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The Christchurch Attack Report: Key Takeaways on Tarrant’S Radicalization and Attack Planning

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The Christchurch Attack Report: Key Takeaways on Tarrant’S Radicalization and Attack Planning The Christchurch Attack Report: Key Takeaways on Tarrant’s Radicalization and Attack Planning Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, Chelsea Daymon and Amarnath Amarasingam i The Christchurch Attack Report: Key Takeaways on Tarrant’s Radicalization and Attack Planning Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, Chelsea Daymon and Amarnath Amarasingam ICCT Perspective December 2020 ii About ICCT The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) is an independent think and do tank providing multidisciplinary policy advice and practical, solution- oriented implementation support on prevention and the rule of law, two vital pillars of effective counterterrorism. ICCT’s work focuses on themes at the intersection of countering violent extremism and criminal justice sector responses, as well as human rights-related aspects of counterterrorism. The major project areas concern countering violent extremism, rule of law, foreign fighters, country and regional analysis, rehabilitation, civil society engagement and victims’ voices. Functioning as a nucleus within the international counter-terrorism network, ICCT connects experts, policymakers, civil society actors and practitioners from different fields by providing a platform for productive collaboration, practical analysis, and exchange of experiences and expertise, with the ultimate aim of identifying innovative and comprehensive approaches to preventing and countering terrorism. Licensing and Distribution ICCT publications are published in open access format and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License, which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. ICCT Perspective December 2020 ISSN: 2468-0486 iii Contents What do we know about the perpetrator’s radicalization process? 1 Did the internet have a particularly important role in his radicalization process? 2 What does the report say about how the attack was planned? 3 Conclusion 4 Bibliography 6 About the Authors 8 iv What do we know about the perpetrator’s radicalization process? On 8 December 2020, the Royal Commission of Inquiry terventions from anti-racism officers due to anti-semitic in New Zealand released its report into the 15 March remarks, and point to a nonconformist personality, along 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting during which 51 with the development of more extreme views. Muslim worshippers were killed.1 The nearly 800 page report concludes that despite shortcomings on the part However, as Borum and Schuurman and Taylor note, of various security agencies, there was no clear signs having extreme beliefs does not mean that an individ- the attack was imminent, and made 44 recommenda- ual will engage in violence.4 Many people with similar tions, ranging from improvements to counter-terrorism, personality types, beliefs, or traits to Tarrant’s do not firearms licencing, calls for new legislation to criminalize commit attacks. McCauley and Moskalenko state that planning or preparing a terrorist attack, and strengthen- “individuals with radical ideas are 100 times more com- ing existing laws around hate-speech. mon than individuals involved in radical action; targeting ideas rather than actions multiplies the enemy by a fac- After conducting more than 400 interviews, and comb- tor of a hundred.”5 ing through over 73,000 pages of evidence and sub- missions, the report took about 18 months to draft. The This points to what scholars of radicalization and ter- interviews included Muslim community leaders, gov- rorism have labeled the “specificity problem”, which as ernmental agency officials - including police, customs, Lorne Dawson notes, is “at the core of all analyses of immigration and intelligence services - along with ex- the process of radicalization.”6 The specificity problem perts and officials in England, Norway, and Australia. In is defined simply as follows: a manner similar to the Gjørv Report commissioned after the 2011 Norway attacks,2 this report provides the public “whenever we encounter an explanation of why with an exhaustive and clear picture of the perpetrator, some person or group has engaged in terrorism, his process of radicalization, and his plan of attack. In we need to ask if the causal factors identified are what follows, we summarize and contextualize, based sufficiently specific to explain why that person or on the academic literature, these three important ele- group engaged in violence, since, more often than ments of the attack. not, the factors apply equally well to a wider set of individuals who did not become violent.”7 What do we know In other words, while