The massacre of Muslims at New Zealand mosques on Friday demonstrated the global reach of a white nationalist movement that preaches an imagined „European“ ideal,…
The massacre of Muslims at New Zealand mosques on Friday demonstrated the global reach of a white nationalist movement that preaches an imagined „European“ ideal, rejects immigration and shares often vicious threats over the internet.
It’s leaderless, fragmented, and relies for attention on lone-wolf type attackers like the 28-year-old Australian loner who allegedly killed 49 people Friday in Christchurch, explaining in a manifesto that he wants to „crush immigration“ and revenge terror attacks on Europe.
But experts say it is a cohesive movement bound together online that stretches across Europe into Russia, has a deep following in the US and Canada, and as Friday’s attack showed, is present in Australia and New Zealand.
They say it poses as much of an international threat as Islamic extremism, and even more so in the United States where white nationalist attacks have outpaced those by jihadists for years.
„White nationalism and far-right extremism is the most prominent extremist threat facing the United States today, and indeed it is a worldwide phenomenon,“ said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
„These folks fear demographic change. They use the term white genocide,“ he said.
– Roots in 1930s, 1940s –
The white nationalist movement has roots in concepts espoused decades ago by European and American fascists and neo-Nazis.
The man who was involved in two mosque shootings in Christchurch filmed himself in his car before the attack, streaming the video on Facebook Live
Handout, HANDOUT/AFP
French historian Nicolas Lebourg noted that the Christchurch suspect’s manifesto cited British 1930s fascist Oswald Mosley, who developed the idea of a planet organized by race.
