First things first – with regard to the massacre in Christchurch New Zealand, Berg’s 18th Law is in full effect: “Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident. It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts.”.
But indications so far are that the attack was carried out by more than one person, whose motivations and “manifesto” seem at first blush strikingly similar to those of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who murdered 70-odd Norwegians, mostly teens at a political summer camp; the killer/s seem to have been motivated to attack Muslims, specifically.
Note that while New Zealand’s gun laws aren’t as full-blown nanny as Australia’s, they are more in line with California’s or New York State’s – registration/licensing/permits to own, “universal” background checks, the works. Note to Governor Walz; get back to us about your “universal” registraiton bill.
So my thoughts and prayers to the Muslims of New Zealand. (And for those idiot progs on Twitter who mock and taunt the idea – yes, thought and prayer and taking a moment to think rationally is in fact more useful than the actions you propose in responding to this sort of thing).
But let’s make sure we’re clear on the real lesson, here: there was a Good Guy with a Gun at one of the mosques that was attacked, and God only knows how many lives the man saved:
BREAKING: The New Zealand Herald reports that the shooting at the second mosque was stopped by an armed Muslim who “chased the shooters and fired two shots at them as they sped off.” pic.twitter.com/BA2FzsXq2d
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) March 15, 2019
Again – with Berg’s 18th Law in mind – it would appear that the shooters had a lot more in common with the French Bataclan terrorists than with your garden-variety American “Gone Postal”-style spree killers. The limited, regulated availability of firearms in News Zealand was only marginally less effective in preventing terror and saving lives than France’s near-complete ban (and ocmplete ban, for that matter, on the military-grade guns that the Paris terrorists used).
The only measure that worked? A good, Muslim guy with a gun.
That’s the real lesson – for those interested in rational thought.
Curious…
The Kiwi 1/4 wit posted his manifesto, and live streamed the shooting, on Facebook.
After the synagogue shooting in PA, GAB was de-platformed and de-monetized because that moron posted there. Will Facebook be faced with a similarly massive backlash?
Redicioulous!
Yep, and I believe the terrorist showed himself to be a real coward as well. He came up against some counter-force and ran.
White people have been in NZ for about 250 years.
Polynesians have been in NZ for maybe a millennium.
Kind of an odd place to consider a “white man’s homeland.”
The guy is a citizen of Australia, not of New Zealand….which kind of adds to the despicable nature of his crime. Like Aurora Colorado, the shooter was from California, not Colorado really. Too bad when “outsiders” come in and do this.
Worth noting; a citizen of one island nation got weapons banned in his nation and committed horrific crimes in another island nation where possession of such weapons is tightly controlled. We will see in the next few days whether he even had the requisite Kiwi permits. I am guessing no.
This would seem to have some bearing on how effective proposed gun control legislation modeled after Aussie and Kiwi gun control laws might be.
The process of radicalization for a Muslim or a white nationalist is shockingly similar.
@Emery, you got that right. You need to have a religion that dehumanizes other people to really become a terrorist. The shooter called himself “eco-nazi” who believed that all should be subordinate to the state, that socialism and government ownership of production was mandatory, and hated the respect for the individual that America promoted so heavily. In doing so, he reduced all humanity as subject to his ideal totalitarian system, only placing some special characteristics making them worth saving.
Hmmm, sounds like instead of an Abrahamic religion, he had a socialist religion, and instead of religious belief status being the marker of goodness and humanity, it was the color of someone’s skin. All in all, painted with much the same brush with just a slightly different palette.
Gee, it may be that the Christian and classic Western idea that all people’s lives are worthwhile might have some merit in reducing the worst excesses of believers. It’s when you start making arbitrary decisions about someone’s humanity (*cough* status in or out of the womb *cough* death penalty *cough* race *cough*) that you get folks who are willing to overlook our common humanity. It’s almost as if we should hope to respect each individual as a person, rather than judging them by their membership in arbitrary groupings.
Nah, let’s go back to dividing ourselves by othering each other. Much more fun, and much less internal emotional conflict.
Look for the differences, Emery.
Virtually all of these white power terrorists are marginalized. Not smart, poor education, no job prospects, no personal or family wealth, no church, no family important connections.
Cf. with the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan.
Very similar profiles: isolated young men with little in the way of romantic relationships (see the complete objectification of women in both cases), a lack of employable skills and employment. These people are not connected into society.
There are millions of unemployed, with little or no education or training in the first world who are sitting at their parents homes, wiling away the day watching porn and playing video games. Prime recruitment material for the alt right and their white nationalism.
Emery on March 16, 2019 at 6:22 am said:
Very similar profiles: isolated young men with little in the way of romantic relationships (see the complete objectification of women in both cases), a lack of employable skills and employment. These people are not connected into society.
