New Zealand Mosque Shooting Manifesto: Donald Trump, Anders Breivik Among Those Apparently Mentioned by Alleged Shooter

The gunman who allegedly killed at least 49 people in two Mosques in New Zealand early Friday morning appeared to have produced a 73-page manifesto in which President Donald Trump was described as "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose."

He also posted pictures of his weapons covered with the names of historical figures and ancient battles, many of which were historic victories of Christian forces over Muslims, the Ottomans in particular. In addition, he wrote that "we're coming for Constantinople," a reference to the capital of the Ottoman Empire that today is the Turkish city Istanbul.

The shooter appears to have wanted the world to know his motive or, at the very least, present the world with a narrative about his motivation for attacking innocent mosque-goers. He used the name "Brenton Tarrant" on Twitter and posted pictures of the weapons several days before the attack took place. He also live-streamed the attack on Facebook and posted his manifesto on the website 8chan.

The manifesto itself was called "the Great Replacement," an apparent reference to the far-right, white nationalist theory that immigration will eventually cause the white race to disappear.

Many observers pointed out that the manifesto contained what is known online as "shit posting," the practice of posting outrageous comments to elicit an emotional reaction in viewers and distract from the real meaning of the post. The comments about Trump may have been just that. The attacker also joked that a video game inspired "ethno-nationalism" and taught him to "floss on the corpses of my enemies."

"Well lads it's time to stop shitposting and time to make a real effort post," one social media user wrote when sharing the manifesto.

The alleged shooter's references to historical figures were noteworthy and obscure. Among them was Novak Vujošević, an Orthodox Christian fighter in the Battle of Fundina, which took place in 1876 in the village of Kuči in Montenegro. The names Marko Miljovan Popović and Bajo Pivljanin, two Christian fighters who led forces against the Ottoman Empire in Montenegro and Bosnia, were also written on the weapons.

The names Sarikamish and Sardarapat were written in the Armenian language, a reference to two battles against the Ottoman Empire that took place toward the end of World War I. The attacker also scrawled the named of Christian Kings from Georgia in their original language. David Soslani, a Georgian prince known for battling Georgia's Muslim neighbors, was mentioned on the weapons.

The manifesto also mentioned Oswald Mosely, the founder of the British Union of Fascists, and Luca Traini, an Italian man who opened fire on a group of migrants in 2018. The shooter also claimed to have been inspired by Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who opened fire in a church in South Carolina in 2015, and Anders Breivik, a Norwegian far-right terrorist who carried out a mass shooting in 2011.

In his manifesto, the gunman criticized the role of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in protecting Kosovo, a Muslim-majority area that declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

"Balkanization will also reduce the USA's ability to project power globally, and thereby ensure that never again can such a situation as the US involvement in Kosovo ever occur again (where US/NATO forces fought beside Muslims and slaughtered Christian Europeans attempting to remove there Islamic occupiers from Europe)," the manifesto read.

In a video of the attacker's drive to the site of the crime, he is listening to a song honoring Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadžić, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison for genocide against Muslims in Bosnia in the 1990s.

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the attack "can now only be described as a terrorist attack." The alleged attacker was a male in his later 20s. He was charged with murder; three other suspects have been detained.