RedHanded - Episode 295 - The Christchurch Massacre

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

On the 15th of March, 2019, a 28-year-old man walked into a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, holding a shotgun and semi-automatic rifle – and opened fire. And what set this story apart was not just its brutality, but also the way it was staged – from the internet, for the internet. The gunman had strapped a GoPro to his helmet, and was streaming every second of the Christchurch shooting over Facebook Live. And just before he entered Al-Noor mosque, he said to his online audience: “Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie.”We look at online radicalisation, the deep internet meta-humour that was littered through the manifesto – and the role of platforms like 8chan and YouTube in the rise of far-right terrorism.--If you would like to take up the offer of the 6 month free trial to Wondery+ just click HERE or visit redhandedpodcast.com/wonderytrialAnd don’t forget - you’ll be automatically charged $4.99 a month after the end of the 6 months, so if you don’t want to keep W+ be sure to cancel!If you have Amazon Prime - but still can’t access ShortHand via amazon music - unfortunately you are in a region that doesn’t have access. So please also make use of the Wondery+ trial! Terms and conditions are available at wondery.com/terms-of-service--Listen to this week's ShortHand – 'The Human Zoo & Mbye Ota Benga' – on Amazon Music or Wondery+.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone. Before we get into today's episode, we wanted to quickly address the confusion there's been around the availability of Shorthand. So just to be clear, because we know it wasn't before, Shorthand is now a Wondery exclusive show. So you can listen on

Amazon Music with a Prime membership, on Apple Podcasts, the Wondery app, or on the Wondery website with a Wondery Plus subscription. And listen, we know change is annoying. We get that, we really do. And we bloody love and appreciate all of you so much. This move is just a part of our new partnership with Wondery, one that we are really excited about because it will give us a chance to bring you so much more content in the long run. But in the short term, to hopefully make this transition a little bit easier for everyone, we're really happy to be able to give you all a six-month free trial to Wondery Plus. If you want to take us up on this trial, follow the link that's

in the episode description. Then you can access Wondery Plus via the Wondery app or through the website directly at wondery.com. Very important to note that the Wondery app isn't available in all countries. So if you are in a country where you can't find the Wondery app, just go to wondery.com and you can use the trial just like everyone else. So please, please, please note, if you guys sign up for the trial, it's free for six months, but you will be automatically charged $4.99 a month after the six-month trial runs out. So please take the trial and keep listening to Shorthand, but keep an eye on that subscription. Stick it in your diaries. handed. By the time you're listening to this I have absolutely no idea where in the North Americas we will be.

Nor will I and I have no interest in clicking onto the third tab on my laptop which is the calendar because yesterday I stayed up till three in the morning looking at that calendar and I don't want to look at it anymore. Nope. So we're going to tell you about Horrible Massacre instead. Let's do that. This is another

one that you've asked for but maybe is a lesson in that you shouldn't always get what you want. This is true. It's the only way you'll learn. Yes. It's the only way you'll learn. On the 15th of March 2019, a 28-year-old man walked into a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand,

holding a shotgun and a semi-automatic rifle and opened fire. Then he drove to a second mosque and did it all over again. Tragedies like this one have not been uncommon in the recent past. The extreme right and the super in-depth manifestos and vigilante terrorists that come with it has been steadily growing for decades. But what set this story horrifyingly apart was the way it was staged. And we use that word very carefully. The gunman had strapped a GoPro to his helmet and was streaming every second of the Christchurch shooting over Facebook Live. He staged his attack to mimic a first-person shooter video game. of the Christchurch shooting over Facebook Live.

He staged his attack to mimic a first-person shooter video game. His manifesto was littered with memes and internet meta-humour. His gun was covered in in-jokes scrawled in a white felt-tip pen. This was a performance. Born from the internet, performed for the internet, and it left 51 innocent people dead. And just before he set out on his killing spree, the shooter uttered his final words. They were not a call to arms or even a statement of intent, this mass murderer said to his thousands of live viewers across the world, subscribe to PewDiePie. This is the story of the Christchurch Massacre.

So let's talk about New Zealand. We've been there recently on this show, and hopefully maybe one day in real life. I would love to. I would love to go to New Zealand. It looks like exactly my kind of country. I actually think so. It looks so beautiful. You've got many a sound I would like to visit.

Pretty hobbity. Absolutely. And if that is a joke about my height, I am calling HR. It actually wasn't, but I'm sorry. But the fact that New Zealand is a peaceful country has a lot to do with its geography. Its islands were the last large habitable land to be settled by humans. It was settled by the Polynesians in the 14th century,

who developed the Maori culture. Then, as usual, New Zealand was colonised by the British in the 19th century, but won independence after the Second World War. And since then, the island nation has mostly existed as a bastion of peaceful, accepting and liberal ideas. It's always ranked in the top in terms of quality of life rankings and things like that. It was also the first country to introduce the minimum wage and to give women the vote.

Those pesky women, asking for their stuff all the time. And still the population of around 5 million mostly live in undisturbed peace. Following a disastrous earthquake in 2011 which killed hundreds of people, many residents left its second largest city, Christchurch, and a lot of migrants moved in to help rebuild the city too, mostly welcomed by New Zealanders. As a result, Muslims now account for just over 1% of the population. Brenton Tarrant, on the other hand, was not a native Kiwi.

He was born in October 1990 in Grafton, New South Wales, Australia. His parents, Sharon and Rodney Tarrant, separated when he was young. And that was the start of a pretty rocky childhood. The loss of their family home to a fire traumatised Brenton and his sister Lauren. And Brenton's mother remembers a real shift in his personality at that point in little Brenton's life. He became anxious, clingy and lost any social skills that he might have had. After their parents' divorce was finalised, the Tarrant kids lived with their mum,

and soon her new partner moved in. Truly a bad egg, bad smell, bad guy. This new guy was a furious presence in the house, and he was physically abusive to Sharon and her kids. Bad news. Bad news bears. Immediately. Such a classic example of,

