Dissecting Myths of a Great Replacement A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Christchurch Terror Attack Manifesto by Kevin Hayder Shakir A Bachelor Thesis Communication Studies & Cultural Encounters Global Humanities at Roskilde University Number of Characters: 87.727
[email protected] June 2019 Abstract This paper analyses the manifesto “The Great Replacement – Towards a New Society We March Ever Forwards”, written by Brenton Tarrant, who carried out the anti-Muslim terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand the 15th of March 2019. It employs Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis along with Sara Ahmed’s writings of imagined communities as collective and emotional bodies. The paper reveals how the manifesto idealizes a “hard” “European” nation as a transnational, racial, cultural and political homogenous white, nation. It visualizes how the author of the manifesto, is constructed as a hero and martyr throughout the text. This paper discusses how the manifesto draws on online “chan” culture discourse and employs so-called “shitposting” tactics. It shows how the manifesto produces discourses that construct the perceived “Other” as a dehumanized and killable subject. This paper argues that the narratives of The Great Replacement manifesto have social implications, as seen with the synagogue attack the 27th of April in Poway, California, USA, which cloned the methods and language of the Christchurch terror attack. The paper implies that the struggle in the manifesto of whether the “European” community should be a “soft” or “hard” nation, is prevalent in the political landscape of several Global North countries. Keywords: Brenton Tarrant, The Great Replacement, Terrorism, 8chan, Critical Discourse Analysis, Imagined Communities, Far-right, New Right, Identitarianism, Racism Table of Contents Introduction ..