Liberals have been quick to connect the manifesto to Tucker Carlson—whom the alleged killer doesn’t in fact mention. The link is the “great replacement theory,” the idea that “elites” are replacing white Americans with non-whites. It’s a racist conspiracy theory embraced by Gendron, promoted by Carlson, and, according to one survey, supported by one third of Americans. Genealogies of fascism do matter—”replacement theory” comes to us from a 1973 racist French novel, The Camp of the Saints, celebrated by Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller—but by seeking out only individual lines of influence, we miss the more dangerous movement that gives rise to them all. Did Gendron watch Carlson? We don’t know. Would he have had to in order to find replacement theory? Not at all. It’s everywhere now.
Gendron borrows the “great replacement” from the 2019 manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 and injured 40 at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Gendron titled his 180-page screed “You Wait for a Signal While Your People Wait for You”—a call to action—after a section heading in Tarrant’s “The Great Replacement.” He lifts both the format and large chunks of “The Great Replacement,” a process that’s not so much plagiarism as homage and advertisement. Not for the alleged killer himself, but for the potential killer in you, the reader.
That’s what such manifestos are for: They pose as true-crime confessions, but they’re more like chain letters. In response to the self-posed question “Did/do you have ties to any other partisans/freedom fighters/ethno soldiers?” Gendron repeats Tarrant’s list of five inspirations and adds five more, including Patrick Crusius, who, allegedly also inspired by Tarrant, was accused of killing 23 and injuring 23 in an El Paso Walmart in 2019. (Crusius has not yet stood trial.) Now Tarrant’s is the first name on Gendron’s list, as he imagines—probably correctly—that his will be added to that of another’s.