I definitely think Brenton has underlying stuff. And then I think it gets put under a magnifying glass when all of this stuff happens in his childhood. Imagine your childhood home burning down. Oh, yeah. Childhood home burns down. Parents divorce. and then new guy moves in and abuses you like it is any one of the first two things could be within like the normal realm of things that happen to like a certain percentage of people possibly especially the divorce definitely but all three

together that's a recipe for bad news oh totally my mom's childhood house burned down i tell you yes you did because of your grandma smoking yeah my grandma fell asleep on the sofa like literally in like a like an advert by the fire brigade grandma fell asleep on the sofa oh my god with a lit cigarette and burnt the house down that is miserable my mom her brother and her sister were forced to sleep in the house overnight because my grandad was convinced that people would come in and steal their like teapots or whatever. Do you know what? Someone might have. I mean, yeah. Yes, children, go and sleep in this burnt out shack. I don't care if anyone steals you, but the silverware. So there you go. Further proof within the normal range of things that may happen to you within your lifetime and of course

we're not saying if all of these things even did happen to you that you're going to turn out to be a wrong-in but Brenton certainly does. Spoilers. Yes. Eventually Sharon gets this man out of her house and she gets a restraining order against him but it wasn't enough to keep custody of her children it was a bit too little too late. So Brenton and his sister went to live with their dad. So instability abounds and it was not much better for young Brenton at school. He had no friends and he was bullied for his weight. But we do have to say, overweight he may have been and I'm sure he was bullied for that, but he was bullied for his weight. But we do have to say, overweight he may have been, and I'm sure he was bullied for that. But he was also bullied for things that he said with his mouth.

Because young Brenton expressed pretty racist ideas from a very early age. His stepfather had been Aboriginal. And Brenton would spit derogatory things about him on the playground. He also got in trouble twice for anti-Semitic remarks, so he was hardly helping himself. On top of that, Brenton started thinking politically from the age of 12, like all of the cool kids. He reminds me of, like, Anders Breivik.

The only reason I haven't said that is because he would love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that's exactly what he wants. Don't fucking listen to this, Brenton, you little prick. But he does. Yeah, 12-year-old Brenton very speedily developed grave concerns about immigration. Specifically, surprise, surprise,

about Muslim migrants taking over Western countries. Strong stuff for a 12-year-old. It's just, like, really creepy when children are political i think so too very very and very unsettling there's something so uninnocent uninnocent precocious unholy demonic damien-esque about children who are political yes exactly it's like people like fucking joining young labor like you're a psychopath. Stop talking to your kids about politics. So you might be thinking, where did a quiet kid with no friends get these complex geopolitical viewpoints from?

Well, this was the late 90s. The internet was exploding and calling out to lonely kids all across the World Wide Web. Brenton Tarrant was no different. Brenton had a computer in his bedroom from an early age, back in the Wild West days of early dial-up. Can you give us a dial-up impression? I knew you were going to say that. It's pretty good. love impression I knew you were gonna say that I'm not that good with my sounds but that's the yes we're old enough to remember children where you couldn't use the phone and the computer at

the same time or when your friend would have to call your house your landline and then like ring once and hang up and then ring again and you'd go stand next to it so your mum didn't pick it up. The good old days. I still remember my best friend's home phone number. Me too. Still remember it. I think there's three that I remember off by heart. Yeah, crazy, crazy.

Do you still ring your parents on the landline? No, my parents don't have a landline. Do they not? Oh, I only ring my mum on the landline. No, no, my parents don't have a landline anymore. Or there's no reception in my mum's house. Ah, yes, you're right. Because it's at the bottom of a hill and somehow no one's figured that the fuck out yet

um but no i do i do ring up the landline i also have a landline i have the red phone oh yes of course you do but anyway back to brenton and the internet that he was growing up with very similar to the internet that hannah and i grew up with um and this was a time of like wonder years where like the only type of parental control on the internet was like when your mum walked in. Or the fact that at the very start, the family computer was in the living room. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I only got a computer in my room because I have a learning disability. So I used a laptop for exams, right?

So from GCSEs onwards, I always had a laptop because I'm so dyslexic. I don't think I had a laptop until I did my A-levels. Yeah, I wasn't allowed to keep it in my room. I'm not even sure I had a laptop when I did my A-levels. Maybe my parents bought me a laptop when I went to university. Isn't that fucking crazy? Who are we? The literal only reason I had one was because I'm basically illiterate.

Take it, take it. So yeah, I think when it was back in the day, even if the computer was like in the living room, most parents weren't particularly computer savvy. Even more so than they're not now. And therefore, mostly parents with young precocious children who were on the internet had no idea what they were doing on there. Nope. Absolutely not a fucking clue.

At least now people have an understanding of what could be happening. They could be getting groomed. They could be getting radicalised. They could be, you know, fucking cyberbullying each other to death. But back then, I think they didn't even understand that that's what could have been happening. See our Mr. Hands episode for more details. I will say that I don't think, maybe it's more of a boy thing,

but I was just watching Charlie the Unicorn. I wasn't doing anything nefarious. I was playing Panetri Taxi and Hocus Pocus, which was an excellent PC game. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows,

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To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. So after 9-11, when the world's governments and most of the media set their sights squarely on the Muslim faith as a global threat, Brenton, just like us, was 10 years old. For Brenton, half his time was spent gaming, playing immersive role-playing games online, and the other half was spent on forums. Thank God he wasn't playing Planetary Taxi. He started using 4chan at the age of 14. I don't think I'd heard about 4chan until I was like 28. I didn't hear about it until I was at university, and that's literally only because I did an anthropology of the internet course and I was like what the fuck is this? What's an internet superhighway? I think I learned about 4chan when we started this show because a lot of

bad shit's going on on there. And if you are like 27 year old me and don't know what 4chan is, let me tell you it's a hellhole. 4chan was started in 2003 as an online messaging board to share pictures and basically chat about anime and manga. More boards were added, however, and it quickly grew to include discussions on video games, internet culture, porn, weapons, and soon enough, politics. 4chan is a lot of where the early internet memes started out and if you are old enough to remember things like lolcats rick rolling scumbag steve bad luck brian success kid rage comics any of that ringing any bells for anybody yes basically all of that doesn't ring a bell for me interesting i just read that list like how i used to read out patreon names disease didn't seize denise and if you don't remember that you're not a real one because you didn't listen to the end of all of our old episodes i think i remember specifically the first time i

heard about 4chan and it was in a tutorial for that course and my very internet savvy friend sam who we're going to see in port hamilton she was doing her dissertation on anonymity on the internet and she it was reddit was her case study So we were talking about that. I had no idea what Reddit was. And then someone else was talking about it was when, do you remember there was a time where fans of Justin Bieber would cut themselves? Yes, I remember that. I think that's the first time I heard of 4chan. That's the first time I heard of 4chan was in that tutorial where someone mentioned it as like a fangirl thing and Sam was like, no no that's 4chan sure sure and i was like what is this um so yes that's exactly i'm very glad that i did not go on 4chan i don't think it's for the likes of us no i'm very very very glad that i didn't go

