As I read through the Buffalo shooter’s 180-page manifesto last night, I was struck again and again by a feeling of familiarity. Had I read something like this before?
As it turned out I had. Something exactly like it.
Here’s the opening of the Buffalo manifesto:
If there’s one thing I want you to get from these writings, it’s that White birth rates must change. Everyday the White population becomes fewer in number.
And here’s the opening of the manifesto left behind by the Christchurch gunman, who killed 51 in attacks on two separate mosques in 2019 due to his paranoid fears of an anti-white “Great Replacement.”
It’s the birthrates.
It’s the birthrates.
It’s the birthrates.
If there is one thing I want you to remember from these writings, its that the birthrates must change. Even if we were to deport all Non-Europeans from our lands tomorrow, the European people would still be spiraling into decay and eventual death
Here’s the over-the-top conclusion of the Buffalo manifesto:
As for me, my time has come. I cannot guarantee my success. All I know is the certainty of my will and the necessity of my cause. Live or die, know I did it all for you; my friends, my family, my people, my culture, my race.
Goodbye, God bless you all and I hope to see you in Valhalla
And here’s the over-the-top conclusion of the Christchurch manifesto.
As for me, my time has come. I cannot guarantee my success. All I know is the certainty of my will and the necessity of my cause. Live or die, know I did it all for you; my friends, my family, my people, my culture, my RACE.
Goodbye, god bless you all and I will see you in Valhalla.
EUROPA RISES
Between these two points — the plagiarized opening words and the plagiarized finale — there’s much of the same. Most of the rest of the Buffalo manifesto come straight from the Christchurch manifesto — page after page of cut-and-pasted text with minor variations scattered throughout.
The structure is nearly identical to that of the Christchurch manifesto, consisting mostly of a series of questions and answers much like those in internet FAQs.
Even the coldest and cruelest potions of the Christchurch manifesto are copied nearly verbatim into the Buffalo manifesto:
Buffalo:
Children are always innocent, do you not think you are a monster for killing an innocent?
Children of replacers do not stay children, they become adults and reproduce, creating more replacers to replace your people. They grow up and vote against your peoples own wishes, for the interests of their own people and identity. They grow up and take the potential homes of your people.
Christchurch:
Children are always innocent, do you not think you are a monster for killing an innocent?
Children of invaders do not stay children, they become adults and reproduce, creating more invaders to replace your people. They grow up and vote against your peoples own wishes, for the interests of their own people and identity. They grow up and take the potential homes of your own people for themselves … .
I wen through the two documents side-by-side last night, and it’s all like this — with a few notable exceptions. There’s an overlong section in the manifesto’s middle where the Buffalo shooter outlines in detail his gear he had assembled for his “mission” and similarly detailed plans of the (then future) attack itself. These sections are striking in their focus on the tiniest details — from the Buffalo shooter’s favorite underwear (Hanes boxer briefs, bought for him by his mother) and the breakfast he intended to eat on the day of his attack (corned beef hash).
These sections seem clearly designed to assist any future shooter trying to pull together his own set of gear.
In the manifesto portions of the manifestos there are also a few big differences. The Christchurch killer aimed his ire at Muslim “invaders.” The Buffalo shooter ignored much of this material and inserted his own sections on the alleged evils of blacks and Jews. He has somehow convinced himself that black people are “invaders” of America, when they came here in chains. He has also convinced himself that black people are a different and inferior species.
I’m not sure that the Buffalo shooter really understands what plagiarism really is; he may think his blatant copying of the Christchurch manifesto is a sort of tribute to its author, whom he idolizes.
The Buffalo shooter was “educated” on 4chan, after all, where he absorbed his current racist beliefs from what he describes as a wide assortment of “infographics, shitposts, and memes.” Notably, all of these sources are anonymous, passed around 4chan and other social media forums with little regard for authorship or originality. Indeed, he fills his manifesto with what must be hundreds of racist and antisemitic memes which seem to have radicalized him nearly as much as the Christchurch killer did,
Over the last several years, we’ve faced a veritable torrent of copycat mass shootings. But I never expected to run across someone this literal in his copycatting.
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Perhaps there’s a website similar to those college paper sites that lets you download a shooter’s manifesto template and gives the would-be shooter instructions on how to fill it out.
