QED

At the Root of the Evil in Christchurch

What a coincidence! Two events, 2000 kilometres apart, on the same day. In one, thousands of school children, their brains half-baked by insidiously-planted concern for an unproven theory, take to the streets to save the planet for the children they may never spawn. In the other, a yokel, a walking tweeting paradigm of voided education and irrational mental process, murders 50 strangers to save the world from Muslim encroachment.

Two extremes, simultaneously, of the same disease: identity politics.

The sheer horror of sudden, brutal slaughter with semi-automatic weapons is judged unimaginable because it occurs in a quiet little city in such a clean little country as New Zealand. And it’s worse because, unlike mass school shootings in the USA, it was targeted very specifically at Muslims. It’s not a case where the usual “thoughts and prayers” will suffice. That it raises a political problem – a problem beyond the death and suffering – is reflected in the headlined comment by a senior political commentator who ought to know better, “We are all Muslims now.” That was more of the #MeToo we saw after the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Compared with Islamist atrocities, terrorist attacks against Muslims in the Western world are extremely rare. Yet the savagery of the Christchurch massacre has produced an unprecedented reaction against “white supremacy” and Islamophobia.  So the only real actions in this country, apart from the proper expressions of sympathy and condolence, are to propose censure of a maverick senator and deny a visa to Milo Yiannopoulos. Both deal only in words, not deeds.

Every politician feels obliged to declare Islam a religion of peace. Yet communities around the world are left to cope with the consequences of the political imposition of multiculturalism. When difficulties arise — a zealot mowing down pedestrians in Bourke Street, a blameless computer worker gunned down in Parramatta — the citizenry is exhorted to put more effort into embracing diversity. Laws may be proposed against hate speech, but it is dogmatically incorrect to try to discuss the hatreds embedded in Islam’s holy texts or to reveal their ultimate aim of bringing the whole world to submission before Allah.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open the gates to Middle East refugees and unleashed a torrent of criminality and terrorism. Berlin is struggling with Arab gangs in its now no-go areas, as is Paris. There are now more than five million Muslims in Germany, but nearly seven million in France, 10% of the population. Some projections estimate 14% of Europe will be Muslim by 2050, and there are no signs they will be integrated. Yet in Australia, it is deemed incorrect to suggest that Muslim migration be limited and Christians preferred. Rather, in Europe, Christians are marginalised, ignored or mocked at the same time Muslim sensibilities are carefully protected.  So without in any way minimising or excusing the Christchurch atrocity, let’s put it in some perspective:

Between 2015 and 2018, 261 people were killed by Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe. “Aid to the Church in Need” in its latest Freedom Report  names 4,305 Christians murdered for their faith in 2018, making Christians the most persecuted group. There is one estimate that 11 Christians are killed every day, three-quarters of them in Muslim-majority countries. The 2017 Palm Sunday bombing of a church in Alexandria, which killed 45, passed largely without comment in the West.

Little attempt has been made to understand Brenton Tarrant’s motivations for his murderous assault, so let’s look at his 74-page “manifesto”, The Great Replacement: Towards a New Society We March Ever Forward. It is clearly the incoherent product of an unformed intellect, the result of sloppy emotionalism being seduced by a mish-mash of historical facts resulting in an absurd political programme. His cry before opening fire: “This is for Europe” is echoed by his reference to Charles Martel, who halted the Islamist invasion of Europe in 732 at the Battle of Tours. Tarrant describes himself as an eco-fascist, a socialist who regards China’s government as the ideal, yet presents the political Left as the enemy, describing Antifa, communists and Marxists as “anti-white scum.” He disparages conservatism, saying it is “dead, thank God.”

Overall, the document seems aimed at the US Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) with the intent and hope to cause discontent, even igniting civil war. At three places he hopes that his attack will “create conflict between the two ideologies within the United States on the ownership of firearms in order to further the social, cultural, political and racial divide.”

And: “With enough pressure, the left wing within the United States will seek to abolish the Second Amendment, and the right wing will see this as an attack on their very freedom and liberty. The attempted abolishment (sic) of rights by the left will result in a dramatic polarisation of the people in the United States and eventually a fracturing of the U.S. along cultural and racial lines.”

This is stupidity and sheer megalomania. As such, it is much more serious and dangerous than mere white superiority and alt-right neo-fascism. It shows that poor education, a lack of critical thinking and personal inadequacy can be an explosive mixture in the pressures of today’s society.

Over time, the wounds of Christchurch will heal and Tarrant will be condemned to the historical hell of irrelevance. But the real lessons from these events —  the importance of education, an understanding of the perspectives of history. and the rationality to reject the siren call of extremism — must be learnt. In that context,  the consequences of the dishonest, teacher-inspired schoolchildren’s strike for climate change may prove much more lasting.

14 thoughts on “At the Root of the Evil in Christchurch

  • lloveday says:

    “Every politician feels obliged to declare Islam a religion of peace.”.
    .
    In the real world, I have lived, worked and played with Muslims for many years and intimately know many Muslims; some are good friends.
    .
    In the mosques, they pray that all non-Muslims will either convert to Islam or be subjugated to Islamic law and rule, for only then will there be peace unto the world. But that peace cannot come about peacefully.

  • Peter Smith says:

    A good and timely piece Geoffrey. This morning, the Australian newspaper clipped a CBS piece which referred to a report on the activities of 121 Islamist groups in 2017. Their activities apparently resulted in the deaths of 84,000 people, 22,000 of them civilians. We just have to keep perspective even in the face of tragedy.

