The man arrested for massacring 49 worshippers in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand posted a manifesto online just before the attack. I haven't read it and do not intend to but he said in it:
Rod Liddle, who must have even odder Facebook friends than me, complains that at a moment for mourning some people are complaining that the flag is flying at half mast over Buckingham Palace, that the attacks were called terrorism and the murderer called right wing.
“For once, the person that will be called a fascist, is an actual fascist, I am sure the journalists will love that. I mostly agree with Sir Oswald Mosley’s views and consider myself an eco-fascist. The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China.”I hope we shall be spared a lot of tedious boilerplate commentary about this massacre, about islamophobia, racism, Donald Trump and anti-immigration politics being to blame and so on and I should also like to be spared whataboutery.
Rod Liddle, who must have even odder Facebook friends than me, complains that at a moment for mourning some people are complaining that the flag is flying at half mast over Buckingham Palace, that the attacks were called terrorism and the murderer called right wing.
I see people are pointing out that recently 130 Christians were killed by Muslims in Nigeria and the other day 23 were killed by Muslims in the Philippines. This is important, of course, and in general the war against Christians is woefully and shamefully unremarked even by, or especially by, the churches. But it seems distasteful to turn murder into politics. Let the dead be buried.
Yet the murders are an entirely political act.
This massacre is part of a sequence and the rate of massacres will surely speed up. Nor is this very surprising. What action can we or should we take in response?
This massacre is part of a sequence and the rate of massacres will surely speed up. Nor is this very surprising. What action can we or should we take in response?
Beyond tightening gun laws, I mean, and restricting free speech further on the internet. The suspect had a gun licence.
I wish to avoid scoring political points and yet some points are very important, especially about the way the media distort the truth and the way politicians think it scandalous that a video made by the suspect has been spread across the world via Facebook.
More importantly, a friend on Facebook just posted this which is very interesting if true and it seems to be true from what I can find on the net. Googling, I see that it was first posted by the controversialist Milo Yiannopoulos.
I wish to avoid scoring political points and yet some points are very important, especially about the way the media distort the truth and the way politicians think it scandalous that a video made by the suspect has been spread across the world via Facebook.
More importantly, a friend on Facebook just posted this which is very interesting if true and it seems to be true from what I can find on the net. Googling, I see that it was first posted by the controversialist Milo Yiannopoulos.
The Al Noor mosque in Christchurch targeted by Brenton Tarrant produced at least two terrorists, from a very small congregation: al-Qaida recruit Daryl Jones, killed by a drone, and Christopher Havard. The parents of these boys say their sons were radicalized by extremist preachers at Al Noor. The boys were in Yemen with the guys who trained the Charlie Hebdo killers. A 2014 story at Stuff.co.nz (now scrubbed from the internet) quotes a mosque attendee who says, “A visiting speaker from Indonesia talked about violent jihad and plenty shared his views.” Three questions: How many news reports have you read these details in? If you’d known that this mosque was a terrorist factory, would it have changed your feelings about the news at all? Finally, how does it make you feel to learn that the media has been not just ignoring these facts but deleting stories to hide them over the past 24 hours?
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