Feature, Musings —03.15.2019 07:49 AM
—The haters and us
When word of the terror attack in New Zealand arrived, I did what many do: I turned on CNN, and I went to social media.
Within minutes, I found the murderer’s “manifesto” and the live video of his killing spree within the mosque. Sleep didn’t come easily after that.
I’ve been researching, and writing about, the racist Right for decades. I have interviewed and exposed many hate movement leaders. There is no doubt, to me, that the mass-murderer was indisputably a neo-Nazi and white supremacist.
His “manifesto” contained the “Fourteen Words,” the haters’ pledge of allegiance, conjured up years ago by one of the jailed members of the neo-Nazi terrorist group, The Order. The Fourteen Words has since been embraced by bigots globally – including Canada’s own Faith Goldy: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
The video, meanwhile, was about fifteen minutes long and showed dozens of Muslim worshippers being murdered in cold blood. It is beyond horrible; don’t go looking for it. What it resembled, to me, is one of those single-shooter video games that are so popular – except that real people were being killed. Over and over.
His weapons were covered with neo-Nazi symbols and references.
The white supremacists and anti-Semites I have tracked over the years are almost always male. They are usually in their teens or twenties. They have been failures in relationships – with their families, with women – and they are failures at life, too. They can’t hold a job, they have little interest in education.
The Far Right offers them a ready-made credo, a new family belong to, a sense of purpose. Sometimes they even get a uniform out of it.
What they all share, however, is this: they are cowards. They strike when those they hate – Jews, women, gays, Muslims, non-whites – are most vulnerable. A daycare in Oklahoma City, a church in Charleston, a synagogue in Pittsburgh, mosques in Quebec City and, now, New Zealand.
Can you imagine anything more cowardly – anything more weak – than attacking people when they are in a place of worship, or children in a daycare or a school? Could there be anything worse than that?
So: don’t utter the cowards’ name. Don’t go looking for the manifesto or the video. They want you to do that.
Pray, instead, for the victims and their families. And resolve to oppose the haters with every means at our disposal – until they are forever gone, never to return.
Amen.
Let us never forget that these hate groups all worship authoritarians and actually model the untoward behaviour of the most infamous of authoritarians that civilization has evidenced to date. Hitler committed the most egregious violations of humanity and he is the one they cite most often.
Bottom line is that right-wing authoritarianism is fueled on the right-of-center politics whereas it is repudiated outright by the left-of-center thinkers.
Right-wing authoritarianism is the bane of our existence in civilization. Right-wing authoritarianism is society at a debased & irrational level of thinking. It is rare when an educator adopts a right-of-center perspective. Right-wing ideologues are few for a reason.
Thanks for the heads up on not looking at the manifesto published or the hate video that is undoubtedly on YouTube.
RW
Why is authoritarianism or even nationalism portrayed as right wing?
So, left wing=good, right=wing=bad?
That’s strikingly similar to four legs=good, two legs=bad.
So all 20-something white neo-Nazis vote Conservative, huh? Good to know.
So do all terrorists (white guys with guns or vans or Antifa placards or those of any other colour, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation) vote Liberal?
Hatred is a uniquely human characteristic and it isn’t married to any one specific political ideology.
Studies have shown that increased fear is associated with conserivatism.
Frank J. Sulloway researched birth order in family constellations and empirically deduced that first born children are statistically more likely to be conservative supporters as they age. Last born children are most likely to rebel and think outside the box on the left-of-center politics.
Please check out Sulloway’s book _Born to Rebel_ as it is telling politically.
RW
Studies have also shown that men with less than average upper body strength tend to be liberal.
Robert,
So where exactly do you put a totalitarian like Mao on the political spectrum?
I was raised by a Poet/Producer mother and Mao would most assuredly be in the great poetry part of the political spectrum given his writing. He had much more empathy than Stalin did.
Mao was a great thinker IMO. And he liked to send people to re-socialization camps for political re-education free of charge unlike George W. Bush.
RW
“Mao was a great thinker IMO. ”
Yes. And also a MASS MURDERER, don’t forget.
