A stereotypical internet Nazi gamer dude-bro just livestreamed on Facebook himself shooting and killing at least 40 worshipers and injuring at least 20 more at mosques in New Zealand. Digging in to his expectedly deranged "manifesto" that he posted on--of course--/pol/, it becomes immediately obvious that all of his perceptions of the world were constructed almost exclusively through internet propaganda, most of it not even being particularity "Nazi" and NONE of it being even remotely underground or difficult to access; most of it has been viewed millions of times on popular YouTube channels. This guy's entire purpose for executing one of the deadliest shootings in New Zealand's history was because of his fear of being "replaced" by Muslims, a concern shared by vast swathes of the Very Online right, including many who denounce antisemitism. He even explicitly mentions TurningPointUSA's Candace Owens as the one who finally "woke him up" to the Muslim menace and the very real threat of extinction of the white race. It's the kind of idiotic shit that you're told to laugh at, to just ignore, to take the high ground and know that none of this racist online tough-guy bragging will translate into anything meaningful in the real world. Is dozens of dead civilians real enough yet?

Obviously it takes a degree of sociopathy and insanity to even fantasize about something this horrific, but I don't think "he's a crazy person" alone is gonna work for this one. The YouTube and Reddit alt-right and alt-lite hugboxes have blood on their hands.


But on a lighter note, remember guys, "subscribe to PewDiePie" is just a meme.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

He got his views on ethno-nationalism from Spyro 3.

Can't forget that we've finally sourced that uber-badass Navy SEAL everyone has talked about for 17 years, too.

If we're taking him at his word (pretty difficult to do that, considering the amount of meta-text and irony filling his manifesto), his goal was to foment a war between the left and right, by riling up the left so that they limit guns and speech for those on the right.

Congratulations for doing what he (apparently) wanted, I guess.

It's abundantly obvious to me he wrote that to get ahead of the criticism from has Nazi pals for fucking up their freedom.

Violence on many sides again.

Awful and depressing news. Obviously its shocking that this sort of thing could happen here, but Christchurch has traditionally been the New Zealand capital of Neo-nazi fuckheads, so if it was going to happen anywhere in this country, that city would be the obvious bet.

White supremacy is a disease.

I was meant to be in CC today but gave it a miss after Ozzy cancelled his tour. In Auckland for Slayer and Judas Priest instead. Cowardly animal. Can't believe it would happen in NZ too - thought gun laws here would be similar to Australia.

NZ gun laws are certainly stricter than American ones, but not as tough as Australia's, from what I read. They probably will be after this though, if the NZ government has so much as two brain cells to rub together.

In any case, this is horrific, and certainly unexpected in the sense of where it took place. If one group of people deserves to be opressed in this world, then it must be fucking white supremacists. Well, them and pedophiles, I guess.

At this point, the "alt-right" should be as stereotyped as terrorists as Muslims have been. The way people looked at Muslims and said, "oh a terrorist, eh?", we should be looking at alt-righters as "oh, so you're a 4chan incel ready to snap at any moment, eh?"

I don't even necessarily think this is true. Otherwise normal people are willing to do absolutely horrific shit in the name of their deeply held beliefs and ideologies, sometimes not even deeply held beliefs, just the right conditions and a little bit of prodding. Its a total red herring and cop out meant to distract from the societal conditions that make the radicalization of people like this, and the people (like Molyneux and Shapiros and Owens of the world) who enable it.

edit: sorry i hope this doesn't come across as disagreeing with you, i 100 percent agree that youtube, et al have blood on their hands here. just wanted to expand

I watched the video of the massacre, man its so unreal. What is wrong with humanity.

Humanity should be beyond this kind of behavior. I was talking about it with my friend tonight, that for all of the amazing people in this world that are working every day to improve this world (such as Elon Musk) and bring us into a more modern, educated and secular society where people can prosper and live a healthy life, you have brainwashed people like this that use violence and cruelty to fan the flames of war and hate, with religious and political ideologies. Humans are built with an unlimited potential for cruelty into their DNA, that must has already been confirmed in the last thousand years.

