All Kiwis must now look inside themselves
‘‘HE opens his mouth, but the words won’t come . . .’’ Eminem referred to speech, but it’s just as hard writing about the massacre in Christchurch eight days ago. How can one not write about that evil act, though?
‘‘Fear no more the heat of the Sun/ Nor the furious Winter’s rages/Thou thy worldly task hast done/Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages/Golden lads and girls all must/As chimneysweepers, come to dust’’. Civis first heard those words (Shakespeare’s Cymbeline isn’t often performed), sung to Finzi’s haunting setting, 23 years ago, at the funeral of a young man killed accidentally, and heard them read at another funeral last Monday.
They sound too resigned, though, to this obscene slaughter: Dylan Thomas’ ‘‘Do not go gentle into this good night/Rage, rage, against the dying of the light’’ might better match the Prime Minister’s cold anger as she promised never to speak the name of the killer. That anger will be shared by most New Zealanders, and must lead to action. There’s work to be done.
Some of that work is obvious: immediate security to prevent ‘‘copycat’’ crimes; the promised inquiry into security agencies, and how it happened; reform of gun laws, including possession rapid of military action style to ban semi the automatic weapons, which has been announced; and immediate and longterm support of survivors, families and friends of the dead and wounded, and whom of this Christchurch has piled more residents, horror for on top of the effects of the earthquakes.
But deeper, less concrete, work is needed too. As Dame Ann Salmond has pointed out, ‘‘White supremacy is a part of us, a dark power in the land.’’ Sadly, the Prime Minister’s initial response to the killings, ‘‘This is not who we are’’, though accurate, until Friday, regarding racebased mass murders, is actually an aspirational statement, not a description of all New Zealanders’ attitudes.
Prof Paul Spoonley has reminded us that, though surveys of attitudes consistently show that a majority of New Zealanders favour diversity, and see immigration as beneficial, there is a continuing history of skinhead, neoNazi, antiSemitic, extreme nationalist and white supremacy groups, long before the internet facilitated the sharing of such views, throughout the country, and of individual acts of violence, ranging from graffiti and verbal and online abuse to murder, against individuals regarded as racially or religiously ‘‘other’’.
Politicians can foment extreme nationalist and white supremacy views.
President Trump, referenced by the symbol killer of in renewed his ‘‘manifesto’’ white identity as ‘‘a and common purpose’’, has angrily denied being responsible for the killings. But his antiMuslim rants during the election campaign, and actions and rhetoric against them since, have surely encouraged white supremacist groups, and fuelled the rise of such groups (the Southern Poverty Law Center counted 1020 of them, an all time high, in 2018, in the United States). Forty people were killed by white supremacists in the US and Canada that year. Well done, Ms Ardern, not just for leadership and compassion, but for your pointed response to President Trump’s avoidance of acknowledging the victims’ religion. Some Australian politicians, such as Pauline Hanson and Fraser Anning, match Mr Trump’s hate speech. New Zealand parliamentarians may be less strident, but demonisation of nonwhite immigrants isn’t unknown. Winston Peters campaigned in 1996 against ‘‘nontraditional’’ immigrants, and in 2005, addressing Far North Grey Power, claimed that ordinary New Zealand Muslims could provide a front for Islamic fundamentalists intent on bringing terrorism to the country (the drunken destruction caused in the Botanic Garden by students two days after the massacre suggests we might be better off with more Muslims, not fewer). Not just politicians, but all New Zealanders, need to ask themselves whether they indulge, even casually, in demonisation of the racial, cultural, or religious ‘‘other’’, and whether, when they hear it, they call it out. When that happens, perhaps, finally, New Zealand can say to those who died on March 15th, ‘‘Quiet consummation have/And renowned be thy grave’’.