Suspect's Purported Manifesto Has White Supremacist Ideology
CHURCH: Welcome back to our coverage of the New Zealand attacks. The suspect seems to have left behind a manifesto filled with hateful white nationalist rhetoric. The document is unsigned and it's covered with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim comments along with online inside jokes. CNN's Alex Marquardt takes a closer look.</s>ALEXANDER MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a diatribe filled with hate and anger and vows of revenge. Eighty-seven neatly formatted pages of ranting about immigrants, minorities, and Muslims. More than 16,000 words that the 28-year-old who says his name is Brenton Tarrant posted on social media shortly before the attack. The attacker repeatedly calls immigrants invaders. And says immigration must be crushed. And like other white nationalists he falsely claims there is a genocide of white people underway. It's the kind of toxic message heard in Charlottesville and from the Charleston massacre shooter Dylann Roof. The New Zealand shooter references Roof's attacks in his manifesto, Norwegian mass murders Anders Breivik who killed 77, mostly children, is held up as an inspiration.</s>ARDERN: These are people who I would describe as having extremist views that have absolutely no place in New Zealand and in fact, have no place in the world.</s>MARQUARDT: The U.S. president is also referenced once, calling President Trump a symbol of renewed white identity though he doesn't consider Trump a leader. The suspect claims to not belong to any organization and decided to carry put the shooting, which he admits is terrorism on his own. An attack, he says, that he'd been thinking about for two years and chose the targeted mosque three months ago. He expresses no remorse for those he planned to kill even the children. With white nationalism growing in the U.S. and in Europe, the gunman points to a number of global events that fueled his hate including a terror attack in Sweden's capital in 2017 when an asylum seeker plowed a truck into a crowd killing five.</s>CHURCH: All right. We do want to get some perspective on this. Joining us now live from Auckland, New Zealand, Professor Paul Spoonley, author of "Politics of Nostalgia, Racism, and the Extreme Right." Thank you, sir for being with us. And I want to say the world stands behind you and your country as it deals with this horror.</s>PAUL SPOONLEY, PRO VICE-CHANCELLOR, MASSEY UNIVERSITY: Thank you, Rosemary. It's a very, very sad time.</s>CHURCH: It is. It is just horrendous. So, I do want to ask you this too. Why do you think it is that we appear to be witnessing this apparent rise and hateful ideology, what's fueling it in your view?</s>SPOONLEY: Well, I think it's a general sense of unease in many western countries which comes from an uncertainty about the economic future. So, we're seeing some communities affected by the fourth industrial revolution in rather negative ways. It's also tied together with a sense that your culture in this case, the shooter's culture are being white and western is under threat by Muslims. I would note attempt in terms of the manifesto it does reference Jews as well. So, it's a slightly unusual combination that the prime enemy are Muslims but Jews are seem to be behind the takeover as he sees it by Muslims of the west.</s>CHURCH: Yes. A very important point. So, U.S. President Donald Trump doesn't think a global threat is being posed by white supremacists and their hateful anti- immigrant, anti-Muslim ideology and he doesn't think it's on the rise. What would you say to him about that?</s>SPOONLEY: Well, I think he needs to look around the western world and look at populist governments and how popular they have become to the general elections. So, we are seeing in many countries parties which expressed anti-immigrant policies and sentiments are being voted in or being voted to positions of power. The other thing which I would note that your previous commentator noted the international content of that manifesto. And when you look at Breivik 2083, the Declaration of European Independence, there's a lot of similarities here. So, there's a bit of international copycatting or referencing of these communities and individuals. So, I think that there is an international rise and a connectivity particularly online amongst these groups and this particular shooter reflects many of those movements and developments in recent years.</s>CHURCH: Do you think that whites supremacist terrorism is treated differently to other forms of terrorism? Do you think this crime may change all that and make people rethink the threat posed by these white supremacists and nationalists?</s>SPOONLEY: Well, it will do in New Zealand because I've been researching these groups since the 1980s. I've been saying for some time that they do represent a threat to our community. Firstly, in terms of the ideology that they express which is vilification and demonization of particular groups. But I've always pointed out there's always the possibility that they will carry out the threats that they've made. And in this occasion the person has done so. And I think we've been naive. I think we've been a little reticent, a little unwilling to consider that these groups represent a threat to our community. That has changed. And so, like other communities around the western world we have experienced something which is deeply, deeply tragic, but which is highlighted our naivety in terms of the threat posed by these ultra- nationalists and white supremacist groups.</s>CHURCH: Right. And on that subject on naiveite, I want to return to social media platforms and their slow response. Facebook, Twitter so many of them don't seem to have a means to actually stop these sorts of things going out. And of course, now, that video that was live streamed by the suspect is doing the rounds. It can't be stopped, it just keeps going, because that's what the algorithms do. So, with that in -- you know, I want to consider that and how big a role the current political dialog plays into all of this in perpetuating this hateful speech and then of course we see it on the social media platforms.</s>SPOONLEY: Yes. And those social media platforms present all of us with the challenges to our democracies. They are done by people who are often anonymous, they went to many, they're cheap. There is no filters. It's not like, the media like CNN where you get to evaluate and test facts and opinions. They are simply out there and people are being convinced by them in various ways. So that presents a challenge for our political democracies and that we have these repeating and very often false untruthful, hateful web sites and views that are being expressed on those web sites. Coming back to the point about Facebook. I am very critical of Facebook. Facebook recently claimed that they have taken down 82 percent of hateful comment within 24 hours. In this occasion 24 hours is way too long. So, they've got to get their metrics, their content managers able to react much quicker to these sorts of situations than has been the case in Christchurch.</s>CHURCH: Yes. They need to do a better job it has to be said, and it has to be --</s>SPOONLEY: They do.</s>CHURCH: -- and has to be put out there.</s>SPOONLEY: hey do.</s>CHURCH: Professor Paul Spoonley, thank you so much. We appreciate your analysis.</s>SPOONLEY: Thank you, Rosemary.</s>CHURCH: We'll take a short break here. Still to come, how Muslim leaders around the world are responding to the terror attacks in New Zealand. We're back in just a moment.