The murder of 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019 has led to, for example, a gun reform bill in New Zealand and renewed interest in the notion of ‘the great replacement’. Given longstanding debates in the United States, gun reform seems unlikely to happen following the mass shooting in El Paso, United… Continue reading “Eco-fascism encountered: the natural environment in justifications of terrorist violence in the Christchurch mosque shooting and the El Paso shooting”
© Pete Linforth | Pixabay Just before his shooting spree at two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques, the alleged mass murderer posted a hate-filled manifesto on several file-sharing sites, and emailed the document to at least 30 people, including New Zealand’s prime minister. He also posted on several social media sites links to the manifesto and… Continue reading “Why the next terror manifesto could be even harder to track”
At the age of twelve, my classics class at the high school devoted an entire week to the ancient war between the Persian Empire and Athens. We were told that the battle of Marathon and Salamis (490 and 480 BCE) represented civilisational encounters between Europe and the ‘barbarians’, west and east. The unlikely victory of… Continue reading “The far right’s weaponisation of history”
The Trump administration tried to downplay the New Zealand terrorist’s white supremacist views and the global threat of the radical right. That’s dangerous. The man hates “anti-white scum,” calls for the murder of Muslims and liberals, and rails against “white genocide.” He describes himself as a “fascist” and cites the late British fascist leader Oswald… Continue reading “Downplaying The Threat Of White Supremacy, Trump Admin Cries “Eco-Terrorism””
After a radical right-wing terrorist murdered 50 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, President Trump downplayed the threat of white nationalism – a threat he has helped to fuel. Updated March 16, 2019: The death toll of the New Zealand terrorist attack has now risen to 50 and President Trump has since defended Fox News host… Continue reading “Trump Says White Nationalism Isn’t A Growing Threat. He’s Lying.”
For terrorists like Brenton Tarrant, acting in the name of “racial survival,” human life has no value unless it is the life of their own ethnic group. Very few people probably still remember William Luther Pierce. Even in the United States, he is largely forgotten, except perhaps on the fringes of the American extreme right… Continue reading “Making Sense of the Christchurch Terror Attack”
Terrorism as theater in the age of Internet ‘Bühnensucht’ is a German expression denoting an irrational longing to take the stage or as Jenkins put it already in 1974, “terrorism is theater” (Jenkins 1974:7). In the age of online communication and social media, the stage is the same as the Internet and the audience that… Continue reading “‘The Great Replacement’ – Decoding the Christchurch Terrorist Manifesto”
Winston Peters’ New Zealand First has been a textbook case of how to combine populist rhetoric and nativist discourse in the service of political mobilization. Some 20 years ago, I coedited a book on The New Politics of the Right. The focus of the volume was on the adoption of populism by the radical right,… Continue reading “Winston Peters: From Populist Maverick to Elder Statesman”