The authors of the attack that killed two people in Halle, Germany, have published several documents with mixed content.
Three documents attributed to the authors of the Harley attack, including a “manifesto”, began circulating online on Wednesday, October 9, hours after the attack that killed two people in Germany.
The manifesto attributed to Stephan B. is not really a manifesto: it’s only four pages long, one full page is blank, with a small title “Thanks for reading”, it’s more of an exercise in ships, a deliberate Parody online publications designed to deceive or annoy their recipients. The document was accompanied by two other documents, one detailing his attack plan and the other containing the address of a web page that played his live video.
Network Culture
The documents stand in stark contrast to previous manifestos issued by the authors of the far-right attack: there is hardly any theoretical exposition, and on the other hand, they make heavy reference to the culture of the web, the culture of internet users who follow video game and animation forums. – Sharp Japanese, “weeaboo”.
Its manifesto filename is written in Japanese; thus, what he claims to be “doctrine”, “technological barbarism”, is actually a reference to the board game Warhammer 40,000; he compares his actions to the Xbox video game. The quest objectives presented are linked, called “achievements,” while he promises waifus (soulmates from Japanese anime) as au-of the rewards. On a few occasions, he presented his offensive plan in a playful manner.
The documents do not reveal much about the political motives of the perpetrators of the attacks. The document, titled Japan’s “Manifesto,” which describes itself as a “spiritual guide for disaffected whites,” contains just one sentence calling for the killing of Jews, Muslims, communists or “traitors.” In another document, he also targeted himself as a “bonus” to members of the “Zionist occupation government,” a fictional government that would rule the planet in neo-Nazi imaginations.
Unlike the lengthy documents published by other far-right terrorists (such as the perpetrators of the Oslo or Christchurch attacks), Stephen B. does not in any way detail his ideological journey or the reasons for his radicalization and actions.
Some elements are also surprisingly missing from the text. The gunman, who highlighted his hatred of feminism in a live-streamed video, was accused of being “the cause of declining birth rates in the West” and “an excuse for mass immigration,” but was not mentioned in three public documents. The texts also make no reference to neo-Nazi groups or Nazism, although the portrait of the Third Reich is an important part of the anonymous forum subculture it refers to.
Apology for ‘D System Terrorism’
Instead, the author of the attack was very accurate in detailing the arsenal of weapons he was equipped with, and explained why: he wanted to demonstrate the “feasibility of improvised weapons” in this type of attack. The terrorist’s car contained six firearms, including a vintage carbine and several homemade shotguns, as well as explosives made from guides found online. However, the video played by the killer partially denied the “survivability” of his arsenal, with the killer repeatedly seeing his weapon jammed and failing to operate his explosives.
The gunman also appeared to realize that he would not be able to enter the synagogue – in a lengthy piece devoted to his “plan”, he explained that he would have to improvise after noticing that the door might stop him.
All these elements that sign his work, and the extent to which they try to confuse the reader, do not allow one to know at this stage whether the presumed author of the Halley massacre is related to someone else.
In a document titled “Please Read First,” he thanked 8chan forum alumni and founder of satellite forum vch. moe, Mark (probably Mark Mann), for donating 0.1 bitcoin to him prior to the report, the equivalent of nearly 800 euros carries the insults of anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories.
8chan founder Fredrick Brennan, who has quit the former far-right flagship forum since the 2016 neo-Nazi attack, said Mark Mann was mentioned in retaliation for expelling the Holocaust author from his vch. moe forum. , or because he is one of the few known Jews in the 8chan community.
The release of these documents remains unclear. Le Monde has not managed to trace the source from which they first published, nor could it confirm whether the documents were indeed all authored by the authors of the attack. The “manifesto” and details of the planned attack appear to have been created on October 1, while the document containing a link to a video of a future attack scene is from October 6.
