THE RED HAT IS THE RED FLAG:

What at first sight may appear as an isolated attack in an obscure German city is anything but. The manifesto the attacker posted online -- as well as his comments during the livestream -- make clear that this is just the latest in a series of interconnected far-right terrorist attacks that have taken place across the world. It follows on from attacks in Pittsburgh (United States), Christchurch (New Zealand), Poway (United States), El Paso (United States) and Bærum (Norway), attacks that have killed 85 people in total over the last year. All of them speak to the same audience of white nationalists online, hoping to inspire them to commit their own acts of violence.

Of those, the March 2019 Christchurch massacre in New Zealand -- which left 51 worshippers dead in two mosques -- has proven to be most influential. Wednesday's attack in Germany featured many of the same hallmarks: the use of a livestream, the stated aim of a mass-casualty attack with "high score" kill counts, the posting of an online manifesto, the use of meme music and the language of relatively obscure internet image boards.

Beyond the similar modus operandi, the Halle shooter also invoked the unifying grand narrative of white-nationalist terrorism today: the "white genocide" conspiracy theory. This is the idea that a Jewish conspiracy is orchestrating the mass immigration of non-whites into Europe and North America with the ultimate aim of destroying the white population. Euphemistically labeled "the great replacement," this was cited as motivation by the Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso shooters. And the Halle attacker explicitly referred to this in his live stream, blaming Jews for feminism, declining birth rates, and mass immigration, as well as denying the Holocaust.

There are, however, differences. While the Christchurch shooter wanted to kill as many Muslims as possible, he also had secondary and tertiary aims: for New Zealand and the United States to ban guns (the reaction), causing people to rise up (the counter-reaction). He said he hoped to have "accelerated" that process. New Zealand did ban assault rifles following the Christchurch massacre, though there was no popular uprising as Tarrant anticipated. 

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