Keeping Tabs on Mass Shooters—Lone Wolves, Emboldened by the Pack

Today, March 15, marks the fifth anniversary when an Australian gunman opened fire on worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The shooter livestreamed the killings on Facebook for 17 minutes before the video was taken down by the platform. Fifty-one Muslims died from the shootings. In livestreaming the murders, the gunman, then 28 years old, demonstrated a disturbing understanding of how such content is engineered to go viral. And go viral it did. The following day, Facebook issued a public statement: “In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload.” The high number of social media users who wanted the video to spread is shocking.

I am a researcher on disinformation, misinformation, and online harassment. I was one of the three women who resigned from Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council in December 2022, in protest of the meteoric rise in hate speech following Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform. The murders by the gunman and the virality of his video are gruesome facts by themselves. However, there are two further reasons why I argue that we need to pay close attention to what happened post-Christchurch.

First, white supremacists have now become emboldened. Yes, the Australian was a lone wolf, but he is fêted by the far right and alt-right online communities. Since the massacre, he has become a literal saint to white supremacists. He subscribes to the Great Replacement Theory narrative: that an elite group is colluding against white French and European peoples to slowly replace them with non-Europeans from the African continent and the Middle East, the majority of whom are Muslim. This idea gained resonance among the far right after French writer Renaud Camus first coined the term in 2011. Camus often refers to it as a shorthand “genocide by substitution.”

Second, the Christchurch gunman provided a playbook for future killings by white supremacists: posting a so-called manifesto online, followed by a live broadcast of mass shootings. In niche online spaces such as chan message boards—named after the 8Chan platform where the Australian posted his manifesto (the platform has since been removed)—and on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, his fans talk about performing copycat acts.

Just one month after the Christchurch massacre, a 19-year-old posted his manifesto on the alt-right platform 8Chan—the same platform on which the Australian posted his 74-paged screed—before attacking a synagogue in Poway, Calif. In August 2019, a 21-year-old posted his manifesto on 8Chan before shooting up a supermarket in El Paso, Texas. That same month, another 21-year-old, killed two people in Bærum, Norway, after posting on 8Chan. Both shooters cited the Australian as their inspiration.

In October 2019, a 27-year-old livestreamed his rampage at a Jewish community center and synagogue in Halle, Germany, on the livestreaming app Twitch for 30 minutes. In May 2022, an 18 year old, livestreamed his killings in Buffalo, on Twitch for two minutes before it was taken down. The Buffalo shooter credited the Christchurch killer for changing his thinking.

The mass shootings above have one thing in common: beyond the Australian being a key rallying point for those already radicalized to commit acts of violence offline, all are young, angry white men. It is important that we understand what motivates these men to commit these mass murders so that we can stop such acts from ever happening. What would be effective: engaging these men in dialogue before they get deeper on their pathway to radicalization? If so, which figures and/or institutions would these men trust?

To this end, I and several others including Nobel Peace laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk andSir Richard Roberts, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, have co-drafted and signed a letter addressed to the two co-founders of the Christchurch Call, former Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron. Ardern and Macron founded the Call to prevent a repeat of what happened in Christchurch. The Call recognizes, inter alia, that addressing disinformation, harassment, abuse, and hatred online is critical to future-proofing the Christchurch Call.

We, the signatories of the letter, agree. Understanding how terrorist, violent, and extremist content proliferates and influences online is central to humanity’s existential challenges in many areas, including systemic inequalities, climate change, and increased political polarization. To do this, we propose studying the links between forms of online hate—such as misogyny, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and white supremacy—and terrorist and violent acts offline. These violent acts have real life consequences. We need to identify proper interventions, including accountability for how the perpetrators utilize the online space that is currently essential to their operations. Evidence from such studies may help support interventions to counter potential violence by at least monitoring, if not regulating, the degree of these forms of terrorism and violent extremist content online.

The fifth anniversary of the Christchurch massacre is a poignant reminder of the very real losses from such a heinous and senseless act of violence. It is never too late.

Eirliani Abdul Rahman is a final-year doctoral student at Harvard University. She was one of the three women who resigned from Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council in December 2022 to protest the meteoric rise in hate speech after Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.