Shootings are so common nowadays it really wouldn’t surprise me to learn such a template (or ten) exists. 🙁
Aka the id of the collective unconscious. :/
Ah, no need for special websites when that’s what Tucker Carlson and 4chan is for. I have observed that people prone to most forms of bigotry tend to be entirely unimaginative and mostly parrot the things they’ve been told by those they consider authorities. Guys like him love to think of themselves as leaders and individualists, but they’re just followers through and through.
The shooter has only been on this planet for less than twenty years, so I very much doubt there was a single original thought in his head. I think, to some degree, we all do this sort of thing, but most of us learn to critically question what we’re told, by whom, and why, by the time we’re his age, even when we don’t have any experiences to answer our questions.
This was as it is in a lot of such cases the culmination of a grand combination of his life and emotional weaknesses (like narcissism, ignorance, lack of empathy, and probably a few more). I only think this because I know people who had been subjected to the same sources of information he did, but they somehow manage to reject it.
I wish they really was an afterlife, just for these people. This guy deserves to be poked by a pitchfork wielding demand who tells “Your mother buys your underpants!”
Frankly, these useless violent bigots aren’t being replaced fast enough.
You will all be relieved to know that it was all just a false flag FBI turned plant that did this. All a part of the giant government conspiracy to make us think mass shooters are coming for us, so we relinquish or god given right to shoot each other. Or that’s the narrative the right are spinning on this. Any belief system to get out of the guilt for inciting this violence. Every time I look at the BS being spewed on those sights, my hope for humanity sinks even lower. I’m surprised there isn’t a Kool Aid shortage.
If this scumbag murderer wanted to “preserve the race”, maybe he should have gone out and had some White babies, huh. Oh, wait, parenthood is hard. Being a psycho killer is apparently easier.
Was this asshole also an incel?
@Impatient and Gorgeous Bitch Becky
He doesn’t seem to have hidden his racism, but I haven’t heard of any incel-type rhetoric from him. So for the time being I’m just going to heartily disapprove of his racism and his overall attitude, especially the bits that told him that opening fire on grocery shoppers was a neat idea.
As a side note, I’ve heard elsewhere that this store was one of the few supermarkets in the area. So the Buffalo shooter has just made life even more difficult for the community. (Imagine a few more hundred words from me here about food deserts.)
@Victorious Parasol: Really? That makes this so much worse. I wonder if the gunman took that into consideration or if it was just shit luck that it was the only supermarket. I’m leaning to the latter but the outcome is the same.
Of course it was because we all know people of color aren’t allowed to buy real groceries, right? They should only have access to unhealthy food so that health problems can be their fault.
Fucking structural racism compounding asshole boy’s murder.
Yeah. I don’t know if the shooter picked the target with extra-smart malice aforethought, or if he just figured a grocery store is a target-rich environment. Either way, it makes me just about as angry as the Mother Emmanuel* shooting.
*Note: I’m a preacher’s kid and I used to live in Charleston. I know exactly where the Emanuel AME Church is, and one of the deceased was someone I recognized.
Giving credit where it’s due: The “somewhere” I read about how the supermarket’s in a food desert was on this very blog. Thanks to Ursa George Artio and lkekee5 for sharing your local knowledge.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants. I couldn’t agree more. May they all be replaced.
Like all young incels and racists – if there is any difference – he was both very lonely, too pampered (even though I’d need more info to blame his parents, the fact he had money to buy this murder gear suggests something truly ugly in itself. though whether racist, dumb or both is unclear) and too damn lazy to actually be a human being.
Valhalla?
He wouldn’t be allowed as a cupbearer on this earth.
Is it an injustice that the racist mass murderers from Norway, New Zealand, and this punk might get a better life than the race of people that they murdered?
It’s such a shame I wonder if this Earth is hell for racialized people. The Norway mass murderer lives in a prison which is far better than the NYC apartments that house non-whites.
Just catching up on this story. I note that he singled out London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Notwithstanding the Mayor made a trip to the US last week to promote London, I cannot imagine he would have crossed the radar of a 20 years old from Buffalo. So again I suspect he’s just cutting and pasting someone else’s comments. Hopefully the authorities will be checking the original sources of his manifesto.
