While "shitposting" is a common thread in
far-right online culture — meme-ing racism and anti-Semitism is how white supremacists hope to spread their ideology — jokey characteristics of the manifesto are in line with similar language used in
older far-right groups as well.
In short, everything in the Christchurch shooter's manifesto is what the Christchurch shooter wants us to know about him. Like Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide bombing campaign from the 1970s to the 1990s, or even Adolf Hitler's
Mein Kampf, published in 1925, the point of these manifestos is not to be factual or realistic about the inner worlds of their authors. In
Mein Kampf, Hitler portrays himself as a talented artist and lover of architecture. In Kaczynski's manifesto, he portrays himself as a man profoundly concerned about the material problems of industrial society. Manifestos aren't honest. Manifestos are for mass consumption.
But that doesn't mean they aren't useful for people who study terrorist movements, particularly white nationalism. Rather, connections between manifestos and the terrorists who write them — what they say, how they say it, and who they mention — tell us about the international flow of white nationalist ideology.
