Recent cases in Turkey and Singapore demonstrate that radicalization by white supremacist content coming from the West can happen just about anywhere. The recent arrest of an “East Asian supremacist” of Chinese ethnicity in Singapore, and the case in Turkey of the perpetrator of the Eskişehir stabbings on August 14, 2024, are a reminder that online networks that spread supremacist hate don’t just impact so-called white countries, but are a global menace. In both cases above, the perpetrators were radicalized online by white supremacist networks, idolized prominent mass shooters such as the Christchurch, N.Z., mosque attacker and the killer in the 2011 mass shooting on the island of Utøya, Norway, made use of Nazi symbols, and either planned or carried out acts of violence on members of a minority community in their respective countries. In Singapore, an 18-year-old student named Nick Lee Xing Qiu (Lee), who referred to himself as an “East Asian supremacist” and was planning to attack Muslims in the country, was issued an Order of Detention (OD), a special use of preventative detention under Singapore’s Internal Security Act (ISA) reserved for extreme cases that can inflame ethnic or religious sensibilities, and Restriction Order (RO), which bans him from leaving Singapore, accessing the internet, or making public statements without authorization from Singaporean authorities. According to Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD), Lee was radicalized online by extremist content, where he eventually developed hostility towards Muslims in early 2023. Singapore’s security agency claimed that this interest in anti-Muslim content was due to “online algorithms” on social media that recommended “far-right extremist material” to him. Lee, who is Singaporean of Chinese ethnicity, believed in the superiority of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese ethnicities, and supported white supremacy because he considered Islam to be a threat to “white culture.” He also developed hatred of Jews, Mexicans, Black people, and Indians. He came to believe in a version of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory tailored to the population makeup of Singapore. ISD claimed that Lee “believed that violent action had to be taken to prevent the Chinese majority in Singapore from being supplanted by what he perceived to be a rapidly growing Malay population,” with the end goal of sparking a “race war” between Chinese and Malays, who are predominantly Muslim. Lee’s radicalization was driven by outside influences, particularly his idolization of Brenton Tarrant, who was the killer in the March 2019 mass shooting at mosques in Christchurch, murdering 51 and injuring 89. In June 2023, Lee searched for the livestreamed video of the 2019 attack, watched it repeatedly, and role-played as Tarrant in modified online games where he could reenact the attack. Lee was interested in carrying out a Tarrant-style attack of his own using homemade guns, knives, and Molotov cocktails, along with other radicalized individuals that he met online. He wanted to dedicate his attack to Tarrant. In September 2024, Lee got a tattoo of a sonnenrad (black sun) and custom-ordered t-shirts with Totenkopf images on them, symbols used by both the original Nazis and their modern-day successors.
via globalextremism: White Supremacy is Radicalizing Individuals to Racial Violence Far Beyond the West
