Germany synagogue shooting is part of ‘global far-right insurgency’, experts warn as attacker seeks to inspire others

Stephan Balliet used the same online formula as other recent attackers and said he wanted to inspire more atrocities

The Halle shooter said he aimed to inspire other white supremacists in his manifesto (ATV Studio Halle/Reuters TV)

A neo-Nazi attack that left two people dead is part of a “global insurgency” by far-right terrorists, experts have warned.

Suspect Stephan Balliet appeared to share a belief in the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that drove attacks in Christchurch, El Paso, Poway and Norway earlier this year.

Like the New Zealand shooter, the 27-year-old German citizen broadcast his shooting live online, and shared a “manifesto” in English that sought to inspire others.

While Isis inspired global terror attacks using a sophisticated centralised propaganda network, Balliet and other far-right extremists have created an informal database of ideological material and instruction manuals that can be far more easily accessed online.

Speaking at the start of the livestream, Balliet called himself “anon” and said he was a Holocaust denier.

“Feminism is the cause of declining birth rates in the west, which acts as a scapegoat for mass immigration, and the root of all these problems is the Jew,” he added.

Balliet said he had “originally planned to storm a mosque or an antifa “culture centre” which he thought would be less secure than the synagogue targeted.

But he claimed his ultimate target was Jewish people, after declaring his belief in conspiracies including the “Zionist-occupied government” theory.

His language indicated familiarity with the online culture of “chan” imageboards where the attackers in New Zealand, the US and Norway made their last posts.

Raffaello Pantucci, the director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said it was unclear whether extremists were directly communicating online or only gaining inspiration from each other’s material.

“Clearly they are copying each other every time but we haven’t understood the degree to which this is coordinated,” he told The Independent.

“One interpretation of what’s happening would be to say it’s a global insurgency.”

Mr Pantucci compared the recent far-right terrorists to that of some Isis-inspired jihadis like the Westminster attacker, who launched atrocities after consuming the group’s propaganda but without any communication with militants or links to the organisation.

“There may be no direct links between the far-right attackers but they are using the same methodology,” he added, pointing to the use of livestreams and manifestos posted on online forums in English.

He warned that, like with Islamist attacks, far-right terror can be used as a way of “articulating and elevating” wider anger felt by western men that may be driven by their personal experiences.

Mr Pantucci said that many terrorists from both the Islamist and far right sides appeared to suffer from mental illness or autistic spectrum disorders, and led chaotic or unfulfilled lives.

Experts at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), based at King’s College London, said lone actor attacks like Christchurch may have “lowered the threshold” for far-right extremists to attempt their own atrocities.

Research fellow Florence Keen told The Independent: “These attacks can be viewed as interconnected, despite happening in different parts of the world.

“The strongest thread throughout all of them was that idea of ‘white genocide’ or the ‘great replacement’.

“Different attackers have blamed different groups for it happening, such as Jews or feminists, but the core thing that inspires them is that idea of the white population declining.”

Jesse Morton, a former jihadi who now works to counter extremism, said the “great replacement” theory was rapidly spreading from neo-Nazis and white supremacists down to lower-level anti-Islam extremists.

“The narrative uniting everyone is the great replacement theory,” he said.

“That is the glue starting to allow people who are predominantly white to get a foot on a transnational network.”

The “great replacement” theory was crated by French white nationalist Renaud Camus and spread by groups including the pan-European Generation Identity, which was supported by the Christchurch attacker.

It is a version of the “white genocide” theory, which goes beyond claiming a replacement is happening to frame it as a deliberate act by hostile groups such as Muslims, Jews or a shady “new world order”.

Another ICSR research fellow, Blyth Crawford, said the attackers in the US, Norway and now Germany were part of a “wave organised to influence each other”.

Stephan Balliet, 27, has been arrested on suspicion of carrying out the Halle attack on 9 October 2019

“There has been a shift since Tarrant, where the narrative is changing from saying a race war is coming to the race war is now,” she added. “People saw Tarrant and decided to act.”

In the wake of Wednesday’s attack, politicians and international leaders have been reiterating vows to combat the spread of extremist material online, but experts say the spread of right-wing extremists across different platforms makes complete eradication impossible.

Like the attackers in Christchurch, Norway, Poway and El Paso, Balliet was embedded in online gaming and “chan” cultures.

The online tribes, who significantly overlap, are early adopters of new technology and platforms.

“The far-right has such an emphasis on being innovative with their use of technology,” Ms Crawford explained. “They take pride in springing up everywhere.”

Balliet originally livestreamed his shooting on the gaming platform Twitch, which took it down swiftly.

But it has already been reproduced in countless uploads in multiple file types, which have been spread across the “chans”, social media, the encrypted Telegram messaging app and other online platforms.

On the 4chan website, some posters were comparing the Halle shooter to “Saint [Brenton] Tarrant”, while another wrote: “Kill society, one lone gunman at a time. F***, I’m lovin it.”

Others ridiculed the shooter for failing to kill more victims – potentially reducing Balliet’s potential to inspire others.

Mr Pantucci said security services were struggling to distinguish racist online posters who have no intention of committing an attack from potential terrorists.

A chan meme depicting the Christchurch, Poway and El Paso shooters that was shared by supporters including the Norway gunman

“You might be in a forum where you have 100 people saying the same thing constantly but 99 just stay at home,” he added.

Balliet, who published documents detailing his homemade weapons as well as his ideology, said he hoped to inspire other attackers.

The document, written in English, called for “discontent white men” to murder Jews, non-whites, communists and “traitors”.

It said he aimed to inspire attacks by “other suppressed whites” by livestreaming his attack, kill as many “anti-whites” as possible.

It included a score sheet of “achievements” for the attack, including numbers of kills and methods, but few were met.

Ms Blyth said the page was part of the wider “gameification of terror”, containing an implicit challenge for readers to “beat his score”.

Ms Keen said: “Violence begets violence. We know that some of the right-wing actors might have been inspired by successful attacks by jihadi actors but now we might be seeing an uptick of manifestos directly calling for people to follow in their footsteps.”