  • lloveday says:

    “We just have to keep perspective even in the face of tragedy”. Indeed.
    .
    Adam Piggott wrote “I feel no emotion for those gunned down. I hear that among the victims were women and children. And? They are not my people”.
    .
    I can relate to that – 140 Brazilians are murdered on an average day, and who cares, or even knows, outside family and friends? Ditto the 15,000 live-born children under 5 who die world-wide on an average day (in many countries the death rate is 10+ times that of Australia).
    .
    When the 737 Max went down in Indonesia, endless headlines about the 189 killed, but seldom do we hear about the well over 100 PER DAY that die in Indonesian road accidents unless it’s a drunken Australian pranging a motor bike in Bali. Ethiopia’s not far behind with 70 or so per day – 2 days and as many deaths as in their 737 crash.
    .
    I would shoot Tarrant at dawn tomorrow without a second thought (why have the cost of a trial and maybe 60 years in a comfortable jail?), but I don’t know the dead in NZ or their family any more than I know the Brazilians, and feel the same as Piggott about both groups – neither are “my people” and I don’t have any specific sympathy, and certainly nowhere near enough to engage in weeping and gnashing of teeth.

  • Geoffrey Luck says:

    I could have added that in Nigeria on March 10, 35 people were killed, the next day 46 were murdered in their village and i00 burned to the ground. The bodies of their minister and his wife were found floating in the river. All apart from the 130 people killed in February. This is the “Christian cleansing” being carried out ruthlessly in that country.

  • deric davidson says:

    Coptic Christians murdered by Islamists while praying in a church in Egypt. In the Philippines Catholic mass goers murdered by Islamists recently. And now, as Geoffrey Luck has said, dozens of Nigerian Christians murdered by Islamists in the last few days. Where is the on going coverage in the media of these atrocities? Limited or none.
    The murder of Christians around the world happens so often it is now a big yawn. It has been normalized by the media. As one well known Muslim TV presenter has said – its just an irritant and the Muslim mayor of London says – it’s to be accepted as part of daily life now. Apparently all that changes for them in relation to Christchurch.
    The murder of innocent Muslims at prayer is an atrocity no doubt but so is the murder of innocent Christians at prayer. Where’s the balance in reporting and response? I don’t see it.

  • whitelaughter says:

    the ongoing media circus is useful in only one fashion – to show that the media know what morality is, but ignore it. Their screams about a mosque in Christchurch show up their silence on attacks on Synagogues (such as Nar Nof) and churches (not least the attack that occured on the 11th of this month in Nigeria, that has been completely ignored).

  • whitelaughter says:

    stupid lack of an edit ability: *H*ar Nof.

  • pgang says:

    Not a single MSM newspaper, including The Australian, has reported on the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria over the past week. Even when I raised this in the comments section the comment went un-published. The Australian claims to be conservative, or balanced, or whatever. It’s not though – it’s just chasing click-bait, like the rest of the them. I notice today that the Christchurch meme has all but disappeared. Not enough clicks now that they have saturated us with their pompous hand-wringing.

  • lloveday says:

    Brendan O’Neil, editor of Spiked, has an excellent article commencing “The Western media class has reached a new low”.

    The Australian lists him as a commentator and occasionally print articles by him, but I don’t think they will print this – like pgang, any comment I post slightly critical of Islam is rejected.

    spiked-online.com/2019/03/18/new-zealands-ghoulish-opportunists/

  • lloveday says:

    Yesterday in Italy, a Muslim “refugee” immigrant locked 51 children in their school bus and set it alight with the stated intention of, and a realistic probability of, them all being burned to death. All escaped death, in good part because of a mobile phone call to the police who arrived quickly.
    .
    This Muslim is as evil as the Christchurch shooter and his intention basically the same, just less “competent”, but will it even be in tomorrow’s papers or on your ABC, let alone elicit wide condemnation, and if it is, will they even mention that he was Muslim and his targets non-Muslims, as is the case in the vast majority of terrorist acts?

  • rod.stuart says:

    Somewhat off topic, but CHCH was referenced several times in the rant. Did anyone see the ‘interview’ on the Bolt Report tonight? How anyone with an ounce of common sense could even consider voting Green has always been a mystery to me, but after that performance you couldn’t vote Green unless you belonged in a straight jacket with their leader. What a DISGUSTING ignoramus! Just as Ardern won’t say the name of the shooter, I won’t say the name of the Greens leader.

  • Jody says:

    Couldn’t agree more about the Greens. That oaf who is vicious and vindictive hasn’t a shred of human decency. What worries me the most, though, are his totalitarian instincts: jumping from foot to foot he breathlessly says, “we shouldn’t be …..”, “they shouldn’t be….”, “we need laws”. He is absolutely TERRIFYING and a sign of what is to come in the brave new world of idiotic millennials.

    And I see the Christchurch Crusaders (RU team) is changing its name. My husband has said, “the name of the city is the next thing that will change”. These minority groups must laugh their heads off at the stupidity of the useful idiots in the western world. I feel ashamed to be breathing the same air.

  • lloveday says:

    For those who saw Richard Carleton interview then Archbishop Pell in 2002 and would like to refresh their memory, or have never seen it, it’s 23 minutes long, starting here:
    .
    youtu.be/V4_hoy_fJWc?t=1221

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