there that i didn't expose myself to any of this i'm sure if you did you're absolutely fine but i'm glad that i didn't so yeah bre Brenton is basically hanging out in all of these forums. And then for him specifically, and 4chan, add in some ethno-nationalism, horny manga chat, and proto-insanialism, and you've pretty much got the 4chan vibe in the 2000s. So yeah, it's all there. Stick in all the boxes. So all of these bundles of joy meant that young Brenton Tarrant had the access and inclination that we perhaps didn't have, Hannah, to thrive in this festering troll swamp before YouTube even existed. So he's in probably the worst place on the internet at the time. And while he's reading all about ethno-nationalism and manga boobs,

simultaneously, Brenton's home life took yet another big hit. When he was about 16, his father got cancer from exposure to asbestos. So 90s. So 90s. His neighbours described Rodney Tarrant, Brenton's dad, as a dedicated family man and, more tellingly, a very competitive athlete. And Rodney set out to try and beat that cancer by any means necessary. He became obsessive about his health and would exercise compulsively. He lost over eight stone and became severely depressed, which is often what happens when your body is

starving. Rodney also sued for damages relating to the asbestos exposure and he won. So straight off the bat, he gave both of his kids almost half a million Australian dollars each. But despite all of his fight, in April 2010, Rodney died by suicide and Brenton was the one who found him. Police had and probably still do have a strong suspicion that Brenton had something to do with assisting his father's suicide. But it's never been proven. He's 60. Either way, his father's death had a massive effect on Brenton Tarrant for the rest of his life. In the online world, his extreme right views got worse.

He started upping the racist ante over voice chat with his online buddies. Brenton, like his dad, became an obsessive gym-goer and eventually left school to become a PT. Red flag. Brenton seemed to like being a PT and stayed working at the same gym for a few years. And according to the gym's manager, Brenton was, quote, as normal as one person to the next. He never showed any extremist views or any crazy behaviour. But this PT stint wasn't to last. In his early 20s, Brenton Tarrant got an injury and left the gym life for good.

He never worked again. Instead, Brenton started dipping into his father's settlement money. Side note here, he maintains that he made a fortune by dealing cryptocurrency, but that's pretty easy to check and shocker, it's bullshit. It's the kind of job he wants to have. That's what he wants people to think he is. But it isn't the reality of the situation. But still, Brenton was loaded thanks to his dad's asbestos money. And he used this cash to live out his gap year fantasy.

And for a racist, he was quite the globetrotter. This is, like, we're going to obviously get into his ideology later on, but this is so fucking ironic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because Brenton pretty much bopped around New Zealand with a few of his gaming friends, and then he set off for Eastern Europe and then across Asia. He spent time in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Montenegro and Serbia. And perhaps most interestingly of all, for an open Islamophobe, Brenton made repeated visits to Pakistan, where a hotel owner remembers him as a friendly regular, who was a big fan of the local food.

He travelled like this for three years. Despite his harem-pant antics, as an adult, Tarrant described himself as an introvert. His relationships were limited and superficial. And though he knew he should care about his family, he didn't ever really feel that connected to them. His itinerant lifestyle, which is a new word, I did not know that word before, it means filled with travel.

And now you're going to hear it everywhere for the rest of your life. His itinerant lifestyle meant that he never needed to interact that much with people or get to know anyone for any length of time, really. And anyone who has been in a hostel will tell you how disposable the twat with the guitar is. That's one of the things about travelling, I think, and you can obviously attest to this. There is no, like, you might meet people that you travel with for a while, but there is absolutely no obligation to ever see them again. No, absolutely not. And I think that for people who aren't looking to make that sort of connection, it's kind of the ideal place.

And if you are looking to make that kind of connection, it's also the ideal place. Absolutely. Yeah, you can find anyone looking for anything. Exactly. And I would say that, you know, some people might be confused by his, like I said, like quite extensive traveling, particularly through like Asia, Pakistan, places like that. Being somebody who holds quite extreme views. And also ask yourself, like, well, why didn't he change those views? Because typically when people are exposed to different cultures, things like that, they tend to mellow out in terms of extreme views. But I also had the displeasure of meeting several people who remind me quite a bit of Brenton Tarrant when I was traveling and I can only surmise this from my first-hand experiences of talking to these people was there was an element of like I'm here and I'm doing this

and I'm having a great time but I don't have to spend the rest of my life here and look at all these people they're lesser than me and that's why they live in this kind of squalor oh I absolutely came across those people so it's it's like I would say it's not quite poverty porn, but like almost to that extent, where it's kind of like, haha, isn't this funny? Like, isn't this food funny? Isn't this funny?

But like, thank God I get to go back to my real life. Oh my God, as if you live like this. Hahaha. Precisely. Yeah. So Brenton Tarrant was certainly not playing Wonderwall in common rooms. So his internal monologue was never interrupted by the regular daily interactions that most people have to have.

So he just gets more concentrated and folds in on himself, I think. Yes, because absolutely anybody with sort of extremist ideologies, the very worst thing is isolation. Yes. Or isolation plus echo chamber. chamber and yeah and it's very easy to do that when you're traveling absolutely and so the only reactions that brenton would ever get to his extreme views were online and they mostly agreed with him and therefore brenton dove deeper and deeper down the red pill rabbit hole. Rabbit hole being a very good podcast that I would highly recommend

very much around extreme views and what can happen to people when they echo chamber themselves online. And so by 2017, Brenton had started to plan a move to New Zealand and he chose somewhere we've just been, Dunedin, a quiet seaside town 200 miles south of Christchurch now Dunedin attracts a lot of artists and for the most part it's a pretty uneventful place save for the Bain family massacre obviously so Brenton's first foray into moving to New Zealand was an email to the local rifle club which is an odd first step, you might think.

But like most things when it comes to Brenton Tarrant, it was, of course, a calculated move. Because by January 2017, he was already planning a terrorist attack. He has had three years to think about this, right? There is absolutely nothing that happens next that is by chance yeah and i wonder like do we know why he decides not to go back to australia and he decides to go to new zealand to do this it's because of the migrant population in new zealand okay okay okay so it's about in his mind there is a larger muslim population in new zealand and they are very recent because it's after the earthquake in 2011 right so he has grown up knowing about that particular migration also it echoes people like Anders

Breivik whose big problem was the Somali migration to Norway so he's reading about all of those things and he's like hang on a minute because Australia famously has a very aggressive migration policy yeah New Zealand doesn't. Okay, got it. But yes, it is key that he is Australian and he is not a Kiwi, as we will go on to discuss. But he's taking it upon himself to save his Antipodean brothers and sisters from the Muslim migrant surge. Yes.