the report places much emphasis on Tarrant’s time online, his travel experiences, and his about the perpetrator’s struggles in early childhood, none of these are “suffi- ciently specific” to be explanatory in themselves. radicalization process? What also remains wanting in the report is a deeper ex- While the report is quite clear in detailing Tarrant’s pro- amination of why some of the early interventions did not cess of radicalization, it is also the aspect of the report prove effective. We know from the report that Tarrant that, for radicalization researchers, feels a little incom- was racist, spewing hate speech, and engaging with plete. Just as pathways to terrorism are a personal pro- hateful online content since his teenage years. It is also cess with divergent factors, this can also be said for the clear from the report that this did not go unchallenged process of radicalization. Sageman and McCauley and or unnoticed. As the report states, “He was twice dealt Moskalenko note that there are two types of radicali- with by one of his high school teachers, who was also zation.3 The first is gaining extreme beliefs, or what is the Anti-Racism Contact Officer, in respect of anti-Sem- known as “cognitive radicalization,” while the second is itism.”8 As the report acknowledges, some of this kind a change in behavior which can lead to violence, known of racism and hate speech would not have raised the as “behavioral radicalization.” The report outlines Tar- same kind of alarm bells as, by way of comparison, an in- rant’s shift from cognitive to behavioral radicalization dividual spewing jihadist rhetoric. Even still, it would be in a rather unexceptional way. Various factors including important to know more about the kinds of interventions a broken home, unrestricted and unsupervised access that were attempted with Tarrant, and whether there are to the Internet, the consumption of far-right literature, a any lessons that could be learned about why such early lack of personal connections, a “loner” type personality, diversion strategies did not work. and behavioral worries. These resulted in two school in- 1 “Ko Tō Tātou Kāinga Tēnei, Report: Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Masjidain on 15 March 2019” (The Royal Commission, December 2, 2020), https://christchurchattack.royalcommission.nz/the-report/. 2 Rapport fra 22. juli-kommisjonen: Oppnevnt ved kongelig resolusjon 12. august 2011 for å gjennomgå og trekke lærdom fra angrepene på regjeringskvartalet og Utøya 22. juli 2011 : Avgitt til statsministeren 13. august 2012. (Oslo: Departementenes Servicesenter, 2012), https://www. regjeringen.no/no/dokumenter/nou-2012-14/id697260/. 3 Marc Sageman, Misunderstanding Terrorism (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017); Clark R. McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko, Friction: How Conflict Radicalizes Them and Us, Revised and expanded edition (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 4 Randy Borum, “Radicalization into Violent Extremism II: A Review of Conceptual Models and Empirical Research,” Journal of Strategic Security 4, no. 4 (December 2011): 37–62, https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.4.4.2; Bart Schuurman and Max Taylor, “Reconsidering Radicalization: Fanaticism and the Link Between Ideas and Violence” 12, no. 1 (2018): 20. 5 McCauley and Moskalenko, Friction, 274. 6 Lorne Dawson, “Clarifying the Explanatory Context for Developing Theories of Radicalization: Five Basic Considerations,” Journal for Deradicalization 18 (2019): 149. 7 Ibid. 8 “Ko Tō Tātou Kāinga Tēnei, 168. 1 Did the internet have a particularly important role in his radicalization process? have started frequenting the imageboard website 4chan Did the internet have a - a notorious hotbed of white supremacist and conspir- atorial content14 - at the age of 14, around the time he particularly important started expressing racist ideas. role in his radicalization The influence of 4chan’s subculture is apparent in Tar- rant’s manifesto. Robert Evans shows how Tarrant’s process? manifesto employs “shitposting,” a tactic used to distract a general audience away from an intended meaning, Despite attempts to conceal some of his online activities while grabbing the attention of its targeted audience.15 - including purging his Facebook profile in 2018, using Notable far-right memes are also used in this way, pro- Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), Tor browsers, encrypt- viding a sense of solidarity and unification among those ing emails, deleting emails, and removing a hard drive familiar with the memes in the manifesto and the inter- from his computer prior to the attack - Tarrant still left a net culture surrounding them.16 Consequently, the man- significant digital footprint. His online activities prior to ifesto can be seen as a coded document
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