The Enigma of Christchurch

Posted By Travis LeBlanc On In North American New Right | Comments Disabled

[1]2,764 words

I fought in the Optics Wars. I was in there, man. I was in those 504-um mega-threads alongside Ricky Vaughn, Weev, and Andrew Anglin, debating the primary issue of the day (optics) against the members of the Traditional Workers Party, their malevolent wignat allies, and the odd well-meaning “us pro-whites have to stick together no matter what” useful idiot.

And I was there when the Treaty of Cuckbox [2] was signed.

“The movement” (to such an extent that such a thing exists) was to be as it was always meant to be: only online. No goon marches, no waiting for the big collapse, and certainly no overthrowin’ the goddamn government. We had Trump, a MAGA movement, and a growing presence on YouTube. We had some tools we could work with.

By decree of the Treaty of Cuckbox, all LARPers, Siege-readers, costume-wearers, accelerationists, Dylann Roof-fetishists, and various humorless and irony-deaf wignats were to be banished from the land. They were to be exiled to the remote island of Gab, where they could dick-size their edgieness to each other and form a cult around Patrick Little. So let it be written. So let it be done.

But since then, we have seen two wignat shooting sprees.

First, there was the October 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, where militant wignat Robert Bowers’ final social media post before embarking on his one-man pogrom actually referenced the Optics War: “Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

[3]The phrase has become iconic [4] in Dissident Right circles. Mr. Bond [5], the world’s premier Internet Nazi rapper [6], even named his most recent album [7] after Bowers’ famous battle cry.

But the notable thing about Bowers’ famous last words was to whom they were directed. Before riding into battle, who did Bowers want to have one last dig at? It was not the Left. It was not the Jews. Nor was it to the “Establishment/DeepState/Cathedral,” “The Man,” or even those rich fat cats. His final parting shot was to people like me, Weev, Andrew Anglin, Greg Johnson, Millennial Woes, and Ricky Vaughn: the “optics cucks.” We are the “your” in “screw your optics.”

Then, fast-forward to last week. Trump has turned to the Dark Side, Brexit isn’t happening. The future of populism, already bleak, has been thrown into greater uncertainty. The YangGang [8] starts looking like an attractive consolation prize for Dissident Rightists looking for something to continue fighting for.

Then there is another wignat shooting, this time in Christchurch, New Zealand, and now the world has been turned on its head. Nothing that has happened in the history of the Dissident Right has prepared us for this – not Hailgate, not Charlottesville, not Dylann Roof, not the synagogue shooting. Brenton Tarrant, an Australian man apparently extremely well-versed in chan culture, White Nationalist ideology, and esoteric Alt Right memes went on a shooting spree at two mosques, murdering fifty Muslims and injuring many more.

There’s something . . . different about this. Like something has changed, like a corner has been turned. It’s not as black-pilling as I thought it would be. People’s reactions have frequently been surprising. It almost makes one question what they think they know about politics.

Now, I oppose terrorism. I believe in the strength of our ideas, and that they would certainly triumph in a genuinely free-speech environment. I have not yet abandoned all hope that at least some beneficial change can be derived democratically – and yaada, yadda, yadda. But I would be lying if I said there were no silver linings to be found here.

Maybe I’ll feel differently when the big Deep State backlash really hits, but at the moment, just looking around at all the reactions, I’m left wondering, “Am I losing my mind? Have the wignats been right this whole time? Should I really go off into the woods and read Siege after all?”

This Christchurch massacre has done something that other public relations catastrophes such as Dylann Roof and Charlottesville did not do: it has actually sparked a dialogue favorable to our cause. You would think it would have the opposite effect – but so far, it has not.

There have been reports that Breitbart has been mass-deleting comments [9] from people sympathetic to Tarrant, something you did not see in the wake of Dylann Roof. People as far away as the United Kingdom have been getting arrested [10] for speaking favorably [11] of Tarrant. And a man in New Zealand is facing ten years in prison [12] for sharing Tarrant’s livestream of the massacre.

These are not all hardcore White Nationalists. Some are ordinary people. If the goal of the Christchurch attack was to force the establishment to overreach, it appears that they are now casting a wider net.

Consider the differences between the public reactions to Charlottesville and the Christchurch shooting. In both cases, the events were roundly denounced and disavowed by everyone on both the Left and the Right, but the difference in the level of cucking is conspicuous. Even supposed free speech advocates sided with the state and the Antifa against the marchers at Charlottesville who were trying to peacefully assemble. But then this Tarrant guy walks into a couple mosques, blows away fifty Muslims, and there are normies saying, “Well, he does have a point.”

The difference is that in the case of Christchurch, the mainstream Right has been holding firm that the problem of Islam in the West is still a legitimate issue, whereas they ran from white identity politics after Charlottesville. It’s . . . odd.