Got it. Absolutely everything about Brenton Tarrant's move to New Zealand, we now know, was designed to culminate in bloodshed. Tarrant set foot on Kiwi soil with a fully formed terrorist ideology cultivated online, and it was all based, predictably enough, on the Great Replacement Theory. Ah yes, we've been here before. Which, if you haven't heard us talk about before, if you haven't guessed, the Great Replacement Theory is the belief that immigration poses an existential threat to Western societies and that the only appropriate response is violence.

Just 15 days after arriving in Dunedin, Tarrant applied for a gun licence. And for the next two years, his sole focus was planning his attack. Tarrant studied the floor plans of three mosques and pored over the details of the buildings obsessively. He researched Islamic worship patterns to calculate when would be the busiest time. And a few months before the attack, Tarrant drove to Christchurch

and flew a drone over the Al-Noor Mosque. He also legally acquired the five guns that he would go on to use in the shooting, and they included two semi-automatic weapons and two shotguns. By March 2019, Brenton Tarrant was ready for war. Now let's meet someone on the other side of this story, Farid Ahmed. He was born in 1962 in Bangladesh. He lived on a farm with five siblings, where they grew their own vegetables

and caught their own fish from the river for dinner. His parents, he says, instilled in him the value of hard work and the importance of serving your fellow man with wisdom, kindness and generosity. Farid studied engineering and moved to New Zealand in 1988. As he stepped off the plane and inhaled the fresh air, he felt an immediate connection to the land. In fact, Farid got talking to a Samoan man at the airport, and when he heard that Fareed didn't know anyone, the man invited him back to his home.

The man's family welcomed Fareed like a long-lost relative and said that he could stay for as long as he needed. When Fareed eventually was settled, his wife Hasna joined him, and they had a daughter, Shifa. New Zealand welcomed them with open arms and open hearts, and it was their home. In 1998, Fareed Ahmed was crossing the road when a drunk driver appeared out of nowhere

and hit him at over 60 miles an hour. Fareed was propelled high into the air, smashed down onto the windscreen and rolled onto the road. Once at hospital, he was given a 7% chance of survival. But his wife wouldn't give up. Husna stayed sleeping on a sofa next to Fareed's hospital bed for 14 days, never doubting for a second that he would pull through. And she was right. Fareed made it. But he would never walk again. And when Husna found out that Fareed would have to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life

because of a drunk driver, her immediate reaction was, he must have had a bad day. Poor guy. Fareed was blown away by his wife's compassion for this drunk driver and decided he would take that attitude of forgiveness into his own life. Twenty years later, on Friday the 15th of March, 2019, Fareed woke up early to say his first prayers, and then he went back to bed for a nap. Friday means a lot to Muslims. It was a Friday when God created Adam and when Adam

and Eve descended from heaven to earth. Muslims also believe that the world will end on a Friday, which is a shit day for it to end. Sunday night, Monday morning, Friday, it's the best day. And so the ritual of Jummah, the Friday prayers, is compulsory for every Muslim man. And I only know how to say Jummah correctly because I've been watching season nine of 90 Day Fiancé. I need to discuss. I literally, I have, I have no. Bilal? I am ready to throw hands.

I hate that guy. I love Shida. I love Shida so much. Did you enjoy my impression of her? Yes. Saruja's a very, very good impression. I'll save it for under the duvet. Yeah.

Oh my God. I was watching it last night and I have just made a list. Yes. We'll discuss. We'll discuss. So if you're not yet a patron, come join up and you can listen to us talk about 90 Day Fiancé at length on Under the Duvet. I i have thoughts feelings and grave concerns so back to this basically friday very very important and yes juma every muslim man must go to the mosque that day for prayers so that makes friday

prayers the biggest gathering for the muslim community you have a sermon followed by joint prayer and Brenton Tarrant, thanks to his drone escapades and research of Islamic worship practices, knew that all too well. So that day, on the 15th of March, Farid and Husna set off to their local mosque, Masjid al-Nur, as they did every single Friday. I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest

to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health.

This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wond Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant.

When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season

of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now

by joining Wondery Plus. At around the same time, Brenton Tarrant made one last post online. He'd left his home in Dunedin that morning and driven 220 miles to Christchurch. He had loaded six firearms into his car. Two semi-automatic rifles, two other rifles, and two shotguns. On every one of these, he'd scrawled words and phrases reflecting his own twisted ideology. There were more than 200 cryptic references to events, individuals and ideas. Here are a few of them.

The number 14, for example, was a reference to the 14 words written by neo-Nazi bank robber David Lane. And those words are, we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. Yeah, because this is very much like part and parcel of the great replacement theory. We've obviously talked about it in different episodes. And it's very linked to like anti-feminist and anti-woman movement, because basically what they're saying is that women in, particularly white women in the West, have become too independent and they're going to work and they're not having enough children. They've got pockets now. Exactly. have governments basically increasing migration levels allowing more and more black and brown people and foreigners into the country in order to keep numbers up because yes the west is not

overpopulated and then you basically turn around and all the children are black and brown and no white people are having kids so basically that's the idea so the great replacement theory is all of the white children being replaced by immigrant children bang bing bang baby. Bing bang brown baby. So yes, as well as guns, Tarrant had four crudely built explosive devices. Two bulletproof vests, camouflage clothing, a GoPro camera, a Bluetooth speaker,

a military helmet, and a scabbard with a bayonet-style knife, sprawled with anti-Muslim writing. So that day, he stopped in a car park near Al-Noor Mosque. And at 1.28pm, he posted an anonymous message on 8chan. And if 4chan is the deformed cousin of Reddit, 8chan is the deformed, even more racist, even more mental cousin of 4chan.

And we do have the post in front of us. We're not going to read it. I don't really see what good that could do. But it's essentially him saying what he's going to do. Yeah, it's basically somebody being like, enough of the shit chat, enough of just the talk online, enough of all of you like, just sort of saying all of these things it's time to take real action yes it's time to get things done yes and he links his manifesto and tells them to go and spread it which is obviously exactly what anders breivik did and that's all we're going to say you can find it if you really want to um it's just not particularly very interesting no um so

yeah he posts this and um posts it on hr like we said which is just like a fucking cesspit on the internet and basically the role that h and plays is it is just the ultimate echo chamber for people who already think these kind of things it's where the sort of pursuit of free speech turns into irony soaked brinkmanship is probably the best way to put it. It's kind of a race to the bottom of who can be the grossest and most cynical and most nihilistic and have the most extreme views. Now, some of it is a joke. That is very clear when you go on there. But some of it is definitely not.

