Ro Cambridge

This is not who we are, said our prime minister during her first press conference after the shooting. New Zealand represents ‘‘diversity, kindness, compassion.’’ She voiced the immediate and visceral need most of us felt to divorce ourselves from the act and its perpetrator.

However, anyone who has belonged to a club committee or a school board, knows that actually New Zealanders are often angry, irrationally prejudiced, and intolerant.

As Aaron Hendry pointed out on Newshub, ‘‘The ideologies and beliefs’’ which drove the shooter, ‘‘are sentiments shared and broadcast by ‘regular’ Kiwis on talk-back and social media’’.

Example. On the day the shooter unleashed death and terror in Christchurch, I googled ‘‘Nelson Muslim Community’’ and I found myself delivered to the website nationalfrontnelson.org. By Monday the site had vanished, but until then it carried pitiless comments on the attacks: ‘‘I don’t care … a few less to worry about on the streets peddling their filthy wares’’; ‘‘Muslims you do not belong in this land’’.

If the Christchurch shooter had been a Muslim or a migrant, how many more of us would have joined the chorus of hate?

When the prime minister announced her intention to restrict gun access, some New Zealanders voluntarily surrendered their semiautomatics or withdrew them from sale in their shops. But others of us rushed to stock up on them.

How tolerant should we be? Our very origin as a nation involved the subjugation of the country’s Maori inhabitants at musket point. Now we no longer tolerate, officially at least, violent coercion, sexual abuse, domestic violence, cruelty to animals or unsafe workplaces. Should we tolerate female genital mutilation, child marriage or other practices which are culturally acceptable elsewhere?

How much should we tolerate free speech, if it is used to lie, promulgate racism or instigate violence? President Trump, leader of the so-called free world, employs free speech to do just this. It’s unsurprising that the shooter cited Trump as ‘‘a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.’’

Is the shooter mad, bad or merely - and this is

Is the shooter mad, bad or merely ... just an ordinary young man with a grievance?