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Wake up the President? Terrorist Mass Murder at New Zealand Mosques [Updated midday Friday]
On Friday afternoon, 15 March 2019, New Zealand time, there was a horrific terrorist attack at least two mosques in New Zealand. They are 20 hours ahead of the U.S. West Coast time. According to the initial reports, an attacker livestreamed the event. The image, at right, was captured by media before the video was taken down. There apparently was a lengthy manifesto. There have been multiple people arrested. It appears this was an attack by white New Zealand and Australian citizens on Muslims.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said: “This can only be described as a terrorist attack.” The linked BBC page has a series of videos. The PM is not inclined to tweet. Indeed, you can see her last communication was in October.
The initial casualties being reported are 40 killed and over 20 wounded at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand:
Of the confirmed 40 people killed, 30 were killed at Al Noor mosque and 10 killed at Linwood mosque. That 10 figure includes three people who were outside Linwood Avenue mosque at the time.
The casualty reports have trended up to 49 dead and 48 being treated in area hospitals. Follow the live blog on the Christchurch mosque shootings, at the Strait Times, out of Singapore, for a regional view.
Initial reports indicated a single shooter, self-identified as “Brenton Tarrant,” methodically gunning people down, starting with worshipers who had just begun their Friday evening prayers.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has confirmed that one of the four people taken into custody is Australian. Media reports had said that a man who called himself “Brenton Tarrant” – a white, 28-year-old Australia-born man – claimed to be the shooter and livestreamed the shooting for 17 minutes.
If it was only the one shooter, not only was he uninterrupted in his slaughter, but he had the freedom to drive from one mosque to another and continue his killing spree.
So, our intelligence and law enforcement community has to be asking if this is a small cell trying to make itself look significant on the internet? Is anyone in the U.S. following, interacting with, the individuals or network implicated in the attack? Are there any signs emerging overnight of people who start chattering about a copycat attack here?
The clock is ticking towards Friday evening prayer services at mosques in the United States. So, what steps are being taken to prevent an attack on one or more mosques here? At the same time, are there signs of Muslims or other Jew-haters deciding that this is as good an excuse at the last one for attacking Hasidic or Orthodox Jews on the streets, or targeting Jewish businesses or places of worship come Saturday?
A lot of professionals are surely working through our nighttime. Before waking President Trump, DHS Secretary Nielsen and National Security Advisor Bolton had better have a clear assessment and recommended a course of action.
Rest assured that the Jew-haters, led by Rep. Ilhan Omar, will shout Islamaphobia, and the media arm of the left will blame guns and President Trump. The Democrats’ failure to properly censor targeted hatred of Jews will now be praised as just the right, balanced message. In New Zealand, there is both widespread gun ownership and very strict controls and inspections for ownership fitness. Their history is not ours, and their politics are not ours. Accordingly, we should be careful in any attempted analysis or drawing of conclusions.
Update—midday Friday, U.S. West Coast time:
* The most comprehensive straight news summary, updated regularly, is in the Strait Times article “‘One of New Zealand’s darkest days’: At least 49 killed in terror attacks on Christchurch mosques.”
* National Security Advisor John Bolton spoke to reporters on the White House driveway, prior to joining the president, vice president, and national security team for a national security meeting at the Pentagon. Bolton was very measured in his words on both the New Zealand attack and North Korea developments.
* Secretary of State Pompeo had an excellent statement on the terrorist attack in New Zealand, followed by a very strong statement on Yemen, and the International Criminal Court. He echoed the New Zealand PM’s language, calling it an “hour of darkness.”
* President Trump’s first tweet of the day read:
My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all!
Published in General
We know how the game is played. This guy has nothing to do with Trump or conservatism.
“The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China”…
But somehow we have to grovel about it.
Just like the events in Charlottesville. One lunatic panics and runs people over and we are all supposed to kowtow. Sorry. Not buying it.
I’m not a fan of tattoos, but I would have difficulty complaining if any beautiful 19 year were to have the above tattooed on say, her shoulderblade.
Didn’t you know that the NRA and its supporters are to blame? You don’t have to look hard to learn about it.
I suppose if we had gun control like New Zealand does, this wouldn’t have happened.
Never let a tragedy go to waste.
As I noted in the last paragraph of the OP:
From the Straits Times article cited:
Moderator Note:
Code of Conduct. Ad HominemPoor souls, crying about their own being killed or injured. What a shame. [redacted] I haven’t forgotten.
I appreciate Andrew Klavan’s “My Thoughts And Prayers:”
Rod Dreher writes “Radicalization & Degeneration:”
concern troll is concerned.
Honestly, it does seem very unlikely. No offence intended, but even within the US there is a very limited segment that sees the President as a thought leader of any kind.
Trump’s election is the local expression of one set of responses to socioeconomic change (crisis for some). Arguably Tarrant is another, but correlation is not causality.
It is human to react and to blame and to distance oneself from the obvious criminality of the expressions which are criminal or cruel or particularly stupid, but wisdom requires understanding.
Or, as NSFW Wonkette puts it:
Something about live by the sword die by the sword?
As stated previously this is your new normal. We might have been able to win the peace about 6 years ago. The ‘struggle’ will be more difficult now.
Similar rather than different:
And:
This is a list of targeted acts of terrorism on Christian civilians and church workers by religious Muslims since September 11th, 2001. These attacks have nothing to do with war, combat or insurgency. The victims are innocent Christians who were specifically targeted and abused solely on account of their faith by those who claim their own religion as a motive.