So just to give you an example of the kind of things that go down on 8chan, it was the birthplace of Gamergate. And it's also where incels go if their hate gets too much for other messaging boards. It's also the home of QAnon. So basically, it's like where extreme ideologies get extremed out of other more mainstream forums and have to go underground. 8chan is your first stop on the route to basically probably going just straight onto the dark web forums. And yeah, if you want more information on things like QAnon, we did do a two-parter on that at some point last year.

You can check that out because we did talk a lot about these online forums on those two episodes. So Tarrant's terrifying 8chan post detailing what he was about to do made it onto 8chan's poll messaging boards, poll meaning politics. And as I said, it contained links to his 74-page manifesto. The contents of that manifesto are a real mess. On the one hand, there's all of the predictable shit that you'd expect to find in the ramblings of a disenfranchised racist. There's fascism, there's white nationalism, neo-Nazism, Great

Replacement, the whole grab bag, it's all in there. He also references Anders Breivik, the Finsbury Park Mosque attacker, Darren Osborne, and other attacks in the US, Italy, Sweden. And he even name checks Oswald Mosley, which he was essentially the poster boy of fascism in the United Kingdom in the run up to World War II. However, he never had the following that people think that he did. But, you know, he said a lot of awful stuff. People like to quote him all the time. As you have probably guessed, Muslims were the main target of Tarrant's vitriol. He framed them and their faith as invaders taking over the civilised Western world.

And Tarrant said that an attack in New Zealand would show, quote, that nowhere in the world was safe. The invaders were in all of our lands, even in the remotest of areas of the world. And there was nowhere left to go that was safe and free from mass immigration. And Tarrant went on to say in his manifesto that he had no problem with other ethnicities as long as they stayed in their country of origin. He of course had spent his entire life on the opposite side

of the world from his country of ethnic origin, an irony that was apparently totally lost on him. But still, so far, so grossly predictable. But there were some elements to Brenton Tarrant's ramblings that were different to what we may have seen before. The whole thing, the whole manifesto, everything you can read that's written by him, is just soaked, like we said, in this kind of meta-humour, red herrings, trolling, bait and references to meme culture that go straight over my head. His manifesto even includes entire copypasta passages verbatim. It's not even very original, is he? It's just embarrassing.

But he thinks he's being so clever. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And in his manifesto, he also adds things like, quote, Fortnite trained me to be a killer. And Spyro the Dragon 3 taught me ethno-nationalism. Spyro 3, I have it on good authority, is a PlayStation game, by the way, about a cute dragon that collects gems and dragon eggs. And the whole thing is so oblique, in fact,

that it's impossible to know how much of this manifesto Tarrant actually means and how much of it is just kind of like trolling memery. Absolutely. Which is classic HM. So journalist Robert Evans said the following. This manifesto is a trap itself, laid for journalists searching for the meaning behind this horrific crime. There is truth in there and valuable clues to the shooter's radicalization, but it's buried beneath a great deal of, for lack of a better word, shitposting. So yes, there are very few sort of crimes like this we've seen that are quite as internet or as like crimes of our time. Oh, totally. That's the thing that really stands out about it.

Yes, absolutely. I think the thing about Taron is he embodies that persona of the internet. And not even wise guy, like the internet fucking wanker. And he just brings it into the real world. And if you're not familiar with the term shitposting, it's essentially saying purposefully incendiary things to stoke an emotional reaction in less internet savvy people. It's trolling. it's trolling it's trolling basically saying offensive shit just to get like liberals all riled up so implying that tarrant was radicalized by video games for example could very well only be included in the 74 pages to stoke rage in newspaper columnists basically he wants it to become like this

obsession that everybody's talking about and they're like what does he mean by this what does he mean by this oh my god spyro the dragon three what happened in there like he wants that virality so tarant also never claims membership to any far-right group he just wants to bring far-right shit posting out into the real world and i think that's the thing about these kind of online radicalised people because Tarrant is very, you see this from very early on with him, that he's not very social. And for you to be a part of like a racist ideological group, you still probably have to have some social skills.

Yeah. Because you're still making a connection in real life with other human beings. Yeah, totally. I mean, not to bring everything back to the nazis but hitler very charismatic exactly you still have to have that level of um sociability and the charisma to engage with other people to be in a group like that in real life and that's why he becomes radicalized online and purely is embodying that internet meme culture so yes after bre Brenton sent out his post, he sent a final message to his mother and sister on Facebook Messenger.

He also, in the style of his hero Anders Breivik, sent an email to 34 addresses, including, of course because he's so important, the Prime Minister's office and media organisations around New Zealand, claiming responsibility for the attack and, of course, linking his precious manifesto. Then Tarrant attached the GoPro to his helmet, linked it to his phone and began the now infamous Facebook live stream. Everything that happened next would be broadcast to hundreds of people around the world in real time and so

brenton tarrant arrived at masjid al-noor and just before he stepped out of his car he said to his audience of waiting trolls remember lads subscribe to pewdiepie which again it is just like what can i say that is going to get me trending number one yeah what are the words and the phrases that are the most popular that i can say that are going to get me trending number one? Yep. What are the words and the phrases that are the most popular that I can say that are going to get me the attention that I so desperately need? And unfortunately, he gets it. Oh, yeah. We're going to come back to the relevance of PewDiePie in a moment.

But for now, we're going to stick with the afternoon of the 15th of March, 2019. Fareed and Husna Ahmed had arrived at Al Noor Mosque just after 1pm. Husna helped Farid into his chair, wheeled him into the mosque, and Farid and Husna Ahmed had arrived at Al-Noor Mosque just after 1pm. Husna helped Farid into his chair, wheeled him into the mosque, and Farid said goodbye to her at the lady's entrance. There were around 190 worshippers at Al-Noor that day. As the imam started his sermon, the men bowed their heads in quiet contemplation. Then, all of a sudden, the sound of gunfire cut through his words. In an instant, the room erupted into panic. Apart from the main entrance where the sounds

were coming from, there were only two other exits. Dozens of men ran to the main exit at once, tearing at each other to get out. Fareed just sat in his wheelchair as they ran past. He saw people enter the room limping and streaked with blood. But soon the room was empty. Gunfire was still ringing around the other rooms in the mosque. But he started to wheel himself out of the door. He went to hide behind his car and he saw a man he recognised, a fellow Bangladeshi.

