Ardern: I will never refer to Christchurch killer by name
To prevent more attacks, we must engage with the ideology that drives men like Brenton Tarrant
JACINDA ARDERN, New Zealand’s prime minister, has vowed never to refer to the Christchurch mosque attacker by his name, as she said he would face “the full force of the law”.
Brenton Tarrant, an Australian white supremacist, gunned down 50 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch last week and broadcast the footage live on the internet.
He is now in custody awaiting trial and has asked to represent himself in court, prompting concerns he will seek to use the legal system as a platform for his far-right ideology.
But Ms Ardern said she wanted to ensure that the killer did not enjoy any publicity as a result of the shooting and that attention should instead focus on his victims.
“He sought many things from his act of terror but one was notoriety,” she said. “That is why you will never hear me mention his name.”
She also implored others “to speak the names of those who are lost, rather than the name of the man who took them”.
Relatives of the victims say they have been overwhelmed by support from New Zealanders, who have flocked to vigils in Christchurch following Friday’s attack.
Janna Ezat, whose son Hussein died as he charged at Tarrant in an attempt to save lives, said he was wearing white instead of mourning black because he was so proud of him.
It came as Facebook sought to defend itself from criticism about Tarrant using the social media website to broadcast the massacre, as it claimed no one reported the video while it was being live-streamed.
In a blog post yesterday, Chris Sonderby, vice-president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, said the video was viewed fewer than 200 times during its live broadcast.
“No users reported the video during the live broadcast. Including the views during the live broadcast, the video was viewed about 4,000 times in total before being removed from Facebook,” he said.
“The first user report on the original video came in 29 minutes after the video started, and 12 minutes after the live broadcast ended. “Before we were alerted to the video, a user on 8chan posted a link to a copy of the video on a filesharing site,” he added, referring to an online message board with links to far-right movements. But Ms Ardern said social media firms needed to take responsibil- ity for the content, as they were “the publisher, not just the postman”.
“There is no question that ideas and language of division and hate have existed for decades, but their form of distribution, the tools of organisation, they are new,” she told the New Zealand parliament. “We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place where they are published.”
Meanwhile, Tayyip Recep Erdoğan, the Turkish president, called on New Zealand to reinstate the death penalty in response to the massacre.
“If the New Zealand parliament doesn’t make this decision I will continue to argue this with them constantly. The necessary action needs to be taken,” he told an election rally.
Mr Erdoğan has faced criticism for using footage of the shootings and extracts from Tarrant’s manifesto to drum up domestic support.
‘He sought many things from his act of terror but one was notoriety’
In the book of Genesis, when God makes creatures to accompany man on Earth, he gives Adam the task of naming them. Since even before Genesis was written down, from Ancient Egypt to the Harry Potter books, we have obsessed over the power of a name. We are still at it.
Opening a session of parliament in New Zealand yesterday, Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, called the white supremacist, mass killer Brenton Tarrant a “criminal” who was desperate for fame. “That is why you will never hear me mention his name,” she declared. “He will, when I speak, be nameless.”
In a 74-page manifesto Tarrant sent out before he gunned down at least 50 people, including a three-year-old child, he included a comprehensive Q&A that covered this point. “Did you carry out the attack for fame?” it says. “No,” he answers, that would be “laughable”. No one remembers the names of the 9/11 attackers, he points out. “I will be forgotten quickly. Which I do not mind. After all I am a private and mostly introverted person.”
We should not, of course, simply take him at his word. He dismisses fame, and yet the whole document is infused with nostalgia for a supposedly continuous lineage of heroic “strong men”, exemplified by the medieval Knights Templar, who have defended Europe’s borders from Muslim “invaders”. The Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, or “Knight Justiciar Breivik”, is a recent adherent whose blessing Tarrant sought before his attack. No doubt, he is now well on the way to ascending some heroic, racist, mass-murdering hierarchy in the historical epic in which he has trapped himself.
So perhaps, you might think, the only appropriate response is indeed to diagnose a case of psychopathic narcissism and consign the killer to an ignominious anonymity while tightening up gun laws. The awkward fact, though, is that Tarrant is neither mad nor stupid. He is pursuing a coherent ideology and I’m afraid it is one that, although they would stop short of endorsing his violent means, a surprising number of people quietly support. Tarrant variously refers to himself as a racist, an “eco-fascist” and an “ethno-nationalist”. He sees the world through the prism of race, in which white Europeans (excluding Jews, of course) are “us” and everyone else is “them”. The problem, in his world-view, is that “white lands” are being “invaded” by immigrants who are outbreeding locals.
The truth is that such notions of racial hierarchy are probably more common than uncommon in much of the world. Whether it’s Kenya’s Kikuyus and Luos, Han Chinese imperialism or American white supremacism, millions of people define themselves in tribal terms, though most of them aren’t violent. Tarrant’s iteration of these ideas weaves together selective readings of genetic studies with folklore and nationalist history.
There are several ways to combat this hateful ideology. You can argue the science, in particular the false idea that modern racial categories correlate in any way to the population
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structures of the past. You can examine the troubled psychology of people who have such a great need to believe in stark, black-and-white interpretations of human society (many of them, like Tarrant, lost their fathers at a young age). You can debate what socio-economic conditions make such beliefs more likely. You can talk about the way ideas propagate via new media, video games and celebrity culture. All of these are valid but I have yet to hear a coherent reason why refusing to name the perpetrator of a terrible crime, whose name, manifesto and murderous video footage is already embedded in the fabric of the internet, will help us to stop this sickness from spreading.
Ms Ardern means well and, insofar as she is taking a stand against the nihilistic hunger for fame, there is a kernel of reason in her thinking.
But, it is ultimately a futile and empty gesture. We have to engage not just in the meta-debate about sociological causes, but the content, the ideas, the substance. We have to debunk the fantasy world of the modern “knights templar”, gunning down toddlers and peaceful worshippers in the name of Europe’s war dead. If we refuse to name the criminal, we cannot address the crime.