In a context where the fallout is both entirely predictable and institutionally overwhelming, and the healthy ‘thoughts and prayers’ response is itself vilified, its something that cannot be avoided without paying a huge price for it later. Kind of like worrying about a tsunami in the wake of a major coastal earthquake, it in no way reflects a disregard for innocent lives lost to any tragedy that could trigger a witch hunt or Reichstag Fire scenario.
No, it isn’t healthy. The alternative is even less healthy. That’s the world we live in.
That list would be much larger if all the attacks on the general populations, the religiously unknowns, the non-Christian known and Jews were included.
From NIOTPrinceton:
Sometimes when people are fearful, they become vicious and lash out. Their senses of reality become skewed (which may be a form of mental illness). Their fight or flight instinct is triggered and instead of retreating, some decide to go on the offense, and in this case, attacking self-selected enemies. Is the fear really that they (white nationalists) will become irrelevant at best or extinct at worse? How do we dispel or alleviate what seems to some as a real threat? How do we allay the fears of people who have delusions that “others” are plotting to destroy them? When we are able to answer these complex questions, we will at best have an opportunity to solve these problems or at least learn to better manage them.
///
Though I would say it’s applicable to more than white nationalists or people who believe that this replacement thing is real. Its essentially a broader point.
This is beautiful!
My prayers for the dead and their families. Horrendous. Evil. May God provide peace and justice.
Yes but we don’t retaliate against innocent people. These poor people were just living their lives, not plotting jihad.
There’s apparently more sympathy with Tarrant’s concerns than I would have thought. Meaning more people think theses concerns are reality based than I would have thought possible. So there’s that.
Also odd similarity in: there are Muslims who automatically respond to questions about Terrorism by Muslims with a ‘what about how many people the West has killed in X, the West is fundamentally aggressive and racist, you can see that by its history, here are some examples’ – and what is strange is that they don’t even seem to be conscious that they are not addressing the issue, and that they’re changing the subject. The mind is a slippery thing.
It seems to me more productive to take these facts and frame them as follows:
“How dreadful that a hateful proponent of an extremist ideology would engage in mass murder of those he hates. Public figures and media organizations have just demonstrated they know the right and decent way to respond to mass murder, and to murderous ideologues. Therefore, they are entirely without excuse for their willful failure to cover, or active covering up by mischaracterizing, mass murder of Christians.”
I agree that we (public figure, media organisations, all of us) should respond consistently when these events occur. With that said, not according them the importance of their own context does them an injustice, and creates more heat than light. Wrt Nigeria:
Which actually aligns more closely with Tarrant’s motivation than religious ideology. He didn’t shoot people in a mosque because of what they believed but because he believed that their very presence in the West (whether peaceful or not) represented an existential danger to his own ethnic group. And because he thought he would get more support from other white people because Muslim migrants are already a high profile out-group in much of the West.
He was targeting an audience when wrapping this particular product.
More on Nigeria here and here. And interestingly here. I don’t know if anybody else subscribes to Radio War Nerd, but this week there was a very interesting podcast on conflicts in the Sahel, which mostly involve the movement of peoples (ethnic and religious identity often overlaps), competition of resources and resulting conflicts. (Next week he will do one on Nigeria.)
Now in societies which are organised by ethno-religious identity and where wealth is largely created from primary production the zero sum competition between different immutable groups has a ghastly logic. And because human societies were like that for so very long perhaps it’s an instinctive tendency for us still?
However. In societies which are not organised by ethno-religious identity (ie where ‘Englightenment Values’ dominate social and political structures) and where wealth is overwhelmingly created by secondary and tertiary production (ie no longer a zero sum game) this viewpoint is not realistic but fantastical.
(Maybe paranoid?)
I am not in sympathy with either point of views. I just recognize thinking that white supremacy which does not significantly exist in any organized form, is not supported by any government or religion is any way equivalent to jihadist that seems to be supported by many Muslims around the world, seems to be supported by many countries around the world seemed to be backed by lots of money from around the world to the point that they field armies that can stop very large nations are similar is a silly and disengenerous.
I think that’s ignoring the identitarian movement in the West. If somebody believes that the West is being over-run by Muslim migrants they do believe in what motivated Tarrant – and we are democracies. If enough people believe that it will eventually be reflected in the make up of our Governments and in their policies. Something that is starting to happen?
Edit: also – some of the responses to this Muslim migrants being shot by a white supremacist, even on this thread but also elsewhere, have been to talk about the problem with Islam and Muslims. I am not suggesting that these responses should be shut down, but I think instinctively talking about what’s wrong with Muslims in response to Muslim civilians in New Zealand being shot really illustrates something about where (some of) society is on all of this.
As, perhaps, does the disinclination to directly address the shooter’s motivations in the context of the shooter’s actions. Were his actions wrong but his motivations correct? I don’t think that conversation should be shut down, I think it should be had.
Isn’t that what’s happening?
Also, I can easily ignore something that doesn’t hit the radar. Identitarian? If that’s a movement, then they’re sure doing a lousy job of getting the word out.
There will always be idiots. I don’t think extrapolating the idea that if there’s a small group of idiots somewhere, they might be able to garner votes, and therefore take over the entire government and direct policy and set the world aflame, is a logical extrapolation. Ask the buckethead party.
With respect, I don’t think you can have a conversation about the shooter’s motives without actually talking about the shooter’s motives.
Re identitarian:
https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/03/28/how-identitarian-politics-is-changing-europe
Dangerous, even.