There are millions of unemployed, with little or no education or training in the first world who are sitting at their parents homes, wiling away the day watching porn and playing video games. Prime recruitment material for the alt right and their white nationalism.
Agreed on a number of points. Once again, we see these lost young men, fit an age bracket that is almost exclusively late teens to mid 20s, the suspect is 27… so close enough in that. And white. In general, they do fit a pattern.
The radicalization part, I’m not as sure about. Yes, sure, they are radicalized but Charlottesville was full of young men and much less, geezers, here and there.
Suspect’s father passed away at 49 (asbestos related) at a time, the suspect was close to finishing up his highschooling from what I could tell. Every case will have some differences. I did not hear about the porn part but I do not doubt it. Also, in his travels he went to North Korea and Pakistan, for how long I do not know.
BNL NEWS
@BreakingNLive
JUST IN: Christchurch, New Zealand terrorist writes in manifesto that he is not a conservative, that he is not a Christian, and that he identifies as an eco-facist. He also adds that he disagrees with Trump on politics.
https://twitter.com/BreakingNLive/status/1106558974042824705
Suspect, yes, is a brainwashed mess. I do think the WN peddlers fill these people’s minds with trash and propaganda.
The thing is, militant Islam was one version of conservative extremism. Conservative extremists of every religion have made various attacks. Nationalism, extremism, and violence are linked regardless of the religious tendencies of the people involved.
Focusing on the behaviors that lead to violence has always made more sense than focusing on religion, or race.
I don’t even know about “conservative extremism”
UN honoring Che Guevara Again… That says it all.
https://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2019/03/16/united-nations-honors-che-guevarayet-again-n2543196
militant Islam was one version of conservative extremism.
That’s one of the things that the left likes to throw out there to muddy the conversation.
“Conservative” (like “Liberal”) is intensely dependent on context. A Saudi fundamentalist cleric and a Buckley/Kemp/Goldwater Republican and a French Monarchist are all “conservative”, but have nothing in common.
Why are the defenders of militant Islam often and usually leftists?
Now, it comes out, this suspect, despicable person, I will not repeat his name, praised Communist China for it’s internment camps for Muslims, which per the Geneva Convention, might eve be genocide, read up on it.
https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-christchurch-manifesto-china-20190316-story.html
Red China, real conservative, good reporting from the LA Times.
Why are the defenders of militant Islam often and usually leftists?
You must remember that every leftist regime started with, and depended on the destruction of everything people value and gain strength from; family; faith; shared culture and tradition, so that it can be replaced with a complete dependence on the state.
The leftists don’t care about muzzies, in fact muzzies will be another group that must be destroyed in their turn. But right now, they represent a disruptive group that is useful to the left, as are homos, trannies, low IQ invaders from 3rd world shitholes.
If you listen to some people, Joe Stalin was a conservative extremist. What was this guy trying to conserve? What are Islamic extremists trying to conserve? What were the fascist dictators trying to conserve?
People who are trying to overthrow the established order or establish a new order are not conservatives. Hillary Clinton by that measure is more conservative than Trump.
The words we use to talk about politics have been polluted by liberal academics. A conservative would want to recreate the empires of Europe. The nationalists tore them down (with the help of the US) a century ago. Nationalism is not some belief in an atavistic past, nationalism showed in Europe in the 1850s (Garibaldeanism). It didn’t take off until after the First World War, with predictable results. The people who promoted nationalism after WWI (like user-progressive Woody Wilson) thought that the cause of of the European war was conflict between empires. We know differently now, don’t we?
When Omar Mateen shot and killed 50 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, did any commenter here wring their hands about “the rising threat of Islamic Extremism”?
Do you really want to bring up Mateen’s massacre, Emery?
The media did everything that it could to blame the murders on lax gun laws or homophobia. AG Lynch went so far as to censor the transcripts of Mateen’s 911 calls. When they were released, they showed Mateen insisting, again and again, that he was a soldier of ISIS, an international Muslim terrorist group, and that his murders were vengeance for US military actions in Syria.
Please do continue to compare apples to oranges, Emery, so people will understand the irrationality behind behind your comments.
The gunman in NZ is not a “white supremacist”. He is best described as an “ethno-nationalist”, I believe. I spent the morning reading his manifesto and thinking about what this might all mean. I have been following the “alt-right” Internet for a year or so now, and always assumed the ethno-state and ethno-nationality stuff to be a big joke. I chuckled along to a lot of the memes. I just though it was multi-layered satire, but that the participants were self aware enough (and perhaps apathetic enough) to understand that none of it could ever be taken seriously. To troll — yes, that’s fun, harmless even. But to think that there could be any validity to this — that an ethno- state for whites could be ever achieved, or would even be desirable even if it could be achieved — I assumed everybody in “the scene” was in on the joke that this had been tried before, in Germany in the 30s/40s, and was a disaster then, and that, anyway, what use would it be when “man is wolf to man” regardless of whether they share an ethnic identity or not?