Oh, sure…most of the 20-45 MILLION people who died (some say 78 million, but who’s counting?) were ‘accidentally’ starved to death, but he also *directly ordered* the killing of over 90% of the millions of land owners in China (never mind the intellectuals and other ‘undesirables’); at least one landlord per village was required to be executed, remember?
Biggest mass-murderer in history, with far more victims than Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or anyone else. This is a guy you admire, Robert?
I get your admonishment but Mao was a great tactician politically, and he was a skilled writer. Of course I do not support the ugly things he did or the mass murders. There is no excuse for mass murder IMO so you are right to sanction my comments. Jan Wong would agree with your assessment too. He did turn China around though most would disagree with his methods.
RW
Can you ask Andrew Scheer why he associates with such people as Goldy Faith or rebel media or even the Yellow Vests? Even today his bland statement did not mention mosque, Islamophobia or white supremacist. Whatever you think of Trudeau, he was the leader today.
As a Muslim and POC in Canada for over two decades, I do not have the luxury to think of scandals. I have to think of who will spread hatred against me here and vote accordingly.
Every politician reads the same boilerplate, i.e. condemning violence, stating condolence and offering assistance. Going any further risks coming off as insincere or playing identity politics. Trudeau didn’t go too far, but neither did Scheer not go far enough. Trudeau has the superior acting skills so no matter what he is better at exploiting these situations.
Please remind us of what your comments were following the Danforth shootings? Was there a Scheer connection as well?
Nevertheless, congratulations on making the linkage, it debases any point you might have wanted to make.
Kris, what linkage are you talking about?
I thought Andrew Scheer’s comments after the Danforth shooting were fine. Apparently, even Leader Scheer was unhappy with his first set of comments about this massacre, as he has issued a second set that (gasp!) uses the word “Mosque”!!
If Leader Scheer has such a hard time doing the right thing when it is easy, how can we rely on him to speak out and protect Muslims and other minorities when it is hard? And it is often hard — to stand up against anangry majority to protect the weak — but that’s the job.
PM Trudeau, for all his faults, knows this. It is past time for Andrew Scheer to learn.
Ralph Goodale also failed to mention Muslims or Islam in his first tweet, *eight hours* after Scheer’s. Why don’t you have a problem with that? Do Conservatives get called out but Liberals get a free pass?
A visit to the Breitbart comment section beneath this story tells you all you need to know about the kind of people who support Donald Trump. Absolutely disgusting and depressing that there are so many people like this on this planet.
Even Breitbart/Disqus had to censor comments. But the stuff that gets through is still incredibly depressing.
Fully agree and we need to stand up to this and make clear it is unacceptable. But I also think as mentioned a lot of frustrated people become more radicalized and if you see someone moving in this direction intervene, don’t stand aside and do nothing. I think the internet and social media has allowed these types to go in their echo chambers thus become more extreme thus why we are seeing more of this than in the past. Hopefully social media sites do a better job of monitoring this and start shutting down accounts promoting this. Bigotry cost lives and time to say enough is enough.
Hopefully the solution will be something other than shrieking obscenities, insults and hatred right back at them…your side has been doing that for decades now, to no avail. It’s long past time to try a different approach, if you’re really serious about dealing with this problem.
Fred,
Miles is CPC.
Uh-huh. Like Michael Chong is, right?
Yes we need to be more tolerant of intolerance…
Trump called for a military coup by his supporters 15 hours before the massacre.
Stephen Harper shut up the worst of the Right Wing extreme hate in Canada for a long time. That was his greatest role in politics. Regardless of much I dislike about him and his politics. He did truly shut out and shut up the fascists and white supremicists and bigots.
The solution is Canada being a grown up and getting France, Germany and the UK to boot the US out of the NATO.
Trump is TRYING to make a mass shooter like in NZ every week. It is his GOAL. Trump is an outright facsist. He is a neo-nazi. His speeches are written by a neo nazi. Bannon amd Miller are outright neo nazis. His whitehouse shared a faked video from infowars of an incident of JimAcosta assaulting a reporter during a whitehouse press conference. And never walked it back. Doubled down.