Look at this Paul Joseph Watson tweet [13]:

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That’s more than anyone ever did for us after Charlottesville. We didn’t even get the usual “I hate Nazis, but damn it, they have the right to the First Amendment” support that time. They denounced the event itself and all the underlying themes that Unite the Right represented. After Dylann Roof’s massacre, no one was saying, “Well, blacks do rape a lot of white women.” But with Christchurch, people are saying, “Okay, but that doesn’t mean that Muslims aren’t assholes.”

I hate to say it, but it looks an awful lot as if people respond more positively to outright terrorism with good optics than to a peaceful demonstration with bad optics. I don’t want that to be true, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look like that at this moment.

Now, I’m certainly not saying that mowing down fifty praying civilians is “good optics.” But Brenton Tarrant is a character, and that counts for something. He’s a character in the same way that Al Capone, John Dillinger, or Bonnie and Clyde were characters, and they all became folk heroes despite being murderous criminals. Any sufficiently charismatic criminal will eventually acquire a fan base. Just look at the fascination around Charles Manson, or the love letters women send to jailed serial killers.

In this sense, Brenton Tarrant had better optics than Dylann Roof or Timothy McVeigh. It is Tarrant’s own personality which is one of the things that sets Christchurch apart: he stamped the event with his own personality.

As Roy Batty of The Daily Stormer put it [15], Tarrant “made RaHoWa seem laid-back and chill rather than tryhard or cringe.” Indeed, this is true, much as Al Capone made being a gangster look like glitz and glamour with a touch of excitement and danger.

On top of this, Capone, son of a bitch that he may have been, was flouting an unpopular program most people considered immoral (Prohibition). That was undoubtedly a mitigating factor in the minds of some of the public. Likewise, Tarrant is flouting another program (the Great Replacement) that is deeply unpopular with the masses. And that will likewise influence people’s view of him.

You still see cucking. Some. But no more than absolutely necessary. What you don’t see is a lot of is people rushing out to virtue-signal their love of Muslims.

[16]Tucker Carlson addressed the issue [17] on his show Monday night with the professional Islamophobe and totally-not-racist Mark Steyn. Mark Steyn is fairly woke for a normie, and was an immigration hawk even in his neocon days. He helped popularize the phase “demographics is destiny” [18] in the 2000s. Steyn knows what’s up vis-à-vis Muslims. Tucker and Steyn spun Christchurch as an argument for free speech. Terrorism, argues Steyn, is the inevitable result of not allowing people to debate the issue.

In addition to Tarrant’s personality, the Muslim angle is a key difference in setting this apart from other high-profile White Nationalist events. Dylann Roof chose to kill blacks, which was destined to backfire because many people feel sorry for and/or protective of blacks. And the Jewish Question [19] is too complicated for most normies who have been raised on Holocaust propaganda to grasp, so shooting up a synagogue was unlikely to wake anyone up. But no one likes Muslims. If anything, it’s actually amazing that it’s taken so long for something like this to happen. It’s astonishing that there weren’t twenty Christchurch-style shootings during the immediate post-9/11 Bush years, when Islamophobia was considered perfectly normal and the US government itself was raining down death and terror on hundreds of thousands of Muslims in their homelands.

Muslims are so unlikable that there are absolutely no positive stereotypes about them. Every other race will have some positive stereotypes. For example, blacks are good athletes and have a good sense of rhythm, Asians are good at math, Jews are good at comedy, Indians are polite and hardworking, Hispanics have good food, Native Americans are wise and in touch with nature. But what are the positive stereotypes about Muslims? Try to think of one. There aren’t any.

There used to be the stereotype that Muslims were conservative and pro-family. The idea that Muslims were brown-skinned Evangelicals was a popular Bush-era meme. But then we learned about the rape gangs and saw their aggressive behavior on the streets. The idea of Muslims as brown-skinned WASPS became ridiculous. And then the media began promoting “liberated” Muslim women – so there went that positive stereotype.

Even the greatest minds on the Left can’t think of anything nice to say about Muslims. The nicest thing anyone can come up with about Muslims is that they aren’t all terrorists.

On top of this, white people feel no historical white guilt in relation to Muslims. We didn’t forcefully bring them here, and no one asked them to come – which makes manipulating whites into sympathizing with them much more difficult for our overlords. Whites don’t feel they owe Muslims anything.

Yet another factor in play is the location of the Christchurch shooting: New Zealand. New Zealand is a place that everybody has heard of, but no one has been to. No one really knows much about the place other than that it’s supposed to be Australia’s Canada or something (you know – basically the same, but technically not). Nothing much ever happens in New Zealand, and their only contribution to world culture has been the two [21]–hit [22] wonders, Crowded House, and the fact that the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed there. For most people, New Zealand might as well be in Narnia. Thus, the fact that this shooting happened on this far-off, semi-legendary island allows people to look at the matter in a more detached and dispassionate fashion.