Of fucking course he’s a lazy, good for nothing, fuck. Of course he copied someone else’s bullshit. Do you think he ever had an original thought in his head? We are talking about the laziest, most worthless type of person there is. We’re talking about the kind of fucktard who thinks that he can achieve greatness by killing a few people. And he doesn’t even have the balls to go after people who are shooting back! He could have gone to Ukraine and made a go at being a hero but he went to Buffalo instead! And even in becoming a mass shooter he was copying others. What else could we expect?
If he’d gone to Ukraine it would undoubtedly have been to join the Russian forces. 😛
Meanwhile, it was a bad, bad day to be heavily invested in crypto:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/technology/cryptocurrencies-crash-bitcoin.html
Even so-called “stablecoin” breeds that are supposed to be insulated from crypto’s notorious volatility took a hit. This not long after the multi-zillion-dollar “first tweet” NFT lost so much value you could now buy it for the cost of a KFC chicken dinner and fries.
I hear the distinct sound of a bubble popping … and I wonder what else it will spread to. “Conventional” banks and hedge funds and such have been investing in crypto lately … just like they’d been investing in dubious mortgage-backed securities in 2007.
Alan, you’re right, the Sadiq Khan bits were just copied and pasted from the Christchurch manifesto.
@ david
Ah thank you, I should have guessed.
So all his manifesto is a crib from Charlestown? He didn’t even synthesise his thesis from multiple sources; it’s just blatant plagiarism? I really need to think about that in relation to online radicalisation. Like, does it slowly build, or can someone just see a piece and instantly think, I agree with all that.
@Alan
I wonder if there’s a kind of bricolage effect going on – the Qanon movement seems to have fostered this kind of process. Take a bit from here, a bit from there, and bring it to a boil.
@lkekee5 –
Right on.
And even when the targets change, the bigotry is pretty copy-paste:
-Some guy in France writing about the “great replacement” as a Muslim plot to “conquer” Europe
-Charlottesville neo-nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us”
-And now this murderer saying Black Americans are “invaders” (as David wrote, a lot of their ancestors were literally enslaved)
…
As for the modern concept of plagiarism, though, not every time and culture had the same views. Plus, what works for academic/publishing culture doesn’t necessarily apply to more casual stuff, so I’m not sure that memes spreading “with little regard for authorship or originality” is the problem. The problem is when the content is bigoted and violent, like here.
(I mean, I’d be pissed off if someone attributed my creative writing to themselves, but one time when I discovered someone online “stole” a joke I made, I decided not to bother about it, figuring it was kind of public property.)
(But apologies if I misread your intent on that point, David.)
@ Vicky P
Had to google that word. But it seems a very apt descriptor.
I find myself a bit puzzled with the plethora of conspiracy theories. Have they always been there? But before the Internet people just brooded on their own. Now of course they can go once and have their nebulous thoughts articulated and amplified by online provocateurs.
But do they even believe them; or is it some sort of shibboleth?
Like, I can understand some CTs, even if I think they’re nonsense. Like antivax grows out of that general suspicion of big Pharma maybe. And maybe Apollo hoaxes are just a reflection of post Watergate disillusionment with government. But flat earth? How can anyone seriously subscribe to that?
Clearly though there are a lot of true believers.
And then there’s the whole crank magnetism phenomenon.
But I guess as apophenia may play a big part in CT thinking generally, then it’s maybe understandable that those susceptible will be open to the idea of it all being one complex web of deceit and cover up.
@Alan
I’m rather fond of “bricolage.” I learned it years ago and I think the concept deserves a wider audience because it seems to fit so many things – how memory actually works, for instance, rather than the film/video approach we like to think it is.
As far as belief goes, I’m not sure how much of it is belief as I would define it vs belief-as-membership-badge. Certainly the latter is prevalent in Qanon. If you believe, you are In. You can thrash a few things about, but the core tenets (whatever they happen to be this week) are their catechism.
The flat earthers get scowled at pretty regularly in the Parasol household, because both of us had enough science education early on that we know the general shape of Earth has been understood for thousands of years, thanks to people who actually LOOKED AROUND and thought about what they were seeing. I think a flat world is a delightful concept when it’s Discworld, but Pterry was being playful and he knew it.
I do think conspiracy theories feed the sort of cozy tribalism need we humans have, but I do wish particular CTs weren’t so harmful.
Sorry for this being a bit disjointed; it’s hard to come up with a unified theory of conspiracy theories.