I can only hope and wish that this event will produce the OPPOSITE effect to what this psychopath wanted, and instead teach people that violence and cruelty is not the way to improve society, or to combat harmful ideologies. You improve the world and change people at their core through education alone, not through violence or cruelty. Nothing good will ever come of them.

I've heard the theory that him specifically naming Candace Owens was actually some ridiculous ploy to screw up her life specifically. Because think about it, she doesn't really say anything about the "Great Replacement" bullshit that Molyneux and Southern do, she doesn't really do anything to perpetuate the alt-right memes that he was obsessed with, and she came onto the whole Extremely Online conservative sphere way after the rest of these people, and apart from the recent bewildering comments about "Hitler was fine until he tried to spread outside of Germany", which is indefensible fucking nonsense, she's always been just a standard whiner and bootlicker from TPUSA. Nowhere near the smoothbrained dipshittery of Molyneux, Black Pigeon, or Sargon. I've heard it posited that he singled her out as a parting shot to take a woman of color out of the White Boys' Club because it's really easy for people to demonize the black girl.

I could be totally wrong about that and she could be way worse than I realize, but for somebody who is such a wholly milquetoast complainer who couldn't excite a puppy, she's an extremely odd choice to be The One to radicalize somebody to violence. She's a token to deflect criticism from TPUSA in bad faith, not a dangerous, incendiary, sabre rattling lunatic like everybody else I mentioned.

Either way this whole thing is supremely fucked and I hate everything about everything right now. This is what happens when people are wholly ensconced in nothing but hate-filled nihilism and radicalized on memes. Lots of people have blood on their hands right now and I can't wait for absolutely nobody to be punished in any meaningful way because Hellworld is a shit.

For every kind of possibility or outcome, I believe there is a human for it.

I don't believe humanity will ever be "beyond" this type of behavior.

I'm not all that surprised that it happened. I was when Breivik did his thing but not now. What I find weird is the type of person who did this. Obviously most of what we can say is what can be seen in the video and his "manifest". The "subscribe to pewdiepie" comment, the music he was playing and the general feel I go from flipping through his manifest. While the islamists recruit people, organize them and train them in ideology and warfare it seems this person, like so many other western terrorists are self-radicalized, does not have a coherent ideology but more of a cut and paste type thing heavily based on online texts, introvert and does not have much military training.

It's always horrible when innocent people die but I'm sure this won't be the last. There will be revenge action from islamists and more westerners will probably be inspired as well (like dome was with Breivik).

Uh, seems like r/watchpeopledie has been banned. It's because of this incident?

They had been itching to do so for a while, and while the mods made it a rule to not post the video, people were still spamming it in comments. I guess the Reddit admins had enough. It doesn't help that the subreddit got mentioned in a Reuters article, and as with other subreddits that garner negative press for Reddit, it almost always guarantees a ban to save face.

A bunch of other subreddits got banned or closed (temporarily?) including r/gore and r/pewdiepiesubmissions. Seems people wouldn't stop trying to post the video. Additionally it seems like a number of subreddits are imposing "moratoriums" on discussing these bans/closures. Unusually even /r/subredditdrama is shutting down discussions on it.

"Islamists," jesus christ get the fuck out of here. If you don't think the vast majority of Muslims are disgusted and horrified by the atrocities of ISIS (who, by the way, overwhelmingly target other Muslims) as well as the other scumsucking groups of murderous animals that associate themselves with Islam, then you're almost as delusional as the people who think The West is being invaded by Muslims. If you did about 5 seconds of research you'd notice that a large number Islamic terrorists in the West are citizens of the West, plenty of them are white, and pretty much all of them were radicalized online.

It's this ignorance mixed with fearmongering that caused this most recent massacre. Stop helping.

Funny thing to say to conclude your "online research answers all questions"-post that is exactly what's behind the shooting. If you want to learn something about Islam, better to ask Muslims in real life than ask Google. Goes equally for people like shooting Aussie and people like you.

Really sad. My friends across the ditch are mourning, and Australia mourns with them.

What?