And this man told Fareed that he would stay with him. Soon, not knowing what was about to happen, they both decided to re-enter the mosque. Fareed went through the men's room without looking and straight into the ladies' room to find Husna. But the room was empty. He told himself that she must have escaped safely. Then he returned to the men's room and finally took in the devastation waiting in there.

Doctors, teachers, fathers and sons were lying bloodied on the floor. Fareed told all of them that help was on his way. Least it's over, he thought. He didn't know that it had only just begun. Just two minutes after he had opened fire at Al Noor Mosque, Brenton Tarrant got back in his car and set off. He shot out of his window at worshippers that had escaped. He even briefly pointed his gun at a white man standing on the pavement

before smiling and driving off. As he drove, Tarrant was laughing, chatting to his online audience, because remember, he's live-streaming this, and listening to anti-Muslim novelty songs. So 8chan was reacting as he went, mostly with disbelief that it was actually happening, because again, remember, most of the people that are on there are just doing it to be edgelords. Yeah. They don't actually think that this kind of thing

should be or could be happening. And of the negative replies that were being received, many of them were saying things like this was too extreme and that the attack might actually get Achan taken down. But of course, there were plenty of words of praise in the comments too. Some saying that Taran was the next Brevik and others calling for repeat massacres in other countries. On the way to the next mosque, the live stream stopped. It had been broadcasting live by this point for 17 minutes. It is unbelievable to me that that streamed for 17 minutes without somebody at Facebook shutting it down sooner. Well, we're going to go on to understand why. But the GoPro, despite it now not streaming anymore,

was still recording as Tarrant arrived at Linwood Islamic Centre, four miles to the east of Al Noor. He got out of his car and with his rifle, and with a rifle in each hand, headed inside and opened fire. Muslims from every race, Malaysian, Filipino, Afghan, I could go on, had all gathered inside for Friday prayers. And in a matter of seconds, bullets sprayed through the room. Abdul Aziz was praying with his four sons when he heard the gunshots.

Without a thought, he ran toward the attacker. He grabbed the first thing he could find, a handheld credit card machine, and threw it at Tarrant. And Tarrant dropped one of his guns. Abdul then screamed to draw attention to himself and away from the other worshippers, his sons presumably. But the gunman continued throughout the building, undeterred. But Abdul collected the discarded firearm and followed Tarrant. When Tarrant returned to his car to get more ammunition, Abdul ran outside after him and threw the gun that he'd picked up at Tarrant's car. The window smashed and thinking that he

was being shot at, Brent and Tarrant sped away. Many witnesses credit Abdul Aziz with forcing the gunman to leave rather than re-enter the mosque and take more lives. He said later, any brother would do the same thing. Minutes later, police caught up with Tarrant's car and rammed his vehicle. And two and a half miles away from Linwood, authorities pulled Tarrant from his car. He told police that he had planned to attack three mosques that day and then burn them all down and that he was disappointed that he didn't get to do that. 51 people would die from the shooting. The oldest was 77. The youngest was just three-year-old Mukad Ibrahim, who was shot while clinging to his father's leg.

Abdukadir Elim was 70 from Somalia and had survived a civil war. Neem Rashid, originally from Pakistan, was shot while trying to tackle the gunman, and Hasna Ahmed, Fareed's wife, was killed as well. After helping as many women escape as possible, Hasna had gone back inside the mosque to look for Fareed. She knew that he would have trouble escaping in his wheelchair, and it was then that Hasna was shot in the back. When Fareed heard of his wife's death, he said that his heart crumbled. They'd been married for 24 years. Fareed said she was busy

saving lives, forgetting about herself. That's what she is, and that's what she's always been like. Hours after the attack, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke to the nation, and she referenced a form of grief that our country has not experienced before. New Zealanders turned up in crowds to offer food, transport, logistical help and even just to apologise directly to their Muslim countrymen. This gunman's aim was to spread as much hate as possible, to do something so remarkably despicable that his enemy would have no choice but to respond with anger. And as corny as it sounds, New Zealand did the opposite. It responded only with love and compassion. Arden even refused to speak

the killer's name. The Christchurch massacre was clearly intended to be as provocative as humanly possible. To be shocking in its plurality, as well as in its violence. It was an internet performance, years in the making, teased on Twitter, announced on 8chan and broadcast live on Facebook. It was, as New York Times columnist Kevin Roos put it, Oh my God, that's Kevin. Kevin who spoke to Sinister Sydney. Well, Kevin be everywhere. Kevin said that the Christchurch massacre was engineered for internet virality.

And he's right. And that brings us to the video. Just as Taryn had hoped for, legions of internet trolls spread the video far and wide over YouTube, Reddit and Twitter. It reappeared as fast as platforms could take it down. Truly like a virus.

In the 24 hours after the attack, Facebook intervened in more than 1.5 million attempts to re-upload the stream. And despite their best efforts, millions saw it. Including children and those in hospital still recovering from the attack. Some users would hide the video in other posts to make it harder to identify. And since the attack footage looked so similar to a first-person shooter video game, again, totally intentional, it was harder for automated systems to identify the stream as the real thing. Yeah, and in the world that we live in, keeping tabs on what gets uploaded is already a mammoth task. 3.7 million videos are uploaded to YouTube every single day.

500 minutes of video is uploaded every second. The job of filtering that volume of content to make sure that hate speech, graphic violence or predatory behaviour is cut off at the source is pretty hard. And that's before you even enter into the conversation of how much control a platform should have over what its users post and who is allowed to post it's also quite difficult i think a factor that people often forget when discussing this um is it's quite hard to recruit people who want to watch fucking awful shit all day you know like that's a really hard job oh definitely it's not something i would want to do so it's it's tough it's like obviously

it's you want to be like well of course it's, you want to be like, well, of course, it should have been taken down immediately. How could they possibly not know? But it's almost impossible. Oh, it's very, very hard. I mean, policing the internet is a very difficult thing. And also, like we said, where you draw the line of what is policed and what is censored is also a difficult thing. There's no grey area with this. I mean, it is footage showing tens of people being murdered. That is not something that there is any argument about whether that should be on the internet or not. But obviously, where you do things like censor political views, because people are thinking, well,

