Let’s build a multicultural power base with our actions
No-one predicted that we would eyeball evil and have our unwanted date with hate last Friday afternoon. This was something that happened elsewhere. We felt distant and, as a result, almost naively immune.
As the composed yet clearly angry prime minister said: ‘‘This is not us.’’ And she’s right. But I am angry too.
I’m angry it happened here. All week I have felt an overwhelming sense of sadness.
I have shed tears both privately and publicly. I feel exhausted and beaten already by the enormity of what will come for families in the years ahead.
Women widowed by this may have to enter paid work for the first time and care for the kids. On so many levels, this sad excuse for a human being has caused utter carnage.
We have been violated, and I am deeply offended. I haven’t thought much about the sad creature who planned and murdered 50 human beings last Friday, the eighth worst mass shooting on Earth. Even keeping that record is strangely deranged.
Let’s go through the process and find him guilty and lock him away until his pointless corpse is thrown into the incinerator beside the prison gates. What a hate-filled monster.
All of the above must be seen as alleged, so I refer all complaints to the use of that word as a defence. Deprive him of everything possible within the law. No media, computer, books or TV. Just loneliness and a Koran.
And if the Mongrel Mob want to make themselves useful and not just the winners of this week’s PR award for hypocrisy, can I suggest they hand back all their illegal weapons, and set up a roster inside jail to pay said coward a few surprise visits. I just ask you keep him alive so he suffers.
Do I feel bad saying that? Hardly. He gave up his rights to life when he started planning this attack on New Zealand.
I have had my son ask me why this happened. Try and answer it. I decided in the end to stick to the truth, and his brain is still digesting the word ‘‘hate’’.
My little bloke can’t believe you can hate so much. It’s why what we say and how we act is so important. We teach the next generation how to act and think. Who taught him? We must all look at ourselves to answer that.
This is a hate crime on so many levels. The alleged offender hates life, hates others, hates his past and present situation, hates what he sees in the future and is surrounded by a small circle of Neanderthals who see nothing but images of hate and crazed doctrines of written hate. Can someone let our spies know.
I doubt he has ever had a girlfriend, either. What a deluded mess, and how the various Australasian agencies missed this wacko is something that requires a full commission of inquiry. I’d also like to know how he got a gun licence, and why no-one paid him a visit at home as part of the checking process.
However, the worst thing is how utterly futile this exercise in mass death really is. No-one is convinced by these animals, and the best thing is it further squeezes these cowards to the sidelines of life.
But why did we not see it coming? I never saw it – I hadn’t thought an Australian from a small rural town would come here and allegedly plan to kill 50 innocent Muslims. No way.
Sure, we all know mad extremists sit at the margins of society, and anyway spy agencies and those in charge had always framed the bad guys as extremist Islamic fundamentalists. Whoops. Behind the scenes, the talk of Right-wing nutters going crazy had increased in recent years, and only a decent inquiry will tell us how the threats were dealt with.
But let’s talk positives amid the debris from hell. It’s surely how non-Muslims and Muslims from New Zealand have come together. I am proud of how we have responded. It shows perhaps we had made little effort before. That’s our shame, and fault lies on both sides. But that was then and this is now. Drop the prejudice.
I live amongst a seriously multicultural community in a suburb neighbouring the mosque in Mt Roskill, and I already sense barriers or prejudices are now getting broken.
But what a price to pay for the slow removal of prejudices.
My mum went and stood outside the Ponsonby mosque on Tuesday to support those who died. Then she met her first Muslim in her life. They talked. They hugged. They hugged because as it turns out her new friend had lost her brother in Christchurch and couldn’t get there for the funeral due to family circumstances. So Mum supported her and, in some small way, I bet Mum changes her outlook on certain aspects of life.
It augurs well for the future once we get through a lifetime of pain. Let’s not waste this hellish week.
Let’s build this amazing country into a truly multicultural power base with our actions. Words only do so much, but actions last a lifetime.
It augurs well for the future once we get through a lifetime of pain. Let’s not waste this hellish week.