I never said the majority of Muslims weren't disgusted and horrified by the acts of ISIS - they obviously are. I never said most people affected by ISIS weren't Muslims - they clearly are. I never said Islamist terrorists weren't citizens of the west or that they weren't first radicalised online - we know that all to well. The only point you make that I don't really know anything about is whether most Islamist terrorists in the west are white or not (I always got the impression they were usually second or third generation immigrants from northern Africa or the middle east).

The only big point where I should have been clearer is that I should have written "Islamist extremist" or "Islamist terrorist" instead of just "Islamist" (i.e. political Islam) and I take that critique to heart. Otherwise I don't know why you reacted so strongly to what I wrote.

I do get a feeling that you might have misinterpreted and thought I was writing, and/or meaning, "Muslim" when I wrote "Islamist" which is of course not the case. If you didn't misinterpret that then why the strong reaction to me using the word "Islamist"?


Basically what I said/meant was that most Islamic terrorists might be radicalised online but there are larger support structures and organizations behind them that actually support terrorist acts. There is also an ideology behind it, an extreme version os Islamism (i.e. political Islam) - in the last 100 years or so the most influential name probably being Sayyid Qutb. And a large number of them actually went away to get some sort of training before they returned to go through with their terrorism. This has shifted somewhat, especially with "trend" of driving large vehicles into masses of people (which obviously has been done by anti-muslim or white power type people as well).

The difference with the western terrorists (or ethnically European if you prefer) is that there is generally no support structures for their terrorism in the way of organizations (maybe I'm wrong but I've not really seen any organization brag about Breiviks deeds for example, not in any way close to how ISIS seemed to love to take credit for acts of terror both when they were involved and when they weren't). There is generally no thought out ideology either. There are for sure common themes in their world view but much of it is copy-paste from blogs and other such online sources so it is in general not nearly as coherent as extreme Islamism. All this going hand in hand with that they usually seem to be acting alone (thus generally harder to locate or stop for the authorities). We saw this with Breivik as well as well as the swordsman in Sweden a few years ago. We'll see what comes up about the NZ terrorist (they have four people arrested I heard). I wouldn't be surprised though if they found he was acting on this alone.


And by the way I have a BA in religious studies. I usually get shit for mentioning that even though, as in this case, you actually attack me for not doing "research". My guess is that I have read quite a lot more about Islam in general and extreme Islamism in particular than you ever have (unless you too have spent years studying religion).

It's weird. Personally I just find it really depressing. Given some time to think about it, I think its knowing that a piece of shit like this guy could so simply take so many lives into his own hands and destroy them. Further to that, to see there are actually some severely fucked up individuals who would support this in the aftermath. I thought our PM's statement yesterday was spot on; as a nation we reject this ideology, and those who support it are not fucking welcome (my own paraphrasing, obviously).

Nobody gives a fuck about your BA. Extremist Islam does not have a rigid coherent structure at all like you're suggesting. In fact, their thought is far more fucking fringe and isolated (at least as far as we should be concerned domestically) than the sort of xenophobic memed out rhetoric this guy was spewing. Talk of a 'great displacement' has so much as become close to mainstream. There is no enacting the belief that 'we need a pure ethno-state' except by removal through violence, regardless of what your Richard Spencers say about 'peaceful ethnic cleansing', or even the less extreme counterparts. If the message is 'Western' purity, anyone the slightest bit perceptive will see what's being dogwhistled for.

What's really problematic about the shit you're spewing is that a bunch of Muslims just got massacred and your response is 'ya but ISIS bad'. The fuck is this?

I brought up my BA because darkeningday wrote about me not being well read on the subject. Damned if I do ("[n]obody gives a fuck about your BA"), damned if I don't ("[i]f you did about 5 seconds of research. . .") it seems...



I wrote this in my second post:

"I never said the majority of Muslims weren't disgusted and horrified by the acts of ISIS - they obviously are. I never said most people affected by ISIS weren't Muslims - they clearly are."

I think that is quite clear, no?

But extreme Islamism does have rigid structures. In plural because there is not just one version (and no they certainly don't always cooperate or even like each other). But they are organizing, they are running quran schools, they are running military training etc. This is quite clear especially when we look at the two most famous movements since 2001 - Al Quaida and ISIS. And obviously I speak of it internationally not specifically for NZ. But muslim terrorism usually sees the perpetrators being connected in one way or another to an actual organization.