he was radicalized online, so there should have been stricter controls on the things he was allowed to be exposed to online. Otherwise, this never would have happened. I argue people like this would happen regardless. And censoring political views is just a very, very difficult one to know where to do. And do you want big tech doing that and deciding what you're allowed to see and not? It's a very complicated issue. But the key thing is we are still just finding our feet with things like technology and what can be uploaded. Because also the minute anybody does get sort of au fait with it. Technology is evolving past the rate at which we can keep up with how to keep people safe in the use of it. So yeah, I don't know. It's a very, very big question, especially for platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Did they play a

role in creating this monster? I don't know. It's hard to say. If you haven't listened to the New York Times podcast Rabbit Hole that Suri mentioned earlier, we cannot recommend it enough. But here's the short version and very oversimplified version of what it's about. Years ago, YouTube, in its efforts to get more people to watch for longer, developed a new algorithm. This algorithm recognised that if viewers watched similar videos one after the other, they would soon get bored and they would leave. One video about crochet followed by another and another and another and you're done and you're stabbing yourself in the eye with a crochet hook. So instead, YouTube began to nudge users slowly towards more engaging videos, which usually meant pushing people to extremes.

Some poor bastard watching videos about history, for example, might be slowly introduced to conspiracy theories about historical events and eventually the COVID-19 vaccine. And a person watching right-wing comedians might then be directed to more far-right characters and on and on and on and before you know it, you're hearing open white nationalism and finding it pretty reasonable. And that brings us to PewDiePie. Let's talk about him. So PewDiePie's real name is Felix Kledberg and most people you've probably heard of him. He's a Swedish YouTuber who got

popular in the 2010s by posting footage of himself playing video games. By 2015 he was the most subscribed YouTuber in the world and he's still posting playthroughs but has also started making vlogs, comedy shorts and wild reaction videos. He'd often play with a fence and did get into trouble a bunch of times, the worst of which is probably a video that he made about the website Fiverr, where you can basically hire people to do like odd jobs for you. And he paid three Indian men to hold up a banner that said death to all Jews, which, you know, understandably got him into quite a lot of shit. But mostly PewDiePie existed beyond cancelling. At the time, a lot of YouTube users felt like the service was becoming too corporate.

And PewDiePie's mad, ironic and always joking persona came to represent the old YouTube. User-generated content with no filter. And then, in 2018, it was predicted that Bollywood music video channel T-Series would take over PewDiePie as the most subscribed channel in the world. And the users were just not ready to let that happen. People bought billboards and radio ads saying subscribe to PewDiePie. Terrifyingly, someone even hacked 800,000 unsecure internet connected printers across the world and

printed instructions to subscribe. Can you imagine your printer just fucking going off? That makes me, I mean, thank God no one has a printer anymore. But that terrifies me. That's why I've always found fax machines very unnerving. You never know when they're going to start. You don't know. PewDiePie himself released a parody diss track called Bitch Lasagna, which started with the words, I don't like you, T-Series.

And so, subscribe to PewDiePie became a self-referential internet phrase, a way to signal to other people that you were in on internet culture and also that you were anti-establishment and Bollywood. Now fuck T-Series though. And the phrase subscribe to PewDieP, kind of posed an existential question for YouTube users. And it was a way for them to log their dissent. For Brenton Tarrant, however, it was mostly just another lame in-joke. He's like, look, I'm one of you guys. I know what that means.

Naturally, after PewDiePie's name became linked with the Christchurch massacre, he was forced to make a statement. And he tweeted, But again. This tweet also succeeded in spreading the word of the attack, specifically its links to internet culture, which is of, exactly what Brenton Tarrant wanted. If any of PewDiePie's billions of subscribers hadn't known about the massacre before, they certainly did once he tweeted about it. Which I get it from both angles. Like, it's a completely impossible position for him to be in, because if he says nothing, he's going to get attacked for it.

But if he says something about it, he's spreading the words, and that's kind of just as bad. Brenton Tarrant knew that, and he forced everyone's hand in this situation. And it's just like, take this attack having happened at different decades in history. And it's just like, who's the most relevant person whose name you would shout out right before you committed the attack in order to get as much virality as possible. And that's exactly what he did. And because he did all of that, so knowingly, the Christchurch massacre went as viral as it was possible to go, just like he wanted it to. Christchurch was also the first time in history that an attack like this was broadcast live. Similar things have, of course, happened before.

A terrorist in southwest France in 2012 ran into a Jewish school and killed children and a teacher. He filmed the whole thing on a GoPro but he couldn't broadcast it. Instead he put the video on a USB and sent it to Al Jazeera who obviously didn't publish it. The Christchurch attack was in a league of its own. It had a direct connection with millions of people in real time. And getting those images out means spreading terror, which is exactly what a terrorist wants to do. But it also means radicalising and mobilising Tarrant's sympathisers. As we alluded to at the top of the show,

right-wing extremism has been rapidly growing for about 40 years. And about a third of attacks since 2008 have been perpetrated by white extremists. And I think this is the thing people like tweet about this in one line. And basically what it is, is absolutely currently right now over the past few decades, the fastest growing threat in the West is white nationalist far right extremism. But the largest current pool of terror threats does still come from radical Islamist terrorism. So when people

say it's not taken as seriously, it absolutely should because it's the fastest growing threat and possibly in a few years it might overtake as the largest stock pool. But currently the largest stock pool is still radical Islamist terrorism. This is fastest growing, however. And, you know, we've talked about some of these radical right-wing terrorists before. You've got Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011. And, of course, we also did an episode on the murder of MP Joe Cox, who was shot and stabbed by a white supremacist in 2016. Then, of course, in 2017, a right-wing terrorist entered a mosque in Quebec with a rifle and killed seven people.

In 2018, a gunman went into a Pittsburgh synagogue shouting, all Jews must die, and killed seven people. In 2018, a gunman went into a Pittsburgh synagogue shouting, all Jews must die and killed 11. And though they are often seen as lone actors, and, you know, we've talked about this kind of lone wolf, which is a phrase that I don't like, but let's talk loner. They are these lone terrorists. And, you know, they are very much self-radicalized. What was the phrase that we've used before? It's a leaderless revolution. These people, there's not one cell, there's not one person now sort of leading the charge. They're just getting radicalised by content that's on the internet. And it's very,

very hard to police, like we've said. And they also talk to each other, they egg each other on. Very similar in the way that we see with Islamic militants. So what happened to Brenton Tarrant? On the 16th of March, the day after the shooting, he was charged with one count of murder in a Christchurch court. Originally he denied the charge, but ten days later he switched his plea to guilty. The next month he was charged with 49 counts of murder and 39 counts of attempted murder.

