Our Darkest Day: New Zealand has been horribly scarred by a fanatical follower of the international white supremacist movement. He hid among us in plain sight, masking his murderous intentions from his Dunedin neighbours, the Police, the SIS and the GCSB – until it was too late. He could not have been stopped – except by the most extraordinary stroke of good fortune. And, at 1:40 pm, on Friday, 15 March 2019, New Zealand’s luck ran out.
BRENTON TARRANT isn’t one of us. He may have been born in
Australia, but he isn’t really an Australian either. If his own words are any
guide, he identifies himself, above and beyond all other considerations, as
White. Like so many of the horrors currently disfiguring our world, Brenton
Tarrant’s crimes are an expression of pure and murderous racism.
He came here a couple of years ago to plan and to prepare
for action in another part of the world, most likely in the United States. Once
here, however, he appears to have changed his mind. Something about New Zealand,
most probably our acute vulnerability to the sort of terrorist attack he was
planning, convinced him that shots fired here would be heard around the world.
New Zealanders have nothing to reproach themselves for in
relation to the horrific attack on the two Christchurch mosques. We must not
for one moment entertain the notion that there was something we could have done
to stop Tarrant. Lone wolf terrorists of his sort are not produced by the
ignorant racist mutterings of gun club members. Nor are they inspired by the rantings
and ravings of social media. That’s not how it works.
All the literature points to this sort of terrorism being
born of real, geopolitical events. Indeed, if the perpetrators could not locate
their murderous racist impulses within a global context, then the scale of
their ambitions would be commensurately smaller. The ravages of Western and
Soviet imperialism, and the asymmetrical resistance launched by the victims of that
aggression, have been the drivers of global terrorist extremism for more than a
century.
We didn’t start that fire.
It is no accident that one of the heroes of the rambling
73-page “manifesto” which Tarrant posted online is Anders Breivik – the Norwegian
white supremacist who murdered 72 of his fellow citizens in 2011. Like Breivik,
Tarrant locates himself in a phantasmagorical world of evil invaders and
righteous defenders. At stake is nothing less than the survival of the “white
race”.
Those who enter this fever dream are utterly inaccessible to
reason. And it is precisely this inaccessibility that makes the weaponised hate
of Breivik and Tarrant so dangerous. In the memorable line from the first Terminator movie: “[I]t can’t be
bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or
fear. And it absolutely will not stop.”
That such individuals are psychologically damaged is
axiomatic. No individual capable of empathy can murder men, women and children
with the robotic efficiency of a Breivik or a Tarrant. Inevitably, the subsequent
psychological assessment of these individuals throws up a toxic mixture of
sociopathic cruelty and extreme narcissism. The injustice and suffering
unfolding in the real world is reinterpreted by the defective personalities of
these lone wolf terrorists as something which is happening not to others – but
to themselves. They take it personally. Far from being “the continuation of
politics by other means”, their terrorism is a savage quest for vengeance.
As the dreadful events of Friday, 15 March 2019 were
unfolding, I couldn’t help recalling the words of King Theoden in J.R.R.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. As his
fortress of Helm’s Deep is on the point of being over-run, he asks
despairingly: “What can men do against such reckless hate?”
That is now the question which New Zealand must ask of
itself.
Part of the answer, the most important part, we have already
seen. In the floral tributes outside the nation’s mosques. In the images of the
imam and the rabbi embracing each other. In the Pasifika voices raised in a
hymn of heart-breaking poignance. In the Maori and Pakeha faces wet with tears, yet set
in grim defiance. In the passionate cry of the massacre survivor: “This is not
New Zealand!” In the nearly $5 million already raised to support the victims’
families. The answer already given by the people of New Zealand, united in
grief, is unequivocal: When confronted with such reckless hate, the only
possible answer is aroha – love.
The wrong answer; the answer the terrorist is always hoping
the strategic targets of his rage will give; is to meet recklessness with
recklessness; hate with hate.
While the ruins of the Twin Towers were still smoking, the American
people shackled themselves to the Patriot Act: voluntarily curtailing the very
freedoms the Al Qaida terrorists were condemned for attacking.
The contrast between the American response to 9/11, and the Norwegian
Government’s response to Breivik, could hardly be more striking. At a memorial
service in Oslo Cathedral, the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg,
declared: “We must not allow this attack to hurt Norwegian democracy: the
proper answer to such violence is more democracy, more openness … No one has
said it better than the [young woman] who was interviewed by CNN: ‘If one man
can show so much hate, think how much love we could show, standing together.’”
It is to be hoped that our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern,
allows herself to be guided by Stoltenberg’s example. To date, her handling of
the Christchurch tragedy has been faultless. Her sole policy response, an uncompromising
pledge to reform New Zealand’s gun laws, was focused, measured and appropriate.
It will be an uphill struggle for any person or lobby group foolish enough to
oppose her call for stricter regulation of firearms – especially of the semi-automatic
weapons that made Tarrant’s attack so costly.
The Prime Minister will, doubtless, come under increasing
pressure from angry and misguided persons to curtail the rights of New
Zealanders articulating unpopular views concerning Maori-Pakeha relations, the
Islamic religion, multiculturalism and immigration policy. In defence of the liberal-democratic
values that Tarrant assaulted so violently, Jacinda should calmly resist all such
calls. We must not allow the unanimity of our grief to be translated into a
demand for unanimity of opinion.
New Zealand has been horribly scarred by a fanatical
follower of the international white supremacist movement. He hid among us in
plain sight, masking his murderous intentions from his Dunedin neighbours, the
Police, the SIS and the GCSB – until it was too late. Brenton Tarrant is a lone
wolf terrorist who took advantage of everything that is good about New Zealand
to perpetrate a devastating act of homicidal violence against defenceless Muslim
worshippers. He could not have been stopped – except by the most extraordinary stroke of good fortune. And, at 1:40 pm, on Friday, 15 March 2019, New Zealand’s luck ran
out.
What happened at the Linwood and Al Noor mosques was horrific,
but it wasn’t our doing. As we begin the long journey towards recovery, it is
vitally important that we keep that fact squarely before us. New Zealand is a
good place. New Zealanders are good people. We are not responsible for Brenton
Tarrant’s dreadful crime. This is not us.
This essay was posted simultaneously
on the Bowalley Road and The
Daily Blog of Sunday, 17 March 2019.
