Trump has not gone far enough

The unspeakable carnage in New Zealand must be called out by its proper name: a terrorist attack by a whitenationalist bigot consumed by Islamophobia and impelled by the fervid extremism that suffuses the Internet’s darkest crevices.

The Internet and social media did not invent or refine evil; they just made it accessible on demand, in all its banal and lurid manifestations.It’s critical that world leaders clearly and precisely denounce this ghoulish act. An attack on mosques, as on any place of worship, is especially sinister and dangerous. Online racists lionised the murderer as a hero and cheered his killing spree as he streamed it live. In fact, he is a monster who slaughtered innocent people – parents and children, the old and the young.

President Trump is not to blame for the tragedy, despite his own history of Islamophobic statements. Still, he should go further than he has; by condemning the alleged killer, whose nativist rhetoric overlaps with the president’s own. On Friday, Mr Trump cited an ‘‘invasion’’ of immigrants to justify his national emergency declaration to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.

And Mr Trump, who could not bring himself to criticise the white nationalists in Charlottesville who chanted that minorities (Jews, in that case) would ‘‘not replace us,’’ also said on Friday he doesn’t regard white nationalism as a problem. That’s the wrong message. Instead, he ought to state unambiguously that the New Zealand suspect’s ‘‘replacement’’ ideology is an unacceptable trope in civilised discourse.