The act of terrorism perpetrated by Christian extremists against the worshippers of two mosques in Christchurch has evoked sorrow, disgust, and condemnation. As investigations continue and links are established between the perpetrators and their networks of radical thought, it is essential also to decode the messages left by the Australian terrorist, Brenton Tarrant, which are circulating widely in White Supremacist circles at this time, and receiving the utmost praise in their cultish online forums.

The Great Replacement, as Tarrant bombastically titles it, is a garbled document of 75 pages which Tarrant cobbled together in the two weeks before the Australian’s act of terror. He remarks that he had prepared another more detailed manifesto of more than 240 pages which “spoke on many issues and went into much depth, but in a moment of unbridled self-criticism, I deleted the entire work.”

The format of his manifesto is divided into three parts, beginning with introductory remarks, along with a simulated interview which offers responses to criticisms and questions that he expects to have posted if he survived, followed by a long series of one-page “commentaries” and rantings on specific subjects he seeks to accuse or denounce.

The substance of his ramblings can be distilled into a single message: stop the high Muslim birth-rates in White countries through violence. The Australian terrorist identifies with the message of colonial-era British fascist Oswald Mosely, and harks to an imagined “White genocide,” while remembering battles that European nations have fought with Muslim armies (at Tours, 732 AD; Vienna, 1683 AD). He is a self-avowed fascist, admitting that “Yes. For once, the person that will be called a fascist is an actual fascist. I am sure the journalists will love that.” He also professes identification, albeit a “complicated” one, with Christianity, and claims to have received the “blessing” of other White terrorists for his acts.

The contradictions within his writings are stark. He identifies with a pan-European nativist cause but resides in Australia, a land decimated by White occupation and violence so brutal that entire nations (such as the Tasmanian peoples) are left without a human trace today. What his sick Australian ilk forget is that their stance against immigration doesn’t make sense because they are themselves foreign migrants to that soil, largely the spawn of “Her Majesty’s Prisoners,” as their convict forebears were called.

White supremacists in New Zealand and Australia who are protecting “their soil” from foreign migrants demand an enormous leap of logic when harking back to the “European” nature of their land stolen, in the relative span of human history, only but a few instances ago. Tarrant’s manifesto, as with that of similar terrorists, fails to grapple with the flimsy legitimacy of White presence on these lands, to begin with.

Another contradiction is in the “eco-fascism” line which Tarrant’s document tows. What he describes as “eco-fascism” to protect the earth from a surplus population and capitalism through the White man standing up in resistance, is self-serving at best given the White man’s track record of decimating the natural environment, and his being the largest profiteer from the pillage of the planet. In terms of eco-(un)friendliness, Australia today produces the single highest carbon-emissions per capita of any country on earth except the United States.

Another set of contradictions emerges from Tarrant’s claim that “the nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China.” His assertion is odd given the Australian terrorist’s obsession with high birth rates for China undertook humanity’s most significant effort to reduce its birth rate and promote sustainable population management deliberately. Nowhere has China plotted to reduce the birth rates of other peoples through violence deliberately. That honour would go to India’s BJP, who have railed against Muslim birth-rates since the 1980s, and whose members are lauding Tarrant’s terrorist attack in Christchurch on their forums at this very moment.

Finally, at the crux of his premise of birth rates is a misogynistic demand of collaboration from White women, whom he blames for failing to keep their birth rates high. His simplistic logic is that killing coloured-folk will reduce their birth rates enough so that even low White birth rates will somehow appear (proportionately) higher – so he is contradicting his “ideals” of ecology by still pushing for more human reproduction.

This birth rate paranoia has regularly appeared throughout history in the writings and discourses of every fascist leadership including that of Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, Likud Israel, and Imperial Japan. Much of Tarrant’s rhetoric is commonly found, explicitly or subliminally, even in mainstream Australian discourse. That is currently being run by a notorious Islamophobe, Scott Morrison, who nearly a decade ago told his party that anti-Muslim political strategies should be deployed to gain votes. At the same time, a copy of a Parliamentary draft prepared by Australian Senator Fraser Manning is now making the rounds for in fact defending Brenton’s terrorist attack in Christchurch.

Prime Minister Imran Khan has correctly observed that toxic Islamophobia in Australia and similar countries is at the root of the violence against Muslim immigrants and a political effort to suppress legitimate political struggles around the world. A neutral observer examining the discourse in the Australian media, for example, would likely conclude that Australia might currently be at war with the Islamic world since its politics and its media express such an open enmity towards the Muslim community.

Tarrant labelled his manifesto The Great Replacement. Indeed, there is a need for a great replacement, and that is in White Supremacist political elements around the world, not in the law-abiding average Muslim immigrant or her children. Until the Australian political and mediatic discourse assumes responsibility for abjectly scapegoating a small minority, there is little difference between the White Supremacists who promote structural violence through politics and the fringe terrorists who commit violence through the barrel of a gun.