Christchurch: we need to denounce racist hate crimes

A WEEK ago, a gunman, armed for war, entered a Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque and an Islamic centre with a clear motive.

He would kill and terrorise as many Muslims as his bullets would allow.

Like a character in a video game, live streaming his violence over the internet, the gunman shot and killed worshippers who had gone to the Al-Noor mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre for Friday prayers. Fifty people were killed.

This act of terrorism had been carefully planned over several years.

The alleged terrorist, a white male into body-building and guns, is almost a stereotypical caricature of an alt-right, white nationalist whose adherents believe that white people are threatened with extinction by increasing numbers of immigrants.

In Europe, governments have lurched to the right as citizens feel threatened by the sight of refugees fleeing violence and oppression in their home countries.

In America, right-wing conservative politicians have been fearful of attacking neo-Nazis, in the shortsighted belief that these were a crucial demographic in elections.

In some parts of the alt-right internet, white extinction is easily interchanged with “white genocide”.

Hoping to raise support overseas, South Africa’s right-wingers have for years described criminal attacks on white farmers in South Africa as genocide, an accusation consistently denied by the South African government.

South Africa’s white nationalists spotted an opportunity over the debate on land expropriation without compensation, along with the criminal violence on farms to push a campaign of white genocide.

This has seen alt-right media charlatans like Katie Hopkins descend on South Africa, hoping to make a quick buck through online fundraisers while preaching to racists who hardly needed any convincing.

Mainstream politicians have also climbed on the white genocide bandwagon, like US President Donald Trump and Australian foreign minister Peter Dutton. The Russian government has gone as far as offering land to 15000 white South African farmers.

Considering all of this, the terrorist attack in Christchurch should come as no surprise. We need to speak out against it, and more importantly speak out against the racists who fan the flames of hate.