The ‘incredible son’ and ‘ordinary white man’ who turned into a terrorist
Former fitness instructor admitted to being a fascist and racist, and supported Brexit and Donald Trump
CLUTCHED tightly by his adoring father, the fair-haired blue-eyed toddler was the picture of innocence.
It was, by his mother’s own account, one of her fondest memories – the family together on holiday in Hawaii.
The young Brenton Tarrant had just celebrated his birthday and would go on to enjoy a normal upbringing in the rural town of Grafton, New South Wales, alongside his father, Rodney, mother and sister. Little, if anything, pointed towards the horror that he would go on to unleash.
Indeed, he describes himself as an “ordinary white man”, born into a working class, low-income family of Scottish, Irish and English descent.
By all accounts, his life was unremarkable, leaving school to become a fitness instructor at a local gym.
In 2010, his father died of an asbestos-related cancer and shortly afterwards, having acquired an inheritance, Tarrant left the family home to travel the world.
During the years he was away, his mother, an English teacher, wrote online about how much she missed her “incredible son”, although she said she “understood his wanderlust”.
She wrote fondly of her “Brento” and appeared blissfully unaware of how his world had turned.
Tarrant’s travels took him through much of Europe, North Korea, India and Japan. Last year, he described Pakistan as “an incredible place filled with the most earnest, kind-hearted and hospitable people in the world”.
At some point during this journey, something in Tarrant changed and the roots of his violent rampage began to take hold.
He is thought to have become obsessed with the terrorist attacks that took place in Europe in 2016 and 2017, specifically referencing the death of 11-year-old Ebba Akerlund, one of five people killed in a terror attack in Stockholm in 2017, in the rambling so-called “manifesto” he published online.
Tarrant’s references to British heritage appear tenuous – both his parents and his grandparents are thought to have been born in Australia.
However, his sister married a Briton from Portsmouth, Hants.
Tarrant’s 51-year-old brother-in -law’s mother, who still lives in the area, did not respond to requests for comment yesterday.
Her elder son, who now lives in Christchurch, was quick to offer shelter, food and anything he could do to support the victims of the atrocity as the news broke yesterday.
At the time, he was seemingly unaware of his links to the perpetrator. “The shooter was Australian who came here specifically to undertake this abhorrent act,” he wrote online.
“I know the mosque well … we pass it all the time and it’s always such a busy and pleasant place. I’m horrified at this senseless barbarity.”
In his 17,000-word “manifesto”, Tarrant describes his native country as a lacklustre, apathetic offshoot of Britain. “The origins of my language is European, my culture is European, my political beliefs are European, my philosophical beliefs are European, my identity is European and, most importantly, my blood is European,” he writes. “What is an Australian but a drunk European? Kidding, but Australia is a European colony, particularly of British stock and thereby an extension of Europe.”
Perhaps tellingly, Tarrant opens the document with Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, the poem written by Dylan Thomas as an ode to his dying father, imploring him not to die.
He declares himself to be pro-brexit and admits to being a fascist, saying he feels an affinity with Oswald Mosley.
Yet he goes on to compare himself to Nelson Mandela and state that he expects to win the Nobel Peace prize.
He says he is racist but not a xenophobe and declares support for Donald Trump “as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose”.
He cites terror attacks in Europe as the cause of his radicalisation and states that he hopes to “create conflict” in the US over gun ownership.
He also claims to have had “brief contact” with Anders Breivik, the farright terrorist who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011.
However, Oystein Storrvik, Breivik’s lawyer, told a Norwegian newspaper that his client, who remains in prison, has had “very limited contacts with the surrounding world, so it seems very unlikely that he has had contact”.
The hate-filled language could not be further from the apparent beliefs of his own mother, whose Facebook page is awash with calls for equality and posts about spirituality and the importance of love and friendship.
At one point, Tarrant’s mother, who collects healing crystals, denounces the “delusional” people “causing death and destruction on this great globe”.
In 2013, she posted part of a message from her son who had been regaling her with tales from his trip to New Zealand: “Brenton’s last update in New Zealand was magic,” she wrote, before republishing his email full of detail about his travels in a country he described as “truly paradise.”
There was little to predict that barely five years later, he would be plotting an atrocity of unimaginable magnitude on that very soil.