The gunman that killed 10 people in a Saturday Buffalo mass shooting was a Christchurch shooting copycat, identifying the mass murderer as an inspiration and plagiarizing large sections of his hero's manifesto.
Christchurch was an inspiration
The Buffalo shooter wrote in his 180-page manifesto that the Christchurch shooter's "livestream started everything you see here...started my real research into the problems with immigration and foreigners in our White lands, without his livestream I would likely have no idea about the real problems the West is facing."
The title of the Christchurch shooter's 87-page manifesto was "The Great Replacement," a conspiracy theory that drove much of the narrative in the Buffalo shooter's manifesto. The narrative asserts that "White countries" are being flooded with immigrants to displace the nation's citizenry. The Buffalo gunman more heavily emphasized the role of Jews as the masterminds of the initiative.
Like the Christchurch shooter, the buffalo gunman attempted to livestream his attack. According to the Anti-defamation League, the shooter's "choice to stream the shooting on Twitch was also seemingly strategic. In the manifesto, he allegedly writes that another attack was streamed on Twitch for about 35 minutes, 'which for me shows that there is enough time to capture everything important.'"
Plagiarized manifesto
The question and answer format of the Buffalo shooter's manifesto is based on the Christchurch shooter's manifesto, often using the same subheadings to lay out his beliefs.
Some answers, such as for why the Buffalo shooter hates black people, are a reconfigured version of the Christchurch gunman's manifesto, merely supplementing "Muslim" with "black." The Buffalo shooter also used an updated list of white supremacist shooters adapted from the Christchurch manifesto.
Other sections of the Buffalo shooter's manifesto are plagiarized completely from the Christchurch manifesto.
The inclusion of the 14 words of white supremacy, a passage criticizing conservatism, and a section entitled "Kill High Profile Enemies" — among other parts — were completely copied. In the "Kill High Profile Enemies" section, the manifestos call for the killing of Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist George Soros, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Internet trolling
Another similarity is the use of memes and Internet humor to confuse and troll readers and those that may attempt to report on the manifesto.
In the Christchurch manifesto, the shooter joked that video games "Spyro the Dragon 3 taught me ethnonationalism. Fortnite trained me to be a killer."
In the Buffalo manifesto, the writer attempts to continue the long-running trolling of journalists in which one claims that pictures of comedian Sam Hyde are images of the mass shooters or persons connected to violent events.
Capitalizing on the frenzy of speculation about the identity of the Ghost of Kyiv, a made-up Ukrainian pilot, internet pranksters photoshopped a picture of Hyde onto the body of a deceased Ukrainian pilot and claimed that he was the Ghost. The picture tricked US Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, who wished fake pilot "Samuyil Hyde" continued success against Russian air forces.
Future copycat shooters
The Buffalo shooter goes into lengthy details about his strategic and tactical considerations for how he planned his attack, explaining which weapon and armor he used and why. He included a step-by-step plan for the attack. Coupled with the livestream, it is possible that the shooter intended for copycats to emulate him as he copied the Christchurch shooter.
The gunman shot 10 people to death and wounded three others at a grocery store in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, before surrendering to authorities.Jerusalem Post Staff and Reuters contributed to this report.