ICCT Policy Brief Jacob Ware
Introduction
Shortly after news broke of another devastating far-right terrorist attack striking the United
States—this time in El Paso, Texas on August 3, 2019—a disturbing manifesto surfaced on social
media sites. The piece originated on 8chan, a message board site, and detailed a hatred of
Hispanics and fear of immigration. The manifesto’s authenticity was soon confirmed, leaving it as
enduring testament to America’s latest terrorist attack. Just months later, another far-right
attack—this time in Halle, Germany—produced yet another manifesto, the latest in a recent trend
in which far-right attackers pen and publish manifestos in an effort to justify their attacks and
inspire copycats.
These manifestos have been well covered in the media, with reporting mostly focused on rhetoric
and meme culture,
the message boards where the manifestos are most-often posted,
and the
debate on censorship.
The manifestos have also begun to garner government attention, with the
September 2019 U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Strategic Framework for Countering
Terrorism and Targeted Violence repeatedly noting recently-penned manifestos and their impact
in inspiring subsequent attacks.
They have, however, somewhat evaded academic analysis.
Academic research so far has focused on older individual cases,
language,
and the role
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See, for example, Kevin Roose, “A Mass Murder of, and for, the Internet,” New York Times, March 15,
2019; Jane Coaston, “The New Zealand shooter’s manifesto shows how white nationalist rhetoric
spreads,” Vox, March 18, 2019; Luke Barnes, “With each new attack, far-right extremists’ manifestos are
being ‘memeticized,’” ThinkProgress, April 30, 2019; Lizzie Dearden, “Revered as a saint by online
extremists, how Christchurch shooter inspired copycat terrorists around the world,” The Independent,
August 24, 2019; and Tess Owen, “How the Germany Synagogue Shooter’s Manifesto Follows the Far-
Right Playbook,” Vice, October 10, 2019;
Andrew Marantz, “The Poway Synagogue Shooting Follows an Unsettling New Script,” New Yorker, April
29, 2019; and Drew Harwell, “Three mass shootings this year began with a hateful screed on 8chan. Its
founder calls it a terrorist refuge in plain sight.” Washington Post, August 4, 2019.
James S. Robbins, “El Paso shooting: Extremist manifestos key to understanding, stopping political
violence,” USA Today, August 7, 2019.
“Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence,” Department of Homeland
Security, September 2019, 10.
See, for example, Sveinung Sandberg, “Are self-narratives strategic or determined, unified or
fragmented? Reading Breivik’s manifesto in light of narrative criminology,” Acta Sociologica 56, no. 1
(February 2013): 69-83; Mattias Gardell, “Crusader Dreams: Oslo 22/7, Islamophobia, and
the Quest for a Monocultural Europe,” Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 1 (2014): 129-155;
Sveinung Sandberg, “Terrorism as Cultural Bricolage: The Case of Anders Behring Breivik,” in Daniel
Ziegler, Marco Gerster, and Steffen Krämer (eds), Framing Excessive Violence: Discourse and Dynamics
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 177-196; Brett A. Barnett, “20 Years Later: A Look Back at the
Unabomber Manifesto,” Perspectives on Terrorism 9, no. 6 (2015): 60-71; Alejandro Beutel, “The New
Zealand Terrorist’s Manifesto: A look at some of the key narratives, beliefs and tropes,” START UMD, April
30, 2019; and Paul Stott, “The White Wolves: The Terrorist Manifesto That Wasn’t?” Perspectives on
Terrorism 13, no. 4 (August 2019): 56-62; Rishi Chebrolu, “The racial lens of Dylann Roof: racial anxiety
and white nationalist rhetoric on new media,” Review of Communication 20, no. 1 (2020): 47-68.
Lisa Kaati, Amendra Shrestha, and Katie Cohen, “Linguistic analysis of lone offender manifestos,” Paper
presented at 2016 IEEE International Conference on Cybercrime and Computer Forensic (ICCCF),
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (2016).