a bit angry about the news from New Zealand
because he said, ‘It is always them, the Muslims, that get looked after and get cared about,’” his girlfriend
told police.
The following day, Fuller marched through the streets of Stanwell attacking cars driven by non-white
people while shouting “kill Muslims” and “white supremacy”. Minutes before starting his rampage, Fuller
wrote a Facebook post reading: “I am English, no matter what the government say. Kill all the non-English
and get them all out of England.”
A second Facebook post shortly afterwards added: “I agree with what that man did in New Zealand as we
will not be brainwashed.”
On social media and internet forums, right-wing extremists are inciting each other to take up Tarrant’s
mantle and launch massacres against Muslims, Jews and non-whites around the world. Tarrant’s almost
17,000-word manifesto had called for readers to fight against the perceived “replacement” of white people
in western nations. Its title – The Great Replacement – is taken directly from a theory named by the French
white nationalist Renaud Camus and spread by pan-European extremist group Generation Identity.
By using the theory’s name as his manifesto’s title, Tarrant created a global trend on Google search where,
initially, anyone searching for his screed would be met with the “great replacement” theory itself. It has
been taken up to various degrees by high-profile figures ranging from right-wing politicians to neo-Nazi
terrorists across Europe, the US and Australia.
Not only have the attackers been copying each other’s ideas, but they have formed a loose format for their
atrocities incorporating online manifestos, livestreams and memes
On one end of the scale, populists claim they are merely concerned by demographic and cultural change,
while the other extreme sees conspiracy theorists claim the “replacement” is being driven by Muslims, Jews
or other groups who must be violently resisted.
The El Paso gunman, Patrick Crusius, created another spike in searches on 4 August after posting his own
manifesto declaring that he had read The Great Replacement. Instead of Muslims, he declared his attack to
be a response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas”, but still adhered to the same idea of a “cultural and
ethnic replacement”.
Not only have the attackers been copying each other’s ideas, but they have formed a loose format for their
atrocities incorporating online manifestos, livestreams and memes from dark internet culture.
In far-right online circles, extremists have drawn a clear link between the Christchurch, Poway and El Paso
shootings. All three perpetrators posted their manifestos on the 8chan image board, which has since been