taken offline.
But the shooters continue to be celebrated on other sites, including the 8chan alternative Endchan, where
the Norway mosque attacker left his final post. “Well cobbers it’s my time, I was elected by Saint Tarrant
after all,” read his post. “We can’t let this go on.”
Philip Manshaus included a meme depicting Tarrant as a “saint” and Earnest and Crusius as his “disciples”.
The same image continues to circulate on “chan” message boards and the encrypted messaging app
Telegram, where Christchurch fans churn out posts, memes, videos and links supporting the shooters and
calling for more attacks. Much of the output is in English, but Tarrant’s manifesto has so far been translated
into more than a dozen different languages and his attack has been celebrated by far-right groups across
Europe.
More than 1,000 people have joined one Telegram channel named in honour of Tarrant, which appears to
be run by a Ukrainian man who sends out hard copies of his manifesto.
A meme depicting the Christchurch, Poway and
El Paso shooters that was shared by supporters
including the Norway gunmanThe public group contains photos of armed men wearing combat fatigues and performing Hitler salutes,
Nazi imagery, antisemitic conspiracy theories and vile cartoons of Muslims. “The fight is not on the
internet,” reads a Ukrainian post published on Friday. “Train, arm yourself, get ready.”
The channel has been amplifying news of Christchurch-inspired attacks and plots around the world and
distributing advice urging people not to discuss their plans online. “Glory to Tarrant! Eternal glory for
opening our eyes to the future that is preparing us,” said a recent post.
Patrik Hermansson, a researcher on far-right extremism at Hope Not Hate said Tarrant had been
“sanctified”. “Supporters talk about ‘doing a Tarrant’,” he told The Independent. “He’s become a very
central figure, a symbol of anti-Muslim violence and the wider far-right neo-Nazis. His manifesto has been
translated into possibly a dozen different languages, there are shooting games that are built by far-right
activists. They are built to look like the mosques in Christchurch and you play as Tarrant.”
Mr Hermansson said Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof had also been assigned “heroic status” by the
same online communities, but Tarrant had generated a huge following by his references to other far-right
figures and symbols, and in-jokes played out through music and memes.
“The knock-on effect is relatively clear with the short timeframe of attacks that followed, he added. “It
takes much more than reading a manifesto to make you pick up a weapon and it’s very hard to predict what
can trigger an attack. But what we’re seeing online is very worrying.”