You are very right though that extreme islamism is on the fringe in the muslim world in general (terrorist organizations certainly are!). In general they have no real power in regards to ruling countries or large pieces of land. The most notable exception was those years ISIS had quite a large piece of land (now reduced to nothing or almost nothing). And there has been some back and forth with the Talibans in Afghanistan (although I'm not updated on the current situation).

What I meant by the NZ shooter not being organized in that, as far as I know, there really aren't any organization trying to recruit people willing to commit terrorist attacks for white supremacy reasons. At least not to my knowledge. There has certainly existed such organisations before but to my knowledge all, or most, of the white supremacy terrorists have acted alone and has not been organized in a terrorist organisation. But if I'm wrong feel free to correct me.

But of course you're right in that some of the rhetoric are very commonplace - at least in certain corners of social and alternative media. And it is obvious that people moving in white supremacy milieus (usually online, seldom IRL) are the ones who have committed most of these deeds in the past few years (most notable exception perhaps being the guy in Charlottesville) but Breivik, Anton Lundin Pettersson as well as the shooters in Minneapolis and Quebec are examples of this (as far as I know). And from what we know of the NZ-shooter this seems to be true for him as well. And from what these people have left behind ("manifests", internet posts etc) its clearly a cut and paste type world view based in online texts and videos.



What (again)? I never wrote anything of the kind.

I don't know what you want to indicate by using single quotation marks (I thought they were generally only used within another quotation) but its clear its not an actual quote and I never said anything to indicate that either. That's just defaming.

My initial reply was me theorizing around the type of man who did the NZ terrorist act. I most certainly didn't take his side. I only said this is a "war" where all these acts will "inspire" others to do the same, or others to take revenge. Its and evil circle of terror and death with both sides blaming the other for starting it.

I feel like you guys attack me for things I never even wrote.

I don't think I can be any more clear in that I absolutely reject terrorism regardless of who the perpetrator is.

Read the room, dude. "Blame on both sides." C'mon, dude.

This shit is absolutely horrifying. The glee of it, the memes, the obvious inspiration by and connection to edgelord alt-right internet spaces...somehow all of these things add up to make this far more callous and awful than any sort of revenge-driven school shooting or whatever. I'm very happy to see NZ taking swift steps to prevent shitbags such as this guy from being able to do things like this on this scale in their country ever again.

That's not what I meant ("blame on both sides"). I just said that in a larger perspective we see how one deed leads to another and that to another (which is part of the definition of a conflict). There is clearly no blame on the innocent people who died in the NZ terrorist acts. And its not an act of direct revenge on specific people but rather on an (imagined) larger threat. And of course he had connections to the alt right online milieus (something I touched upon in my first post as well).

I also support acts to prevent shootings like this one. Of course. I don't want this in any shape or form.

I apologize if I haven't been able to read the room but I feel like the very rude and aggressive couple of replies were uncalled for. Especially claiming I wrote things I never wrote.

Thank you.

The whataboutism mixed with insouciance towards one of the worst hate crimes in modern history drove me up the fucking wall. This guy wasn't trying to get "revenge" for the attacks perpetrated by ISIS, he straight-up murdered dozens of innocents because the now-mainstream internet right convinced him there was an invasion by brown people and he needed to cull the herd to avoid "displacement."

He actually said it specifically was the terrorist attack in Sweden on Drottninggatan was what drove him to do this (to the point he had one of the victims of that attacks name written on one of his guns). But he was obviously radicalised online as well.

I never meant to come across as taking this lighthearted. As I said. I was shocked when Breivik murdered all those people but now I'm sadly more numb to it since its been all to common in the past 6-8 years or so.

I do think you guys are delving far more into his words than he actually did state, and agree that while he should have "read the room" better, the responses have been overly hostile. He is right that acts like these do fuel and help the recruitment efforts of Islamic terrorism. It's also true that people like this douchebag are going to use that as an excuse to do even more harm. It is an endless cycle, and one which is awful, horrible, and seems only to lead to more tragedy. Keep in mind, too, that this is exactly what people like this douchebag would want; he's an admitted accelerationist who wants people to act on their hate and to see the world burn sooner than later.

