A constant diet of food fads Is the ‘Christchurch Call’ enough to combat hate?
I tried a fat bomb today. Heard of it? Neither had I, and I wish I hadn’t. If you have heard of them you’ve probably also heard of ‘‘‘five and two’’, ‘‘eating windows’’ or ‘‘intermittent fasting’’.
I discovered them all as I journeyed down the mystical world of modern-day diets. And I swear I heard the cash registers ringing.
Everyone seems to be talking about food and how to eat it. At the hairdresser, lunching with a friend, around the family dinner table, in magazines, and online.
I recall years ago people looking down their noses at us when we lobbed butter on our potatoes. Fat wasn’t in vogue then. Now fat is back – we know that because products like Lewis Road butter have pride of place in every trendy fridge.
Then salt was the bad guy – it was supposed to harden your arteries and cause a heart attack. Then rock and Himalayan pink salt promised the Earth’s minerals with one shake and it was cool again.
Then we all freaked out about sugar when, really, they just shouldn’t have invented those lousy energy drinks and left us ordinary folk alone with our brown sugar and Weet-Bix. Now carbs are out of vogue. I admit I did once fall prey to the grapefruit and boiled egg diet. It was the end of boiled eggs for me forever.
Every day I hear about fasting, low or no carb, or no dairy, or much dairy or much fat. These diets don’t get cool by chance. They’re part of powerful marketing campaigns using supposedly credible research to infuse into our lives so we’re all spurting out words like ketogenic, Atkins, pegan or paleo.
Every shot of an unachievable body starts to lure us into irrational hope. Despite all rational thought we see the ‘‘before and after’’ pictures and next minute we’re gagging for that new body.
Diet marketers have got it easy. We’re all interested in food and, while trends change frequently, the desire to look in shape doesn’t.
Personally, I’m all for the renaissance woman, celebrated for looking like she enjoyed a good bit of butter on her spud.
Then the Kardashians brought in the new bodybeautiful trend of big butts and breasts.
But this look is way more challenging. You have to look insanely fit, which means maniacal workouts which, of course, deplete your breasts and butt which are mostly made up of fat, so to complete the look you have to get implants.
Therefore, the bank balances of the fitness industry go ka-ching, the diet industry tills go ka-ching and now the plastic surgeons are ka-chinging like never before.
I’m not saying we don’t have a problem. The New Zealand Health Survey last year found about one-third of us are obese. But while we’re expanding exponentially, the $72.7 billion diet industry is growing steadily at 3 per cent a year.
The reality is there’s only one real answer and I offer this at no cost: a lifetime of healthy living, eating moderately and exercising more. But there’s no fun marketing that.
The latest far Right terrorist attack in Halle, Germany, has confirmed several things. First, that the Christchurch mosque shootings have provided something of a model for white supremacists around the world. Following on from Anders Breivik in Norway, and Christchurch, the aim is mass casualties from target groups. Also, following both Breivik and Christchurch, a manifesto is provided that employs white supremacist and ultra-nationalist rhetoric to justify what is about to happen. As the Halle shooter noted, he wanted to ‘‘strengthen the morale of other suppressed whites’’.
At the core of these arguments is the notion that ‘‘whites’’ are being replaced – demographically and in terms of national sovereignty and identity – usually, it is argued, by Muslims, although this is often associated with a conspiracy that it’s being orchestrated by a Jewish elite. As marchers in Charlottesville chanted, ‘‘Jews will not replace us.’’
Perhaps the only difference in the major attacks committed in 2019 is that the target has been different – Muslims in Christchurch, immigrants in El Paso, Jews in Pittsburgh and Halle.
And then there is the livestreaming, in the Christchurch case, on Facebook.
The ‘‘Christchurch Call’’ is an attempt to seek international co-operation, involving both the major online platforms and other countries and agencies, to monitor and act against extreme racist content and violence in cyberspace. And it was great to see the New Zealand censor acting so fast to deem the Halle shooting video objectionable. But will these actions be enough?
In the Halle case, the video was streamed by Twitch, a subsidiary of Amazon. The material was removed from Twitch after 30 minutes, and with about 2000 views. However, that was not the end of the video’s circulation.
A number of smaller platforms or sub-channels then got involved and posted the material from the Halle shooter. One researcher has estimated that there have been more than 50,000 subsequent views.
As we heard last week at a meeting in Melbourne to discuss violent extremism, hosted by Hedayah and Deakin University, there are new online options for the extreme Right.
The decentralisation of online platforms has generated platforms that can be hosted by individuals or groups using new software – and allowing them not to be reliant on major platforms like YouTube, Facebook or Twitter.
The Pittsburgh shooter used Gab; others use Telegram, but there are many more. One estimate is that there are at least 150 catering to far Right groups and ideologies, with 100 of those established this year. Platforms such as Telegram and Gab claim to be free speech sites that do not censor the material being posted and that resist any sort of external intervention or regulation.
The point is that while these sub-channels often have small audiences and reach, they are part of the online ecosystem that allows extremist groups to recruit, and to circulate their ideology and tactics.
And they are not subject to moderation or regulation. As one expert in Melbourne noted, they are ‘‘takedown-resistant’’.
Second, tactics and options are changing for extremists. At the moment, when major platforms like Facebook are doing more to manage content and as countries and agencies such as the European Court of Justice impose new requirements, the challenge is going to be to manage self-hosted and dispersed sites that cater specifically for extremist groups and activists.
There is growing evidence that what happens online has real-world consequences. Research by Karsten Mu¨ ller and Carlo Schwarz has shown that there is a real-time correlation between an increase in racist and hate speech on Twitter and hate crimes directed at religious and ethnic minorities.
Equally, when there are internet outages in countries like Germany or the United States, the number of hate crimes goes down. In the week after the Christchurch mosque shootings, the United Kingdom saw a spike in hate crimes, with 95 recorded. Eighty-five referenced the Christchurch shootings. The El Paso shooter praised what happened in Christchurch.
The online ecosystem that encourages racial and religious vilification, and provides rhetoric and tactics, is proving difficult to counter. It is becoming more difficult as the far Right migrates from using major platforms to those that are sympathetic to their cause – and that are not easily subject to regulation or removal. Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley is from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University. His research focuses on white supremacy movements, racism, immigration and population.
When there are internet outages in countries like Germany or the United States, the number of hate crimes goes down.