The battle between good and evil has always been in the heart of each human individual, this is common across all races, and just because you stuck with your “own” race, it wouldn’t change anything about that. Or to put it more concisely — you can have your white ethno state, but if you’re low on conscientiousness and intelligence and thus end up in the lower stratum of society, it’s not going to fix your problems. In fact it might make it worse, now you have no bogyman to blame for your dilemma. And I thought, that the “alt-right” community was well aware of this, at least at some level, perhaps subconsciously, and the proposal of an “ethno state” as any kind of solution was put forward half jokingly. But then this happens. A guy of clear intelligence, means, will, and vision spends two years plotting, and then methodically kills over 40 people. Clearly, there can be no doubt that the ethno nationalism was no joke to this man. Is this just an isolated thing? Do the majority of the “alt right” circles think that this man is an idiot for taking what were supposed to be jokes (albeit dark and cynical ones) so seriously? Or is there some kind of renewed white Nazi/fascist movement emerging from the underground? How repulsive is the human creature when obsessed with “race” and “purity”. Unfortunately I fear that it is hard wired in some humans due to some biological imperative driving the deep desire to pro-create and populate the environment with one’s own progeny at the expense of “the other”. A story as old as time.
When Omar Mateen shot and killed 50 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando
Pretty sure some people, myself included, brought it up. Yes.
Eco-Fascist too.
https://thenewsrep.com/115359/eco-fascism-makes-its-terrifying-debut-in-new-zealand/
The gunman is scum but different facets of him do gain attention, he wrote on one of his guns in Cyrillic, names of some (Serbs) convicted of crimes at Srebenica, Bosnia. In his car, they said they could overhear some anthem of the Chetniks, some who apparently collaborated with the Nazis.
His travels took him through Bulgaria, Croatia, Turkey, Pakistan, North Korea and other countries I’m sure.
I guess, we have to pay attention to detail.
MBerg: Not all extremism is treated equally.
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I’m interested in hearing more about why an all-White society is doomed to low intelligence and failure to accomplish much. Perhaps we could hear some historical examples? Athens. Rome. France, Britain, Norway, Sweden.
My God, Emery is right! NONE of them lasted more than a few centuries, and not one of them ever had Maya Angelou.
We are so screwed. . . . .
Rome technically lasted over a millenium, if you count both the Republic and the Empire, and if you count Byzantium as an heir to it, close to two. I won’t count the Holy Roman Empire as an heir, though.
To be serious, when you’re not open to other peoples’ contributions, you do tend to stagnate, but I don’t believe that means you need to view every culture as equal in all regards to choose the best. Probably closer to the opposite is more true.
Emery compares apples to oranges…and slips on the banana peel.
Speaking of low-intelligence white societies that never amounted to much . . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo
Since we are talking about history 🙂
There is this thing academic historians call “presentism.” Presentism is “(1) the tendency to interpret the past in presentist terms; and (2) the shift of general historical interest toward the contemporary period and away from the more distant past.” (https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2002/against-presentism)
Academic historians universally condemn presentism because it makes for bad history. Most academic historians also routinely use presentism in their research, which tells you a bit about how corrupt academic history has become. For example, racism and bigotry have definitions in modern times that they never had in the past, yet periods of the past are often judged on their racist and bigoted characteristics, using modern definitions that would have bewildered the historical people they are applied to (“feminist history” is an accepted academic field of inquiry, for example).
Until the 20th century, a bigot was a person with a strong opinion about something they were ignorant of. The word racism did not exist before the 20th century (the word “race” did, but it was used to describe both ethnicity and nationality).
So you need to be careful when you identify historic European nations and civilizations as being “white.” If you do, you are guilty of presentism.
FYI, until 1500 AD, if a hypothetical, unbiased being from another world were to examine the world and choose the most advanced civilization (in the terms we use now) the alien would have chosen the Chinese.
Also FYI, while the Roman Empire, and the Roman Republic which preceded it, had many admirable & advanced features, most of the time it could be described in modern terms as being a kleptocracy and a military dictatorship.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what gun the defender used? It strikes me that the question being asked now–should long barrel semi-autos be further restricted or banned–has a lot to do with the answer to that question. If it was a “scary black gun”, then those “scary black guns” have their uses. If it was “just” a pistol or shotgun, then those “scary black guns” aren’t the end-all in preventing violence.
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