For four years before his attack on 15 March 2019, Tarrant had been posting anonymously but publicly on the online message board 4chan about the need to attack people of colour in locations of “significance”, including places of worship.

In its final report in 2020, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terror attacks wrote: “The individual claimed that he was not a frequent commenter on extreme right-wing sites and that YouTube was, for him, a far more significant source of information and inspiration. Although he did frequent extreme right-wing discussion boards such as those on 4chan and 8chan, the evidence we have seen is indicative of more substantial use of YouTube and is therefore consistent with what he told us.”

The authors of a new report questioned this and did their own research. They concluded that right-wing websites were more important than YouTube in Tarrant’s radicalisation.

Serious questions

What they found overturns a great deal of what was thought to be known about him. It also raises serious questions, not only about why this posting was not detected before the attack but also why it has not been discovered in the five years since the attacks.

When he wrote in his manifesto that he was driven to violence by the lack of a political solution – a realisation that came to him in 2017 – we now learn he had been calling for attacks against civilians at least as early as 2015.

Where he claimed he was not driven by antisemitism, we now discover that conspiratorial distrust and hatred of Jews were central to his entire worldview.

Although he claimed in his manifesto that he carried out his attack to preserve diversity and respect for all cultures, the violent racism and Islamophobia in his posting sets him apart, even in the darkest corners of 4chan.

Calling for mass violence

There were many opportunities for the public and New Zealand and Australian security services to observe him making very threatening statements online.

By 2015, he was calling for mass violence against people of colour.

Inspired by white supremacist Dylann Roof’s massacre on 17 June 2015 of nine Black worshippers in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, Tarrant claimed “violence is the last resort of a cornered animal” and “it was always going to come to this”.

He made it clear that white nationalist extremists should target innocent victims in locations of “significance”, such as places of worship.

When other posters claimed Roof ought to have targeted a “ghetto”, Tarrant became frustrated.

He explained that attacking unarmed people in a church is a “very simple tactic” necessary to provoke people of colour into retaliating. He used a racist phrase common on 4chan’s / pol/ message board to refer to this strategy.

Glorified violent acts

For at least four years, then, Tarrant contemplated and planned killing people in a location of emotional importance such as a school or place of worship.

In fact, he glorified a wide range of violent acts that had already been carried out by others, including school and public shootings, the perpetrators of which were driven by psychological or other motives rather than white nationalist ideology. He advocated for and praised the sadistic and brutal killing of innocent civilians.

The key for Tarrant was that this violence was perpetrated by white men. For him, any white violence might trigger the race war and segregation he desired.

As he travelled the world between 2014 and 2018, Tarrant became increasingly focused on Muslims.

His hatred persisted after arriving in New Zealand and sometimes it spiralled into unhinged tirades.

In one thread, he claimed he would form and fund an armed band of 4chan users to conduct ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

Some of his posting is unusually violent even within the extremism of /pol/.

Opportunities for detection

With hindsight at least, it suggests potential opportunities for detection, most obviously by Australian authorities.

For example, in that same thread, he identified himself as Australian four times, and brazenly wrote there was nothing the Australian Government could do to stop him.

At the moment of this violent fantasy, he emailed a gun club in Dunedin stating his plans to move to New Zealand. In the same week, he made donations to international far-right leaders.

The Royal Commission into the Christchurch terror attacks claimed Tarrant made only “limited lapses” in operational security during his time in New Zealand between late 2017 and March 2019.

This is untrue. He posted regularly on /pol/, which is freely and publicly accessible.

His posting was visible to many others whose identities he could not possibly have known.

Two threads in March and August of 2018 in particular show his hatred of the Muslim community and his plans to attack it. They presented opportunities for his detection.

In these threads, Tarrant and other users posted angrily about the spread of immigrants in New Zealand, and particularly the presence of mosques in small towns.

Very soon, a group of anonymous posters, including Tarrant, discussed violence against the buildings and the communities that gather in them.

When another user posted an image of a box of matches in reference to the mosques, Tarrant wrote “Soon”.

Revealing he was in Dunedin, Tarrant expressed his anger at the presence of mosques in that city, and in Christchurch and Ashburton to the north, using highly abusive language.

When other users called on him to act, he wrote: “I have a plan to stop it. Just hold on.”

Far from maintaining tight operational security as he planned his attack, Tarrant openly (albeit anonymously) discussed violence against mosques in the South Island while in New Zealand. These were not “limited lapses”.

The 4chan community was crucial in Tarrant’s radicalisation (and the examples given here are just a small portion of what the researchers found and, because of the highly offensive nature of his posts, chose to share).

Lack of investigation

Given what is known about the importance of online environments in the radicalisation of other white nationalist terrorists, it is disturbing that this aspect of Tarrant’s path to 15 March has not been investigated more thoroughly.

After all, his final words before the attack were released on the imageboard 8chan, but also intended for 4chan: “It’s been a long ride […] you are all top blokes and the best bunch of cobbers a man could ask for”.

It is hard to imagine a clearer signpost that the real nature of his radicalisation could be found on those forums.

Five years later, it seems we are only beginning to understand why he committed the atrocity, what might have been done to stop it, and how government agencies could work together with specialist extremism researchers to prevent another such event taking place.

The authors of the report on which this article is based are Chris Wilson, co-founder and director of Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa (HEIA) and director, Master of Conflict and Terrorism Studies, University of Auckland (Waipapa Taumata Rau); Ethan Renner, Researcher, HEIA; Jack Smylie, Research Analyst, HEIA; and Michal Dziwulski, Researcher, HEIA.
A paper based on their study has been submitted for peer review and publication. More about the study will be released at heiaglobal.com

Also see:

How they knew it was his posts