Editing Philip Manshaus (section)

==Background==
Manshaus' neighbors have described him as ordinary, with one neighbor saying he had helped her with household tasks before, though another claimed he had not been very happy when he was young, with several neighbors also suggesting that a family bereavement a few years earlier had hit him quite hard, and that in the last year he had turned increasingly to religion and extremism. Norwegian police had stated the day after the attack that they were planning to give the suspect a mental health assessment. In the official questioning session, Manshaus declared that his goal was to intimidate Muslims in Norway.

Shortly before the attack, someone using the name Philip Manshaus was active on a web forum that has been variously reported as 4chan and 8chan, but was confirmed to be a copycat forum called EndChan. His retrieved messages include telling people that "it's my time, i was elected by saint tarrant" (sic), asking those he was messaging to "bump the race war thread irl", and saying that "Valhalla awaits". Several intermediary messages had been removed.

The messages are seen as praising [[Brenton Tarrant]], the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019, and refer to him as "saint tarrant". The Christchurch shootings were inspired by, among other things, the 22/7 attacks that happened in Norway in 2011. The user also posted a meme depicting Tarrant, [[Patrick Crusius]], and [[John T. Earnest]] as "chads"(alpha males). All three perpetrated racially and/or religiously motivated gun murders in 2019. Manshaus' posts also reportedly feature him describing himself as the "third disciple"; internet extremism researchers connect this with the rhetoric of Tarrant, suggesting the other 'disciples' would be Earnest and Crusius. Online, Manshaus has also praised [[Vidkun Quisling]], who headed a domestic [[Nazi]] collaborationist regime during [[World War II]], and expressed far-right, anti-immigration views.