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Monday, March 18, 2019

The terrorism empowered by far-right politics, media and religion


The terrorism empowered by far-right politics, media and religion



On 15 March 2019, an Australian far-right, white supremacist massacred 50 innocent Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Prior to the massacre, this terrorist released a rambling manifesto that he called 'The Great Replacement'. To be frank, it sounds like the maiden speech of Pauline Hanson or Fraser Anning ... or a poor translation of Mein Kampf. It blamed Muslim migration for the woes of the western world. His manifesto acknowledged US President Donald Trump as a 'symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose'. 

That he was Australian is no surprise. Australia has become known globally for the hate-fuelled, fear-mongering, far-right rhetoric and actions of many of its politicians. Hence his manifesto sounded so similar to the garbage spouted by politicians such as current prime minister Scott Morrison, former prime ministers, Tony Abbott and John Howard, and a raft of front-, back- and cross-benchers, such as Petter Dutton, Pauline Hanson, Fraser Anning, Cory Bernardi, and George Christensen, to name but a few. It's not just rhetoric. Australia has imprisoned innocent asylum seekers and UN-declared refugees indefinitely without charge and tortured them, confining them to remote islands; out of sight, out of mind (Doherty and Hurst 2015). A generation forgotten and abused so conservatives can harvest the votes of xenophobes.

For years, conservative politicians, media and voters have been accusing Islam of being violent, of fomenting terrorism, of treating murder as a religious tenet, of condoning pedophilia and of trying to take over the world. While these right-wingers were apoplectic with rage over their perceptions of violence in Islam, they didn't see the extremism that they were fostering, that they were responsible for. Just like the poor crab being slowly boiled to death, Islamophobes have focused on Islam and not noticed just how radical they were becoming.

Until Christchurch, 15 March 2019! 

That day one of their own unleashed a murderous terrorist attack that killed 50 people and left dozens injured. Many of these Islamophobes expressed horror at the attack and even changed their profile pix to cute little koalas hugging a sad kiwi. How fucking rich is it that these arseholes have previously demanded the banning of Islam, halal, the burqa; they have praised people who have vandalised mosques and thrown pig's heads and blood into sacred areas, that have torn burqas or other head-coverings off women walking in the street, that have mocked Muslims from the floor of parliament, in the street, on TV and in social media. Some of these very same people are now hand-wringing and asking where such hatred could come from. Mind you, not all of them have expressed sympathy. There are some deadshits who think it great that this brain-dead racist would kill so many people. 



Australia's conservative media has long portrayed Islam as evil. The Murdoch rags, such as the Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph, published 2891 anti-Islam articles; almost eight articles per day attacking one religion - Islam (Brull 2018)! The world's media has noticed the radicalisation of Australia where right-wing political parties and media outlets blatantly target Muslims (Taylor and Noack 2019).




Anyone who dares defend Islam or criticise the main-stream media's inaccurate and racist reporting is treated as some lefty, politically-correct snowflake. Yet for all their brazen talk, the right-wing are driven by fear. They are running scared, seeing every Muslim as a terrorist, accusing them of trying to take over the world through halal easter eggs. Sensitive little petals, these conservatives. They issued rape and death threats against Sudanese-Australian engineer, Yassmin Abdel-Mageid for an innocuous tweet about Anzac Day (Zhou 2017). Yassmin eventually left Australia because she did not feel safe here. These right-wing snowflakes believe every lie told to them about Islam, about refugees, and then when one of their own goes on a murderous terrorist attack, rather than self-reflect about the role they played in his radicalisation, they blame the victims. Victim-blaming is pretty typical of the right-wing. As are extremely violent outbursts at the slightest insult, with Nobel-prize winning Paul Krugman detailing that these outbursts are predominantly occurring from the right-wing (Moran 2019).



