Standing united the only way to defeat this evil
THE death and souldestroying destruction wrought by terrorism has devastated the most unlikely of places.
Christchurch is an idyllic town that has suffered natural disasters, including an earthquake eight years ago that killed 185 people, but it’s the last place you’d expect to see an atrocity of the scale we witnessed last week.
Do not seek out footage of the massacre. You cannot unsee the horror of a monster mercilessly murdering innocent people like they were characters in a video game. The barbaric killer spared no one, gunning down children and the elderly alike. Among the victims are three-year-old Mucad Ibrahim and 14-yearold Sayyad Milne.
What happened on Friday was an act of pure evil but sadly one that is seen far too often in other parts of the world with a number of attacks at mosques, synagogues and churches in recent years.
Thousands have been killed in places of worship in Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Philippines, Canada and the US among other countries.
Terrorism is terrorism regardless of who perpetrates it. Anyone who uses violence to further a political or religious agenda is by definition a terrorist and must be condemned in the strongest terms possible. There are no ifs, buts or maybes.
No sob stories about marginalisation, madness or supposed provocation can ever justify the brutalisation of innocent people.
In this case the alleged mass killer is an Australianborn white supremacist, Brenton Tarrant, who stands accused of the worst terrorist attack in Australasian history. In many ways this was New Zealand’s Port Arthur with a cowardly, heavily-armed killer hell bent on causing maximum carnage.
NZ prime minister Jacinda Ardern has vowed to overhaul the country’s gun laws just as John Howard did in Australia after the Port Arthur massacre. The reforms will undoubtedly save lives.
Think of the recent terror events we’ve seen in Australia and consider how much more horrific the toll would’ve been in November if the Bourke St terrorist Shire Ali had access to the firearm used in NZ instead of a kitchen knife.
There is no reason for a private citizen to have the type of weaponry that Tarrant allegedly used to kill at least 50 people at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques.
The death toll is expected to rise further in the coming days. The Christchurch massacre was a carefully planned act of terror against Muslim immigrants with the aim of creating further conflict.
It’s important to note that Tarrant’s 73-page manifesto contains plenty of misdirection, sick humour aka sh*tposting and ‘bait’ designed to hoodwink the media along with his real beliefs.
In it he claims to have been radicalised by video games, mentions Fortnite, says he’s anti-immigration, an environmentalist and wants a white ethno-state but admires China.
If the manifesto is to be believed, and it contains many mendacious inconsistencies, the aim of the slaughter was to deepen divisions and sow political hatreds.
Sadly, many are helping the terrorist achieve that aim. There is no shortage of unscrupulous ghouls who want to use this massacre to settle personal scores and attack their ideological opponents.
The list of people blamed for inspiring the act of terror includes Donald Trump, John Howard, Scott Morrison, American neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris, Muslim reformers Yasmine Mohammad and Maajid Nawaz and even former first daughter Chelsea Clinton who was accosted at a vigil at New York University for the Christchurch victims. Clinton is always politically correct and never strays from mainstream Leftist doctrine but she was still blamed for stoking religious hatred, all because she dared to criticise the anti-semitism of a Muslim congresswoman.
That is all it takes nowadays to have the feral mob accuse you of inspiring bloodshed. In a video that has gone viral a heavily pregnant Clinton is abused for her supposed complicity in the heinous crime.
“This right here is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world,” Leen Dweik tells Clinton.
“The 49 people died because of the rhetoric you put out there.”
Remarkably this is a view shared by a disturbing number of activists, including paid pundits, who yesterday piled on the abuse against Clinton.
Closer to home we had reprehensible conduct from all the usual suspects, among them Senator Fraser Anning and former MP Tony Windsor.
Before the bodies were even cold Anning blamed the victims instead of the terrorist and his ugly ideology. In a statement that has been condemned around the world he said “real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand”.
Windsor, confirming the horseshoe theory, sought to blame Morrison for the massacre, he posted: “Your dog whistling of race, religion and division has borne fruit @ScottMorrisonMP … Don’t you dare apologise on my family’s behalf when you have encouraged the problem and fanned the fire. You are a disgrace.”
Melbourne University academic Marcia Langton responded: “‘Disgrace’ seems too soft in the circumstances. He’s complicit in mass murder & do (sic) too most of his cabinet members & back bench (sic),” she tweeted.
Here is a professor at one of Australia’s most prestigious universities publicly accusing the PM of complicity in mass slaughter.
Those who want to use this atrocity to attack political opponents who are neither white supremacists nor sympathetic to white supremacists need a good hard look in the mirror.
Sadly, we are seeing some of the alleged terrorist’s stated goals realised with people who should know better engaging in the most hateful, divisive and often demented rhetoric imaginable.