Anniversary Of Christchurch Attack Celebrated On Multiple Platforms
Notorious Live-Stream Video, Manifesto, Memes, And Photos Located
(New York, N.Y.) — On March 15, multiple extremist accounts and channels on Telegram as well as imageboard users on the surface and dark web celebrated the fourth anniversary of the Christchurch terrorist attack, which left 51 people dead. Users posted memes and supported further acts of violence.
In searches for related content, Counter Extremism Project (CEP) researchers located the full version of the livestreamed attack video on a library download site, as well as an account on Meta-owned Instagram that used a photo taken from the attack video as a profile photo and a separate Instagram account that posted a photo originally taken in 2020 threatening one of the attacked mosques.
CEP researchers also located a Twitter account created in October 2022 that glorified the Christchurch terrorist and a separate account that, several days before the fourth anniversary, posted a photo from the attack video in an anti-Muslim threat made to another Twitter user.
An audiobook version of the attacker’s manifesto was located on Catbox.Moe. and a video was found on the same library download website, uploaded on March 22, 2023, that contained footage from the livestreamed Christchurch attack video. That video referenced James Mason’s book Siege and included a montage supporting the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Order. CEP reported all content to relevant national authorities.
Unfortunately, content depicting the Christchurch terrorist attack and supporting similar acts of violence are continuously spread on multiple platforms. Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Christchurch attack in 2020, CEP researchers found the attack video on 17 online locations. In August 2022, CEP located three Twitter accounts that glorified the terrorist attack and combined had nearly 2,000 followers. One of these accounts remained on Twitter for almost four months.
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