And perhaps people are more red-pilled and battle-hardened than before. Since Charlottesville, we have seen anti-white canards such as the Covington and Smollett hoaxes. They’ve seen Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes deplatformed. People now know the media is not their friend, and bowing to them gets you nothing. People feel less of a need to carry water for a system that they know is coming for them next. Maybe the moderates are waking up to the anti-white agenda and realizing that the time has come to fight back. “Yes, terrorism is bad, but by golly, Muslims are still assholes!”

It should be noted that Mr. Tarrant put things in his manifesto and video solely for the purpose of making moderates the target of establishment retaliation. For example, Tarrant cited black cuckservative Candace “prison inmates are natural Republicans” Owens as the person who radicalized him, which is a ridiculous claim. Then there was the killer’s now-legendary shoutout to YouTuber Pewdiepie, which caused Pewdiepie’s subreddit to be closed [15].

Moderates know now that their speech can be taken away for reasons outside of their control even if they play by the PC rules and stay within the approved boundaries. All it takes is for some kook to drop your name, and bam, there goes your freedom of speech. Tarrant’s intention here was to force moderates onto the same side as the radicals, or at least to force them to become more active co-belligerents against the system.

But now, please allow me to break out the tinfoil hat for a moment.

[23]

I’m not saying this is a false flag. I am agnostic on that. Having said that, I believe there is probable cause not to rule out some sort of shenanigans. I’m not the only one. Rush Limbaugh is calling Christchurch a hoax [24]. He thinks Tarrant is a Leftist trying to make the Right look bad. That’s miles better than outright cucking, because Rush’s theory at least presumes the existence of an anti-white conspiracy. At worst, he is right for the wrong reasons. So, because the theory is already out there, let’s look at the case for Christchurch being a false flag.

First, there is Brenton Tarrant, the man with the English boarding school-sounding name at the center of it all. This guy comes out of nowhere and says all the right things. He knows Dissident Right memes and ideology backwards and forwards, and yet no one in the Dissident Right knows or has heard of this guy. Maybe he’s been playing a very looooooooooooong game? Maybe he’s been planning this for years, all the while moving in our circles, but never making any close associations? It’s almost a little too perfect.

Second, Breton Tarrant has a sense of humor which no wignat actually has. This makes me question whether he is a real wignat.

Third, Tarrant had the money to travel the world, despite being a fitness instructor. He claims to have gotten rich on cryptocurrency, which is not impossible, but . . . convenient. If he was so independently wealthy, he should have been donating to outlets like Counter-Currents and The Daily Stormer, which are badly in need of funding. But I digress.

And where Tarrant chose to travel is also interesting, given that his destinations include Turkey and Pakistan [25], of all places. According to a hotel owner there who described him as a “regular tourist,” Tarrant was in Pakistan as recently as October. Then there is Tarrant’s nine-day stay in Israel in 2016. [26] It’s interesting that a White Nationalist would visit these places rather than go to Rome, the heart of Christendom, for inspiration, or his ancestral homeland of Britain. Instead, he visited Eastern Europe and a bunch of non-white countries. This doesn’t prove anything, but it’s weird.

I have heard differing opinions on whether Tarrant appeared to have military training. I do not have it myself, so I am not qualified to say. But some found the fact that Tarrant was a little too cool under pressure suspicious.

Still others consider the lack of anti-Semitism in Tarrant’s manifesto to be suspicious. How can a guy so well versed in Dissident Right memes and ideas not be seriously woke on the JQ? It’s possible Tarrant had tactical reasons for doing this, of course. Had Tarrant made Jews a central part of his manifesto, Christchurch would have been a “Nazi shooting” rather than a “White Nationalist shooting.” If his goal was to rope moderates into the fight, this was the right move, since normies have a knee-jerk reaction to anything “Nazi.” They have been conditioned to it. But everyone knows that you can hate Muslims without being a Nazi. Hell, even some Jews hate Muslims!

Early reports also mentioned an accomplice (possibly two) [27] being arrested along with Tarrant, although nothing has been heard of this fellow since [28]. Who was that guy? I’d kinda like to know who that guy was before I put my tinfoil hat back in the drawer.

For more on the theory that Christchurch was a false flag, check out Johnny Monoxcide’s Paranormies episode on Christchurch [29]. For the moment, remain agnostic.

However, if the Christchurch shooting was in fact some elaborate ZOG operation, they really didn’t think it through very well. Or maybe they were a little too good at their job, because either way, Christchurch is turning out not to be the public relations gift-from-God the Left may have hoped for.