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An injured person is being cared for by an ambulance following the attack at Al-Nour Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019. REUTERS / SNPA / Martin Hunter

A dead man and three wounded near San Diego, California, after the attack of a synanogue by an armed man. The 19-year-old man went to the police after he opened fire on the believers gathered for the last day of Passover. He also published a manifesto to claim his act on a very controversial forum. It was on this same site that the Christchurch killer in New Zealand posted a 75-page extremist text last month.

The platform is called "8Chan" and was launched in 2013 by New Yorker Fredrrick Brennan. Its "8", according to the initiates, represents a node of Moebius, but can also be read as "eight-hate chan", "the channel of hate". In fact, it is a discussion forum whose political section serves as a defoliator for neo-Nazis around the world: apology for the white race, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic propaganda.

The tone is displayed from the home page: the visitor is warned that he arrives in "the darkest parts of the Internet". There is no debate, the tone is permanently insulting against Jews, Arabs, the LGBT community, the media ... in a place maintained by the anonymity of the contributors. All is anonymous.

Today, this online space takes another dimension because in the space of six weeks two killers chose "8Chan" to publish their manifesto, before taking action: John Earnest who has just opened fire in a California synagogue and white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, author of the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch , New Zealand, which left 50 dead.

In his manifesto, John Earnest claims to have been inspired by Brenton Tarrant, which means that among the users of this forum, there may be a handful, perhaps a dozen, perhaps hundreds of supporters of extreme right radicalized, ready to act ... without so far, no sanction has been taken against the owners of this site, nor any investigation launched to release its users anonymity.

In New Zealand, however, after the tragedy in Christchurch, the country's leading Internet access providers have agreed to block, until further notice, access to the site on the mobile network. And Australia, where Brenton Tarrant was originally from, adopted at the beginning of April a (controversial) legislation introducing prison sentences for senior executives of social networks who would not promptly remove extremist content.

► to (re) read : Massacre Live in Christchurch (Media Column)