"White supremacy", the racist theory behind the New Zealand massacre

The author of the deadly attacks on two mosques in New Zealand, a 28-year-old Australian identified as Brenton Tarrant, has published in the networks a long manifesto in which he claims to be a white supremacist, a racist ideology according to which Whites are superior to other humans and that for this reason they must dominate others.

White supremacism, or white supremacy, is closely related to theories ofscientific racism " of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, which was based on supposed observations of physical anthropology such as the shape of the face or the size of the skull to badert the superiority of the white man over black and indigenous populations during the colonial period .

These theories have permeated Nazism as well as the movements of the Far right American, like the Ku Klux Klan, which was born after the defeat of the Confederation of Slaves in the Civil War. Openly anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, homophobic, anti-communist and racist, the members of the Klan defend "white power ", the "white power" and oppose the social and political freedom of minorities. Over the years, they have committed hundreds of murders of African Americans.

Tarrant's manifesto

In the 73-page document he left before murdering 49 people and wounding 48 others, including several children, Tarrant is defined as "a common white man, of a normal family who has decided to take a stand for the future of his people ".

Throughout the text, the man insisted that his European roots, "Scottish, Irish and English" and is defined as "racist" and "Ethno-nationalist Fascist Echo ".

"The origins of my language are European, my culture is European, my political beliefs are European, my philosophical convictions are European, my identity is European and, more importantly, my blood is European," he said. . "What's an Australian, if not a drunk European?" Explained Joke, but Australia is a European colony, especially British, and as a result, an extension of the Europe, "he added.

The manifesto was entitled "the big replacement"and refers to a thesis of the French writer Renaud Camus on the disappearance of" European peoples "," replaced "according to him by populations of non-European immigrants.

This theory is gaining ground in right-wing circles. Tarrant also insisted on the supposed "fertility " immigrants and is worried about the low birth rates of European countries and the "decadence" of the West.

The shadow of Breivik slips on the attack

The man also refers to the extremist Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in July 2011 and published a similar, though 1,500-page, manifesto attacking "cultural Marxism". According to Tarrant, Breivik is a "Just Knight" who gave him his "blessing" to attack in New Zealand.

The man also named Oswald Mosley, a British politician close to the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, founder of the British Union of Fascists.

In his text, Tarrant states that was prepared for two years to carry out the attack and who chose New Zealand in the last three months to show that "there is no safe place in the world ".

"The mosques in Christchurch and Linwood have had many more invaders," said the Islamophobe, about the reasons that led him to attack these two places of worship.

The man – who according to Australian media has spent most of the past nine years traveling the world since his father's death of cancer – said that the key moments of his radicalization were the failure of the leader ultra-right Marine Le Pen in the 2017 French elections and a truck attack that killed five people in Stockholm in April 2017, including an 11-year-old girl.