Queensland Senator, Fraser Anning is most notable for a pathetic media release on the day of the Christchurch terrorist attack, in which he expressed his horror, then immediately blamed Islamic migration for it. In the context of such horror, this amounts to hate-speech. It was designed to justify the actions of the terrorist, not to express remorse or sympathy for the victims. The following day, 17 year old William Connolly casually walked up behind Anning and smashed an egg into the back of his head (Winter 2019). One of Anning's henchmen who wrestled the boy to the ground, was Neil Erikson, a white supremacist who attacked a church last year for daring to defend Muslims and refugees. There is a warrant out for his arrest in New South Wales. Disturbingly, many right-wingers are more upset about the egg being thrown, than they are about the Christchurch massacre or the radicalisation of everyday Australians. 

Fraser Anning gave a speech in parliament that called for a final solution against refugees (Murphy and Remeikis 2018), invoking memories of Hitler's final solution that resulted in the genocide of millions of Jews, socialists, dissidents, gypsies and anyone who didn't fit his idea of what a German citizen should look or act like. He also praised the White Australia policy and declared in his maiden speech that Muslims should be banned from migrating to Australia, while European migration should be encouraged. He is a white supremacist. He regularly attends neo-Nazi rallies with the likes of Blair Cottrell, who called for a photo of Hitler and a copy of Mein Kampf to adorn every Australian classroom. You still wondering why the Christchurch terrorist was Australian?

A petition was established calling for Anning to resign (Price 2019). Of course, he is too arrogant to do that, however, it is encouraging that more than one million people signed the petition in 48 hours ... keep in mind that Anning only received 19 votes at the last election: loser.

Fraser Anning's response to the Christchurch terrorism event on 15 March 2019
Australia's conservative political parties have drifted so far to the right, that they are in the realms of Nazism. They encourage white-supremacy through fear of the other, through propagating xenophobic messages that whip people into a frenzy.

This is driven by the mistaken belief that Australia is being taken over by Muslims. The Christchurch terrorist reflected about a takeover of western nations by Muslims. Pauline Hanson and other right-wing politicians have ruminated on the same thing. Is this really a threat? According to the Pew Research Centre, just 3% of the world's Muslims live in developed regions, such as Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan (Pew Research Centre 2011). This body of research identified that migration from Muslim majority countries has declined sharply over the last 25 years. In the mid-90s, Muslim-majority countries were losing population at a rate of 160 per 100,000 per annum (0.16%). By 2010, this had declined to 42 per 100,000 per annum (0.04%). The report identified that there would be further declines in migration from developing nations that have a Muslim-majority population as economic conditions improve. Migration in western nations is likely to increase by 180 per 100,000 per annum (0.18%). This is hardly a take-over. For Australia, Muslim growth was around 0.12% in 1990. Over the years this has been declining, and is predicted to only be (0.07%) by 2030. So why do they believe there is a Muslim takeover? In 2010, the Muslim population in Australia numbered 399,000, which is about 1.6% of the population. By 2030, it will likely be 714,000 based on net birth-rates and migration, while Australia's population is forecast to have grown to 30 million, so Muslims will account for 2.4% of the population. This is less than 1% growth in Muslim population in 20 years. Australia's population growth is currently forecast at 1.6% (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018). Muslim population growth in Australia will be less than Australia's net population growth, so based on that, Muslims will never be a majority in Australia ... not what any critically thinking person would consider an invasion or take-over. 


Many of Australia's far-right politicians who exploit xenophobia and white supremacy also claim to be Christian. Many right-wing Christians are more than happy to attack Islam and take its scriptures out of context. Quote distasteful biblical scriptures and these same Christians will try to provide context. They will say that the Koran promotes violence, yet their own bible calls for the killing of every man, woman and child. They will say that Islam promotes paedophilia, yet the bible says to kill every man, male child and female who has slept with a man, but for the young girls (children) who have not been with a man to be taken into sexual slavery ... then there is the issue of God getting a pre-teenage and betrothed Mary pregnant with Christianity's namesake (Jesus, in case you missed the memo), which raises all sorts of questions about paedophilia, adultery, and consent given her age and the power imbalance. Oh, is there no context? Context is not a luxury that racists allow Muslims to provide.