And then the month after that, he was charged with terrorism. It was the first time that charge had been brought in New Zealand history. That's crazy. I know. Tarrant pleaded not guilty to all 92 charges. His trial began in Christchurch in August 2020. And of course, like many narcissists before him, Brenton Tarrant represented himself. You know what? When you are up for 92 charges of terrorism and you have live streamed yourself committing the attack. What else have you got to lose? What else, man? You might as well. I'm going to have my day on the podium, Exactly like I'm describing. Absolutely. And I think, you know, also,

what do we know about Brenton Tarrant and people like this? They are there to get as much internet time, FaceTime, media time, paper time as they possibly can. And what better way to do it?

Sitting quietly in the dock while a lawyer represents you or standing up there and shouting and screaming like a crazy person in court, which I haven't seen the court footage, but I presume is maybe not far away from what happened.

He's, of course, not the only person who took the stand. The imam who had been speaking at the Al-Noor Mosque the day of the attack told the court that he saw hate in the eyes of a brainwashed terrorist. And just three days later, the judge gave Tarrant a life sentence without parole. Another first for New Zealand. And something that did also come out of the legacy of this horrendous attack is that New Zealand's gun laws were completely changed.

Because at the time, New Zealand's gun laws were pretty relaxed compared to most Western nations that aren't the US of A. Just 250,000 Kiwis owned about 1.2 million weapons between them. That is a lot of guns. It's a lot of guns, yeah. That's like four and a bit per person. But just weeks after the shooting, legislators voted 119 to 1 to change the restrictions. Some of the high-capacity semi-automatic weapons that Tarrant used were banned, and parts that could be used to build illegal firearms were outlawed. An authority spent almost 100 million New Zealand dollars in buyback schemes to basically pay people who already owned firearms to hand them in.

So, you know, not to harp on about gun laws in the US, but that was just weeks after the attack. And there hasn't been another one. Yeah, I mean, very similar story in Australia after the Port Arthur massacre. A report commissioned by Jacinda Ardern 10 days after the attacks was released in 2020 after some COVID delays. It answered the question of whether anything could have been done to prevent the Christchurch attack, and also what authorities could do to prevent similar

horrors happening in the future. The report's 800 pages long and you can read the whole thing online. But here's the most important bit. The report concluded that intelligence services had directed their efforts away from investigating right-wing threats and instead they focused heavily on the threat of Islamist extremist activity. But the report also said that intelligence services could not have been alerted of an imminent attack. And to be fair, I kind of get it. There really was not much about Tarrant that would put him on their radar. Yeah, this is the problem with the kind of self-radicalized one-man-cell online radicalization like there isn't a gang of guys hiding in a house like building a fucking bomb that you can be tipped

off by all of the equipment they're buying he legally purchased his firearms and he he was in no way linked or affiliated to any obvious terror groups or anything like that. Yeah, no criminal history. And he kept all of his planning extremely private. The only thing was getting a gun license in 2017. But, you know, we just told you how many people had guns in New Zealand. Exactly. You'd have had to investigate basically everyone. And for the most part, the Muslim community in Christchurch and

the rest of New Zealand have accepted the report's conclusions. The attack obviously scarred not just the Muslim community, but the whole of New Zealand. At the National Remembrance Service, Farid Ahmed came to speak. He said, a volcano has anger, fury, rage. It doesn't have peace. It burns within itself, and it burns its surroundings. I don't want to have a heart like this, and I believe no one does. I want a heart that is full of mercy and will forgive lavishly, because this heart doesn't want any more life to be lost. Farid said publicly that he forgives the shooter and even that he would like to meet him. Christchurch was one of three shootings in 2019 that were preceded with manifestos posted to 8chan. After the third, a terrorist who ran

into a Walmart in El Paso, Texas and killed 23 people, H-Anne was removed from the publicly accessible internet. Three months later, it was back. And again, like if you shut it down, they're just going to build something else. They're just going to go further underground, where it'll be more difficult to monitor. Like it's such a tricky, there is no correct answer. It's an impossible problem. No, it's an impossible problem because I really think like if people are happy and they have not got marginalized lives and things like this, you reduce the possibility of people getting radicalized. I am not saying that, you know, it's everybody else's fault that fucking Brenton Tarrant went and did this. I'm all for personal responsibility.

He fucking did this and no one else is to blame for that. But what I'm saying is shutting down websites where people do this does not solve this problem. It is more of a fundamental issue with why do people get drawn to things like this. It's like the Andrew Tate stuff, right? You putting him in jail, obviously put him in jail for all the fucking crazy shit that's been going on with what he's been up to. But shutting him down, taking him off YouTube, doing things like that. It's not going to address the problem of why so many of our young boys are drawn to somebody like Andrew Tate. That is a root issue problem that we need to address as a society as why that is happening, rather than being like, Andrew Tate needs to be taken

off because somebody else will become the next Andrew Tate. So I think it's, you've got to think about the problem from a more like grassroots level of why somebody like this turned into the person they did. i just think you know farid ahmed particularly but the whole community's response to what happened there is just so inspiring because people like brenton tarrant he was filled with hate that's why he did this and he wanted other people to become infected with that same hate that he had but it's just really heartwarming to see that Farid Ahmed, even though he lost his wife, doesn't. And so let that be a lesson to all of us.

Be more Farid. Exactly. That's what we'll leave you with this week. And we'll see you next time for something else, probably just as depressing, to be honest, because that seems to be the river we're running in these days. It does. But if you would like to hear us talking about other things that are not depressing, you will have heard me well maybe slightly depressing but you can come join us on patreon.com slash red handed and become a member where you can listen to

under the duvet where why i interrupted hannah to be like that's kevin rose is because last week i read hannah the highlights from a particularly troubling transcript of kevin rose who's the new york times internet man he's like their technology correspondent or something. And he basically has a two-hour chat with Sydney, who I like to call Sinister Sydney, who is, of course, the AI Bing chatbot. And it is terrifying. And has now been shut down.

It has now been shut down. And I saw this amazing tweet that was like, oh, emotionally stunting Sydney can only end well. That's it. We've created this monster. Unplug it. So yes, if you'd like to come

and listen to us responding to that, come join us on the duvet where we also talk about 90 Day Fiancé. Goodbye. Bye. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry.

The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy,

sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to the Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's show, American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle.

And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free

and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.