For years, the public was told the Christchurch terrorist acted alone, a radicalised individual who killed 51 worshippers at two mosques and livestreamed the massacre to the world in 2019.
But investigative journalist Joey Watson has spent the past year investigating that narrative, and new reporting suggests that might not be the full picture.
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In his new podcast Secrets We Keep: Lone Actor, Watson uncovers a network of online extremism that appears to have played a far greater role in shaping the attacker’s actions than previously understood.
“There were clues that he had been connected and those started to spill out in the months and years after the attack,” Watson said on The Briefing podcast.
“He was part of an ecosystem… signalling his violence in multiple communities, garnering support, and people in those communities helped him spread his propaganda,” he said.
Watson didn’t interview the terrorist directly, but he spoke to people who went to school with him, visited his hometown of Grafton, and connected with those who knew him online.
“So what I wanted to do was sort of bring them all together and work out what was missing, and I can say kind of unequivocally that the lone actor narrative doesn’t fit.”
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