The curse of extremism

THERE are more questions than answers at the moment after the massacre of 50 people during Friday prayers at two New Zealand mosques.

The sick irony is the alleged Australianborn antiimmigrant killer was an immigrant himself to New Zealand, though he didn’t see it that way.

What we’re seeing in the New Zealand attacks is yet another atrocity committed in the name of white supremacy.

Of course, such racism is not new in the world, as our own history attests. Hitler immolated most of Europe and North Africa in hopes of building an Aryan empire, and in the modern era, the US suffers more terror attacks by homegrown white supremacists than from foreign actors.

It is a scourge, and we pay it too little heed.

The shooter might have carried out his mayhem even if there were no giant social media networks available to broadcast it around the globe. But there are, and while Facebook quickly removed the video and terminated the alleged killer’s account, the video spread rapidly on YouTube and Twitter despite those companies’ efforts to keep it off their networks. That’s a problem inherent in a platform that makes content posted by users available for sharing, instantaneously and without filters, around this modern media world.

But the impulse behind the acts isn’t new, and the persistence of violent expressions of racism and religious intolerance in the 21st century undercuts any pretense that the world has advanced beyond such medieval notions.

Few impulses are more primitive than wanting to kill other people just because they are different. And yes, Muslim extremists perpetrate horrific crimes. Christian extremists perpetrate horrific crimes. So do extremist Hindus and Buddhists.

The commonality among them all is that one word: extremism. And in New Zealand today, 50 more people lay dead, the freshest victims of an old curse.