During the March 16, 2019 episode of the Darkstream, alt-right vlogger Theodore “Vox Day” Beale went to absurd lengths to justify his skepticism over the recent Christchurch massacre. The shootings, which took place at two separate mosques, were perpetrated by a self-described “fascist” named Brenton Tarrant and left at least 50 worshipers dead.

Beale — a friend of antisemitic comedian Owen Benjamin — instructed his fans to always distrust official narratives put forth by the government, and the Christchurch shooting is no exception. “When I say that you have to question the narrative, what’s the narrative that we see with regards to this recent event in New Zealand?” he asked.

Beale called the terrorist attack “fairly inexplicable” and noted the “major push for gun control” that followed.

Of course there was nothing “inexplicable” about Tarrant’s decision to slaughter Muslims while they prayed — he laid out his ideology and reasons for committing the attack in a long-winded manifesto. Tarrant, motivated by revenge for so-called “white genocide,” wanted to strike fear into the hearts of Muslims everywhere.

Tarrant drew inspiration from racist killers like Dylann Roof, Alexandre Bissonnette, and Anders Breivik. Beale himself expressed support for Breivik’s 2011 killing spree in Oslo and Utøya, and referred to him as “St. Breivik” in a 2017 blog post. Beale explained:

Breivik did not target innocents. He didn’t attack teenagers at a pop concert or families enjoying a night out on a public promenade. He struck a highly effective blow against the political machine that is still actively engaged in attacking his people and attempting to eradicate them. If you don’t believe violence is a legitimate way of resisting invasion, if you don’t think that making war on those making war on you is permissible, that’s your prerogative, but your opinion is both ahistorical and irrelevant.

Notably Beale refers to non-white immigration into European nations as an “invasion” and terrorist acts as a form of “resist[ance]” — just as Brenton Tarrant did in his manifesto.

Yet despite their hatred of racial minorities and love of violent retribution, Beale promoted the conspiracy theory that Tarrant was actually a government agent, whose purpose for killing 50 people was to impose gun control laws on New Zealand. Beale still hedged slightly, claiming that we can never know for sure what the truth of the matter is.

Beale then suggested that we can’t really know anything for sure, including whether or not New Zealand even exists. “I’ve never set foot in New Zealand,” he explained. “For all I know, there is no actual New Zealand but the actually filmed the [Lord of the Rings] movies in Middle-Earth, and claimed that they did it in a place called New Zealand.”

To his very limited credit Beale added that he doesn’t actually believe New Zealand doesn’t exist — though coming from a Creationist and anti-vaxxer it wouldn’t have been shocking.

But after that jaw-dropping bit of stupidity Beale circled back to his main point: that Brenton Tarrant was probably a member of the military and/or government and that his attack could be a false flag. “You may recall that I commented on the fact that the guy looked to me like a government agent,” Beale said.

“It’s just like, if you’re around the military enough, you know when somebody is military or ex-military,” he continued. “They just walk that way. They just stand a certain way. And the same is also true of military contractors, that whole sort of public/private soldier type that sort of falls in that gray area in between private contractor and mercenary and so forth.”

He further speculated, having read Tarrant’s manifesto, that it was written by “multiple parties,” and that “more than a few people were involved in writing it.” Beale went on to say, “If I had to guess, I would say that it was — either somebody was encouraged to do it, or brought in to do it, or something — I don’t know. I’m just saying I don’t believe it.”