As shockwaves of the Christchurch shooting continue to be felt around the world, and coverage continues unabated, Crikey readers took to the comments to help process one of the most challenging events in recent memory. Readers responded to our bumper edition yesterday, covering everything from the conditions that allow for white supremacy to thrive in Australia, the warning signs of right-wing terror that the media have ignored, the difficult homecoming many New Zealanders are facing, and the mainstream media’s normalisation of racist discourse, among many other issues.
On Christchurch
Richard Shortt writes: The biggest mistake anyone could make after the tragedy of Christchurch is to label it “a New Zealand attack”. This was a global attack, aimed at a global audience, seeking a global response from both like-minded and opposing groups. However, it did not happen in NZ by accident. It was a deliberate exploitation of weakness in NZ gun laws. NZ has to fix the law, we all have to fix extremism.
Humphrey Bower writes: Show me an ethnonationalist, ethnoseparatist or white supremacist and I’ll show you a racist, sexist, homophobic fascist every time. These have existed long before multiculturalism, globalisation or neoliberalism were invented. They are fuelled by the hate speech of demagogues (including politicians, journalists and public figures of all kinds).
Jim Sykes writes: One wonders how long it will be before one of the Murdoch tabloids reverts to form and has one of their anti Islamic and/or racist scare front pages. Maybe Sportsbet could open a market. My tip is late next week.
Helen Gaynor writes: I have a friend who lives in a small town in far north Queensland who called me in despair yesterday. Not one person of many he had talked to had expressed any sadness or sympathy for the victims of the Christchurch shootings. These fellow Australians, my friend tells me, think they know what’s really going on, unlike the media or city folk who are all being duped. They believe that what they hold dear and true is under threat by Muslim and non-white immigration. The only politician they feel who hears them and understands them is Pauline Hanson. It is this part of the country that the Coalition has been turning inside out for to stay in power. At what cost to us all? My friend took a bunch of flowers to the small mosque in the next town. The only other tribute was a single red rose.
Ken Nesha writes: Humans have only progressed when we cooperate. The fear of the other has to be seen as pointless and a waste of time. The world is not going to go back to cultural purity (which never existed). Humans are travellers and since time immemorial have moved to other places and countries to improve their lot. This is the world, so to all the Tarrant types out there: stop the racist bullshit and find something creative to do with your life.
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The Grand Prix – Melbourne
20 years GP @ $50M pa = $1B total = 200-300K visitors for 3-4 days pa
MONA – Hobart
1 year @$250M = $250M total = 350K visitors pa, every year, year round
If I were a Taswegian I’d be rolling about laughing as the supposedly more businesslike north islanders spent their $ funding an international private venture capital’s business, to the tune of 4 MONAs (to date and counting)
Thanks for pointing that out. I hope others will publicise this, to the morons and other gullibles who think that funding the F1 is a great idea. I have been to MONA and completely applaud the whole idea, and to think that it even makes “neoliberal economic sense”!
The big difference between the two is that MONA is privately funded, the GP is taxpayer funded.
On Humphrey Bower’s comments, I was more than a little interested to see the video of Anning being egged. I was struck in particular with the audience. I realise stereotypes are dangerous and can be unreliable, but the similarities between the audience members were much greater, to my mind, than their differences. Exclusively male (I saw no women, although I’ve no doubt there are plenty of women who do support Hanson and Anning [Hanning?”]), young, white, disaffected, some in singlets (men only do that if they think their biceps make them physically intimidating). That they are in the audience means they are racist, but I suggest it unlikely they are not sexist and homophobic as well. My guess is they are more likely to drive “blokey” or “tough guy” vehicles like dual cab utes; they see themsleves as work-hard/play hard guys; despise immigrants generally, but especially Muslims, deride those on welfare as bludgers and think that the indigenous get given way too much for doing nothing of anything much except more bludging – they likely also support DNA for people claiming to be indigenous. All views peddled at various times by the vainglorious Hanson.
Their views are, typically, uninformed and based on, dare I say it, stereotypes peddled by Hanson and her “kind” of politician and commentator. I’m not suggesting immigration is the “golden chalice” and multiculturalism has created some kind of southern hemisphere nirvana – immigration has always raised issues in Australia. My grandfather was Italian and he came to Australia in 1920, when Italian migrants were viewed with hatred by Australians and brawls in the streets and on job sites were de rigeur. Notably, the locals who feared Italians were themselves in many cases from families in Australia for less than 100 years at most – especially in South Australia where most settlers were immigrants not convicts!
Therein lies the rub – the views of this otherwise feckless group seem only to have their genesis in the spoutings, if not incoherent dribbling of Hanson, Anning, Dutton, Palmer, his disciples and Lambie to name a selection, although Lambie has gone quiet of late. But perversely, with every further utterance of their heroes, the views of their supporters, already distorted, are further skewed towards hatred of the target groups. Not all such young men take up guns and murder Muslims, but their hatred burns bright and their minds are closed.
Ken Nesha, while I agree completely with your comments could you please refrain from naming the filthy cockroach terrorist who killed all those defenceless people in Christchurch? This absolutely evil filth obviously gets its reward from publicity of its cowardly acts. This failed human being, this festering pus filled carbuncle needs to be lanced and forgotten. Remember the names of those murdered. Let their lives shine above the hate.
PS, I wish we had a Prime Minister with the integrity of Ardern. Maybe if we had such leadership we wouldn’t face shame being of the same nationality as the evil mass murdering coward.