These Christians will claim the Koran promotes violence and terrorism, yet Christianity has been responsible for most of the wars of the last 1,000, including some of the biggies that most of us are familiar with in recent times, such as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf Wars I and II, and Afghanistan. These wars killed hundreds of millions of people during the 20th and 21st centuries, far more than have been killed by Islamic terrorism - yet these Christians will ignore that and continue spreading hate and lies about Islam. 




Actually, the bible bangs on about hate-speech. It tells Christians not to do it! Scriptures like Proverbs 12:18 - 'There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing'. Proverbs 11:9 is one of my favourite, considering that Evangelical Christianity has proven itself redundant with the willingness of many of its leaders to embrace the lies and hate-speech of Donald Trump and the far-right. This scripture declares them to be godless: 'with his mouth the godless man would destroy his neighbour, but by knowledge the righteous are delivered'. All that white supremacists want to do is destroy anyone who is not white, European, Judeo-Christian ... and right-wing Christianity is going along for the ride, as it has done for some time. Nazi Germany is a case in point.

Hitler used Christian-speak to whip Christians into committing horrendous crimes against Jews. Read Mein Kampf and see the similarities between what Hitler said, what today's conservatives speak and what the Christchurch terrorist wrote in his idiotic manifesto.

Christians funded Islamic holy-war in Afghanistan under the Soviets during the 1980s (Cooley 2002), yet Muslims get the blame, while Christians conveniently ignore their role in terrorism. Out of this, we saw the rise of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and eventually ISIS. Christians then ignore and lie about the role that their own had in the rise of global terrorism - instead, they blame Islam. So much for the religion of peace and truth when many Christians are not interested in either peace or truth. Oh yeah, there is also the claim that Christianity is the religion of love, yet many Christians revel in sharing hate against Muslims.

The day after the Christchurch massacre, a Christian radio host named Bryan Fischer defended the attack as 'vigilante justice' because 'Islam has to be stopped'. (Stone 2019). Apparently, terrorism is fine as long as it is waged by Christians.

The radicalisation of the Australian terrorist responsible for the Christchurch killings, has been coming for a long time. Far too many Australians have been saying exactly what he said in his manifesto. Hanson rose to power in 1996 on a Mein Kampf-like platform (don't believe me? read the book). Her white supremacist platform was later comandeered by John Howard to win elections on fear-mongering of Muslim refugees. Australian hip-hop band, The Herd aggressively called out Australia's racism & hate-speech in 2003 with their brilliant song, 77%. Sadly, right-wing snowflakes were more offended by the song's strong language than they were by their own government's lies, demonisation, persecution and physical and mental abuse of innocent people. Australia needs to wake up to itself. Islam isn't a threat, right-wing extremism is.  

The Christchurch terrorist's rambling manifesto showed that he was emboldened by Donald Trump and it repeated much of the hate-speech spewing forth from Republicans in the United States Congress (Fuller 2019). It was telling that Trump condemned the terrorist attack, and then immediately condemned migration by using the same rhetoric the terrorist used to demonise migrants (Blumberg and Blumenthal 2019). Immediately, following the attack, Trump tweeted a link to an anti-Islam website (Vidal 2019). This is from a president who thinks neo-Nazis and Klansmen are 'very fine people' (Gray 2017). Trump claims there is no rise in white nationalism (Campbell 2019), even though 98% of terrorist attacks on US soil are by white nationalists(Kivel 2019). Meanwhile, globally, there has been a surge in deadly attacks on Muslims (Al Jazeera 2019a). With such a rise in Islamophobic attacks, one would expect a corresponding increase in reporting of these acts, but no! Islamist terrorism received 357% more coverage than terrorism by non-Muslims; there are an average of 105 headlines per Islamist attack, compared to 15 headlines when the perpetrators are non-Muslim (Chalabi 2018). 

The United States is on a downward spiral into far-right extremism. Three years ago, the US voted AGAINST a United Nations resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism over freedom of speech (CBS News 2016). Seventy-five years ago, the United States battled against Nazis, today it defends them.


