Monday 18 March 2019

Breivik inspired. DarkWeb enabled.


This article in Foreign Policy magazine is the best I've read so far on the Christchurch murder mayhem, 
Main points:
  • The single main inspiration of the Christchurch killer was Norway's Andres Breivik. 
  • He was self-radicalised by sites on the dark web. 
  • He did go specifically after Muslims because of their higher birth rates (so I was wrong about this in an earlier post). 
He was out to cause confusion and conflict hence naming certain people, specifically with that aim. Hence, eg, Candace Owens, who has never said anything, good or bad, about Islam.  And Trump, only to dismiss him.  And, btw, Nelson Mandela -- who he hopes to emulate by getting out of prison as a hero to his race. And also names some video games, like Fortnite. 
A concluding para: there is a negative correlation between the rise of right-wing parties in the west and far-right terrorism. In other words, they are like a safety valve. And give lie to claims from the Left to demonise and blame such parties. 
Over the past three decades, large-scale terrorist attacks motivated by extreme-right beliefs have almost exclusively been carried out by lone actors and small autonomous cells. The reason is simple. Maintaining an extreme-right group with terrorist ambitions is impossible in Western democracies today due to state monitoring and the lack of external support and safe havens. A recent example of extremists who tried, but failed, to prepare an attack while keeping a public profile is the British group National Action, whose leaders and activists are currently serving long prison sentences. This leaves extreme-right revolutionaries with two options: operate in the public but refrain from illegal behavior, or go underground.