Trudeau is such a useless fuck we have this SNC bullshit. If the US will not face the reality that a minority of fascists are in power and trying to make a coup for their dictatorship of fascism. The it is up to the so called “allies” of the USA to do so. Since we are actually the enemies. Canada needs to get the reat of NATO to take the USA issye seriously. NATO was for North America to protect Europe. Now it is for Europe to protect Canada from what may amount to them going full Nazi. Better to face that before they to full Nazi.
Apoeasing these fuckers like media still is… worked so wel in 20’s and 30’s Europe. Now we are all Chamberlain acting like we can have peace with fascists. At leadt the American progressives now know not to compromise with evil.
Fuck Trump. Fuck Nazi’s. Trump is an outright ficking Nazi. Right now. So is the entire Republican Party. This is not American exceptionalism. Or America being further to the right generally than Europe or Canada for decades. This is Nazism. His the playbook. And they want more New Zealand attacks. So do the rebel media crowd.
Scheer is no Nazi. It is not about Scheer. This is not about Conservative vs Liberal or right or left in Canada. This is an outright hot war – world wide for human civilization. And Trudeau apparently thinks the rule of law in this historical environment is optional if he could lose votes. Who cares about money laundering with totalitarian dictatorships?
Everyone Canada needs to grow the fuck up. Wake up. The US is run by outright fascists that are going full Nazi. We have this long border and 1% of the military capacity of the US. So we need to fix this more than any other country. We are poland. Right now.
I don’t want to be poland in the late 1930’s… but here we are. Talking about SNC… fuck Trudeau. Fuck the Canadian Media.
You don’t do your side any favors with a hysterical, over-the-top rant like that one, sorry.
Why is authoritarianism or even nationalism portrayed as right wing?
I honestly believe that Hitler’s Brown Shirts were the historical nexus of authoritarianism & white nationalism and they were characterized as rule abiding without discernment or thought beyond following orders like automatons. Right-wing nationalism cloaked itself in things like manifest destiny & the ‘fatherland’ in the case of German. Fascism proper was ethno-nationalistic for Italy & Germany as it started but grew into alignment with ‘God & Country’ type nationalist thinking that was likely precipitated by the First World War superordinate goals of coming together to defeat nationalist enemies. By the time Hitler came about the 1st WW had been utilized to condition the masses to the authority of war making at that time in history. And at that time Germany was the most likely to precipitate war by nationalistic & propagandistic means. No leader ever spent the money on propaganda that Germany did for WW2. White Nationalism emanates for the Second World War period in history IMO. I may be wrong though I’m not entirely sure when it comes to political historiography. And that’s why I study this website.
RW
Interesting to see the media vultures and the LPC doing the Gotcha! dance on Scheer. Imagine preying on the victims and their loved ones to sell advertising, bring back a lost audience and to further your political goals.
Apparently these vampires think that’s the way to bring people together.
Would you agree that the Liberals and the left in general, in forbidding any debate whatsoever on immigration policy, bears some of the blame?
When you hysterically prevent mainstream opponents from discussing an issue of vital importance to the country, the extreme bigoted voices will fill that niche instead.
Pedant,
Bang on.
“Bang on.”
He is…but how do you get the liberals and ‘progressives’ to understand and accept this? They still respond to any perceived hatred with hatred of their own; how do you break this cycle?
Present, to answer you question, I would disagree. As. I think, would any decent person.
(Only responding because of what Miles said earlier — to try to not let incitement go unanswered).
Is anyone ready for discussions around how to truly head off tragedies like this? Condemning hatred is fine but won’t accomplish much. Perhaps intelligence agencies need additional funding or authority to surveille people planning these types of horrors. Maybe legislation needs to force more accountability on social media providers to censure hate content. Maybe internet service providers should have to take reasonable steps to block access to sites like 8chan and the dark web.
Why do things like this get so much less reporting?
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/27/asia/philippines-church-explosion/index.html