I don't agree with him on *this* not being organized, however. This guy was organized and supported by a network of people from across the world via online communities that facilitate and enable his beliefs and actions. I see a lot of blame with this issue on guns, and even blame towards Facebook, and while both have merit ultimately the communities and the people who openly encouraged this dude are going to continue doing what they're doing. 4chan and 8chan aren't going to be shut down, and even if they were, the people who use them will find another online medium to do their business. I'm honestly not entirely sure how, with the online world we have today, that there's any way to put an end to that. The proliferation of everything awful and backwards, from white supremacism to antivaxxers and flat earthers to fake news is growing because of the dissemination of information through online circles. And it's just getting worse.

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Thanks for being civil and nice. And your critique is good to (I love critique as long as it is presented in a civil and concrete manner). In the way you define "organized" it does make sense to define him as just that. It wasn't what I had in mind when I wrote it but it is obvious that this thought bubble in some way shaped him and radicalised him.

A note on online culture is that we also need to realize all the good it is doing. Making information available and spreading good things. The school strike for the climate was pretty huge and probably would have been impossible without online communication.

Echoing what Derigin said here. Innes' initial comment was mostly innocuous, no need to jump down his throat. He's not blaming the victims (or I'd have shown him the door quite fast, believe me).

That said, I do agree with Derigin also about how these white supremacist fuckwads are actually quite organized. Not just through online communities, either. Just look at this shit:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 46641.html

White supremacist groups that are openly recruiting, with uniforms, training camps, the whole thing. I admit, even I didn't know this was a thing. It's so fucking creepy.

Oh without a doubt. That said, Reddit is foremost a company, and we can't ever forget that fact because it deeply informs its actions. Just like with r/jailbait, r/watchpeopledie is a public relations nightmare waiting to happen for the company. No matter whether the subreddit was following any rules set by the Reddit admins, or if the subreddit wasn't as bad as people think it is, it's the fact that in the public perception you could have a subreddit dedicated to publishing videos of people dying actually exist which is the problem. There is hypocrisy because there are numerous other subreddits that (at least in the minds of a lot of people) deserve a ban just as well, but won't receive one unless or until they become damaging for the company's stakeholder reputation. A subreddit like r/the_donald IMO should be tossed, but it won't be because it doesn't have the same negative public perception that people might instinctively have over r/watchpeopledie for its name. The writing was on the wall the moment the subreddit was created.


Ugh, yeah, this is just so awful. We're even seeing it in Canada, in both the many alt-right groups, but also in movements, too. The "Yellow Vests Canada" movement is one of them. Absolutely disturbing shit.

"There will be revenge action from islamists and more westerners will probably be inspired as well" is a pretty straight-forward observation on the cycle of violent extremism, not whataboutism. There is nothing remotely whatsoever about his post that could be fairly read as excusing or intentionally misdirecting blame for what happened in New Zealand. A person who observes that the Crips will respond in kind to an attack by the Bloods is not whatabouting anything or anyone.

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Seems people are still trying to spread the video. I know a number of people on Facebook who have quit or are thinking of quitting because certain "friends" keep trying to send them the video through Messenger, even though they didn't ask for it. I've also heard about people on Twitter getting sent the video without asking for it, too. No idea who is doing the sending, but a lot of the people who are outright complaining about it happening to them are middle-aged and closer to my parents' age. This is really bizarre to me. Is this what the social media Boomers really want to share with one another?

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As usual, it looks like a lot of 4chan-types are sharing it because "information can't be censored"; I've seen one place where they did so while youtube linking to that "Can't stop the signal" bit from Serenity.

One or two days before the incident Donald Trump said to Breitbart that "it would be very bad if his supporters got tough" as a threat to opponents, a day after the incident Donald Trump said he sees no danger from white nationalists. The German Trump equivalent AfD meanwhile claims the attacks were carried out by a leftist green eco-terrorist because the "manifesto" mentioned overpopulation and climate change.