The Christchurch terrorist's manifesto railed against Islamic immigration. For years, Australia's conservative politicians have lied about Muslim refugees, equating them with terrorists, even though they are often victims of terrorists. Only a few weeks ago, senior ministers of the government, including Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Home Affairs Minister, Peter Dutton, and the Finance Minister, Matthias Cormann, made the ludicrous claim that refugees (less than 1000 of them) would force Australians off hospital waiting lists; a claim which has been debunked as baseless (Das 2019). It is pure fear-mongering and evidence of the blatant lies the federal LNP has been ramming down the throats of Australians. Morrison has previously claimed there is a benefit in exploiting anti-Islamic sentiments to gain votes (Taylor 2011). No wonder, there is so much hatred of migrants and why someone became radicalised enough to murder 50 Muslims.



The Christchurch terrorist modelled his attack on that by Anders Breivik in Norway (Werleman 2019). In his manifesto, he declared support for other mass murderers, but emphasised his idolising of Breivik. Christian and far-right extremist Breivik, killed 77 socialist students to fulfil his hatred of leftists and migrants. Both elements that Australia's conservative politicians and media are constantly railing against. 

Interesting that the Christchurch terrorist wasn't on any terrorist watchlist and authorities said he was not known to them, even though he'd been planning this for some time and had travelled to North Korea, Pakistan, Bulgaria and Turkey as part of his preparations (O'Grady 2019). If it was a Muslim planning such an attack or travelling to those countries, Australian authorities would have been all over it and he would have been arrested immediately. But hey, white privilege.

Hard-right conservatives are running around upset that people are blaming them for the Christchurch attack. 'We're not all like that'. Oh the irony! They don't show such nuance when attacking Islam. 

Hours after the Christchurch terrorist attack, a Muslim man was assaulted with a hammer and batten in an Islamophobic attack in London (Al Jazeera 2019b). The following day, in a case exemplar of white privilege, a 23 year old moron deliberately drove into the gates of a Mosque near Brisbane, yelling anti-Islamic hate (Garcia 2019). The Queensland Police Commissioner excused him because he was drunk so therefore, it was not a hate-crime! Had a Muslim done that to a Christian church, he'd have been arrested and charged with terrorism. White privilege!

Thankfully, most Australians have expressed horror and revulsion at the attack. The Christchurch terrorist perpetrated the very act that he detests Muslims for. Clearly, not a very intelligent specimen. If anything, it is clear that he is projecting his own hatred, animosity and violence onto people who are actually peaceful and tolerant. He isn't the only one. 

While the Christchurch terrorist is apparently a 'lone-wolf' attacker, he should not be considered in isolation. White supremacy is a global issue that is on the increase (Anderson 2019). When the President of the United States defends Nazis and empowers white supremacist terrorists, there is a significant international problem. These extremists carry on about the danger of immigration, while exporting their terrorism to the world.

What can be done? Stop normalising hate-speech. Stand up against the fear-mongering, demonisation and racist rhetoric of these horrid politicians who pretend to be Christian but instead are driven by hate-filled agendas. Instead of Christians losing their collective shit over halal Easter eggs, how about they invite Muslims to their churches, their homes, into their lives and get to know them as friends and family, not as the enemy. 

Love your neighbour!


References

Al Jazeera 2019a, 'A summary of attacks on Muslims in Western countries', Al Jazeera, 16 March, viewed 17 March 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/summary-attacks-muslims-western-countries-190316150024125.html.

Al Jazeera 2019b, 'Muslim worshipper assaulted at East London mosque after NZ attack', Al Jazeera, 16 March, viewed 16 March 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/muslim-worshipper-assaulted-east-london-mosque-nz-attack-190316092902959.html

Anderson, T 2019, 'White supremacy is ‘being exported and globalized’: Experts respond to New Zealand mass shootings', Boston Globe, 15 March, viewed 17 March 2019, https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/03/15/everyone-vulnerable-experts-respond-new-zealand-mass-shootings/cUmb88y4kU6kxUJOA9FROM/story.html.

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