Terrorism and digital parallel worlds: monsters who consider themselves heroes

column

When Neil Lewington was arrested on October 30, 2008, he was drunk. The man had first "publicly urinated" at the station of Lowestoft in the east of the UK and then verbally abused a railway employee. She called the police.

When the officers searched Lewington, they found the ingredients for "two working burners." In the apartment of the unemployed electrician, they then came across a bomb making workshop, far-right writings and an authored by Lewington 18-page pamphlet entitled: "Manual for the Waffen-SS in the United Kingdom".

The court found that the 44-year-old had planned, among other things, to build splinter bombs out of tennis balls in order to throw them into the homes of families of Asian descent. He was sentenced to indefinite detention. He did not become famous, unlike the mass murderer of Christchurch.

Without a goal, in search of meaning

The historian Matthew Feldman quoted in the proceedings as an expert. In his book he describes the prevented murderer Lewington as an example of what he calls "self-activated terrorists": perpetrators without direct exchange with terrorist organizations.

The main culprit of the mass murder of Christchurch is likely to be included in this category. Like Lewington, he feared the downfall of the "white race," which at least suggests his "manifesto." Like Lewington, he chose to defend this "White Race." Like Lewington, he is a man who has not achieved much in his life.

He is a "monster of willpower," the murderer of Christchurch once said about himself, he needed "only one goal."

Does this sound familiar to you? Aimless men in search of meaning? It is precisely the description that applies to many of the "self-activated" Islamic terrorist perpetrators of recent years in Europe. Breitscheidplatz, Nice, the attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015 - always the perpetrators had a problematic childhood and youth and also a criminal career behind him.

The misguided idea of ​​becoming a hero

There are even more similarities between the self-radicalized murderers of seemingly opposite ends of the ideological spectrum:

• They believe in an imminent apocalyptic event and wish for this apocalypse at the same time - incidentally, this also applies to some of the violent left-wing radicals.
• At the same time they hope to conjure up an epic conflict through their actions, an apocalyptic final battle,
• between "Crusaders" and Muslims, blacks and whites, or the "Zionist Occupation Government" and the "Aryans".

The perpetrator of Christchurch refers in his "Manifesto" to Dylann Roof, who shot dead nine people in a church in Charleston, and Anders Breivik, the mass murderer of Utoya. Both have left "manifests" for their part.

Murders as "marketing"

This is the central commonality of all these terror facts - the actual audience are potential recruits for their own "cause," be it the global caliphate or the global supremacy of the "White Race." The murders are, as Anders Breivik explicitly stated, "marketing". From the perspective of the culprit.

In truth, these men invent a war into which they then move. Always against the defenseless, often against children. They consider themselves heroes, but they are monsters.

Ideologically, however, Roof and Breivik are by no means unanimous. Breivik saw Israel and the Jews as allies in the fight against "Islam" - which earned him criticism from classic right-wing extremists around the world. Roof, on the other hand, regarded Judaism in the typical Nazi manner as the true cause of all evil.

One thing is for sure: somebody has to die

The perpetrator of Christchurch is there closer to Breivik, whom he also names as the most explicitly "role model": He has nothing against Jews as long as they stay in Israel. In his "manifesto" is indeed the alleged "population exchange" threatens the whites.

However, the usual right-wing narrative that this exchange of the Jewish world conspiracy - usually embodied by the philanthropist George Soros - planned and carried out, but is not not in the foreground.

However, it is always certain that someone has to be killed. The "manifestos" of individual perpetrators from completely different ideological directions even resemble each other linguistically. For example, they like long words and often talk about "those". The ultimate goal is always to assign oneself a decisive role in the preparation of a final battle.

The one-man terror proliferates digital-medial

The "lonely wolves" of today have always worked their self-study from online sources into the ideology that serves as an excuse for killing them. Researcher Matthew Feldman speaks of "radicalization networks":

• These can be right-wing extremist websites and social media groups - or the digital propaganda channels of the Islamists.
• Search engine, video portal, and social media sorting algorithms ensure that amateur radicals quickly find the content that extremism professionals have provided for them.
• Their own "manifestoes" then form new hubs.

The Charleston murderer Dylann Roof explicitly described his radicalizing experiences with Google. Now his "manifesto" is referred to by the Christchurch culprit as a reference. The digital-medial one-man terror is proliferating and fertilizing itself.

Manifest from the Nerdkultur biotope

The novelty of the Christchurch case is that another "radicalization network" has appeared:

• The perpetrator announced his action not only on Twitter, but also in the picture forum "8Chan", an offshoot of the so-called Chan culture whose origin is called 4Chan.
• In his "Manifesto" there are tons of pseudo-ironic quotes and inside jokes from this nerd culture biotope.
• With a lot of effort, he adopts to the anonymous cynics, to a reference to a kind of digital terrain game around the video game creator PewDiePie at the beginning of his mass murder livestream.

The perpetrator apparently had the feeling to be in the politically often extreme / pol forum of 8Chan among like-minded people who would appreciate his live streamed massacre. And indeed, there was apparently applause following the massacre.

With imitators can be expected

The model 4Chan school mass murderers are regularly celebrated since the murders of Columbine. The boundaries between taboo-based Trollhumor and human-contempting cynicism are barely distinguishable there.

Part of the boyish-disillusioned, self-proclaimed clientele that gathers on platforms like 8Chan will declare the murderer of Christchurch another of their heroes. He was "the next Breivik" raved there one already on Friday. Some may say this ironically, others seriously. Imitators are expected.

Over the past ten to fifteen years, a radical right-wing boy-soup of trollery, taboos, YouTube, video games, conspiracy theories, feelings of inferiority, sexism, racism, intellectual arrogance, and fascination with violence has sprung up online. In it, for example, grew the German politician "Doxxer" 0rbit.

Now this scene has its first real terrorist.