Online posts by the Christchurch mosque terrorist spouted hatred and proposed attacking people in vulnerable places long before the March 15 atrocities.
Researchers from the University of Auckland have discovered that Brenton Tarrant had been publicly posting about his plans up to a year before the March 15 attacks.
The terrorist is currently serving a life sentence for murdering 51 people at Christchurch’s Al Noor and Linwood mosques.
Researchers combed through thousands of posts from the online forum 4chan, investigating his online history.
Learning his style of writing and tracking the locations of where he posted – researchers were able to identify which posts came from the terrorist.
They found a pattern of extreme and violent rhetoric – where he would call for violence against communities of colour. He also contemplated attacking several mosques in the South Island.
Lead author and senior lecturer Chris Wilson said, of the research: “We’re able to identify the way these perpetrators speak, the things that make them emotional, the things that radicalise them, the way the community recognises them and the things that set them apart from others.”
He told Breakfast that the posts painted a “very candid picture” of how the terrorist acted when he was speaking to like-minded people - and the way he reacted to certain topics could have indicated that he would carry out his plans.
“For at least four years, he was thinking in the way that he ended up acting in 2019,” Wilson said.
However, Wilson said it would have been "very difficult at the time" for security services to find "the needle in the haystack".
Wilson said it was very difficult to identify which users would go on to commit the violence they talked about online.
"Even within New Zealand, even in the South Island, there are people talking in a similar way."
He said the research showed it was important "to be able to understand these people and hopefully prevent more events occurring like this in the future".
"This sort of information is really crucial."
'Insights into how such as awful thing can happen'
Federation of Islamic Associations’ spokesperson Abdur Razzaq said he was "surprised" at the breadth of the study and congratulated the researchers.
He said it could help stop future attacks if agencies knew how to identify someone who could potentially carry out an attack.
He said the most important thing, however, was the closure it gives to the victims as it provided them new insights about how such an awful thing could happen.
"People are still out there thinking: 'How can one person bypass an entire security system of a nation where millions have been spent and do so much damage?'.”
He hoped lessons would be learned from the study and all necessary agencies worked together to protect Kiwis.
"We hope that the new Government focuses on these two areas. One is the NZSIS, and the second is more resources on this targeted area."
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