A Facebook Live video was posted Friday apparently showing the New Zealand mosque gunman videotaping his attack while it was ongoing.
The video was apparently taken by the account “Brenton Tarrant 9,” according to the visible URL. A screengrab shows the credit “Brenton Tarrant was live.”
The disturbing 17-minute video follows the attacker from his car before the attack to fleeing in his car after.
The Washington Times viewed 75 seconds of it that was posted to WordPress before it was taken down. That segment shows the camera point-of-view entering an area that matches photos of Masjid Al Noor mosque.
The tape then shows the barrel of a weapon as the camera follows it, as if in a first-person shooter game like the Counter-Strike and Call of Duty games. The weapon fires repeatedly, and on-camera deaths and woundings are shown.
The tape, viewed by The Times, matches earlier reports that the gunman taped his attack.
According to reporters, Mr. Tarrant claimed responsibility in a 74-page manifesto titled “The Great Replacement,” portions of which were screen-grabbed on Twitter and all of it posted on Scribd, which has since taken it down.
In the manifesto, Mr. Tarrant offers qualified support for U.S. President Donald Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose,” but “as a policymaker and leader, dear god no.”
The manifesto criticizes declining white birthrates — “It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates.” it begins.
“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.”
Mr. Tarrant decries “mass immigration” as “white genocide” and says why he commits the attack.
“To most of all show the invaders that our lands will never be their lands, our homelands are our own, and that, as long as a white man still lives, they will NEVER conquer our lands and they will never replace our people.”
He then goes on to catalog a list of atrocities committed against white Europeans that he is avenging.
Mr. Tarrant also has a U.S. goal in mind in committing the attack — fomenting a second American Civil War.
“Finally, to create conflict between the two ideologies within the United States on the ownership of firearms in order to further the social, cultural, political and racial divide within the United States. This conflict over the 2nd amendment and the attempted removal of firearms rights will ultimately result in a civil war that will eventually balkanize the US [that] will not only result in the the racial separation of people within the United States ensuring the future of the White race on the North American continent but also ensuring the death of the ’melting pot’ pipe dream,” he writes.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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