Mass shootings at mosques in New Zealand

The BBQ Pit
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We all make mistakes, it was that or “Wuthering Heights” and I made a bad call. Those canapes went completely untouched.

I confess it isn’t a page turner, the sub-text is a little too obvious and unfortunately we all how it ends but it is hugely important work. To fully understand the rise of National Socialism it is required reading.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that it shouldn’t be banned, even Germany haven’t done that, (I believe they have some experience of how that pans out).

Do you think it should be banned?

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The posts by asahi and others on free speech are reminiscent of the mindset that ultimately turned the French and Russian Revolutions from truly noble social experiments to repressive Orwellian nightmares.

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No, it really isn’t.

Naah, pass. I understand the rise of Hitler perfectly fine, thanks.

No. But then I don’t consider pre-War racist, fascist drivel on the same order of utterance as active modern Holocaust denial or other hate speech.

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Heh. Do you suppose in 2081 someone will post to a message board that The Art of the Deal is required reading for the understanding of the rise of Trumpism [sic]?

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Actually the point I made does take into account what Karl Popper and Godwin (Yes, that Godwin) said.

https://www.libertarianism.org/prototype/one-year-after-charlottesvilles-unite-right-riots-following-karl-popper-we-should-tolerate

Yes, there is a need for free speech of even ideas that most consider to be bad, however, do not expect others to remain silent and to not demand that the intolerant stop reaching for the sticks and stones.

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Point well taken on firearms. I don’t know what the rest of this is supposed to mean. The US is a model for much of the world in how Muslims can for the most part coexist with other beliefs and cultures. There was a spasm where some manipulative spambot material that factored into the 2016 election was not regulated as promptly as it should have been by the likes of Facebook. It’s not immediately obvious to me what our valuing free speech has to do with the main problems we face right now, executive branch abuses. Freedom of speech in some ways is acting as a bulwark against the worsening of these abuses.

Some odious characters here carrying recessive genes of right wing thought that had laid dormant for a long time did come out of the woodwork in 2015-2016. And, all in all they haven’t coalesced into too much as far as united movements. It’s a bit more acceptable to kowtow to conspiracy and prejudice for some elected officials and I’d like if they were replaced by voters as much as possible. What you’re mostly left with as threats are radicalized individuals, and that is hardly unique to us. You have relatively unregulated internet in your country as well which has played a part in individuals like Alek Minassian going on killing sprees, and I’m sure people in some parts of the world are appalled by that.

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ooooo! christ let’s hope not. No-one needs that. I suspect Trump is an ugly orange blip (blimp?) rather than a precursor to a major atrocity.
He’ll be remembered as a fashion error like rah-rah skirts and lawn flamingos.

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That Hitch video is one I hadn’t seen before. Might now be my favorite.

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Y’know, that’s a good point and I’m going to have to think about it. It might make a good debate thread: Is refusing to make public space available to a racist/bigot/etc. the same as refusing to make a wedding cake for a homosexual couple? Both actions are, presumably, the result of refusing to do something because it goes against your principles and implies support of something you reject. On the other hand, the first is refusing to support a form of hate, and the other is refusing to support for reasons of hate.

Is this a case of situational ethics? Am I basing my position off of my personal prejudices? Definitely have to go off and think about this one.

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…Orwellian nightmares?

LOL. You want to ban Muslims from entering America. You literally want to stop people coming to your country because of what they think, who they worship, how they dress. I can’t imagine anything more Orwellian than that. Get off your fucking high horse.

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People can create their own information bubbles, particularly online. The first step toward committing terrorism is to dehumanize the perceived enemy. It won’t matter whether people call them out or not because the racists will seek and find each other, and reinforce their own sick worldview. The problem is, there’s little that their victims can do to defend themselves from this kind of demonization except to hope that nobody actually takes their hatred to the next level and commits violence – we’ve seen how that works, which is not well.

It’s no coincidence that those who have this great philosophical admiration for the absolutist view of free speech are generally themselves white. It’s easy to be favor a philosophical view when you’re not the ones dealing with the consequences. What’s striking is that in almost every Western country I can think of, including the United States - no, especially the United States - there are laws against providing material support to terrorists. Those laws include producing propaganda. Those laws even include translating propaganda for English audiences, regardless of whether or not the translator identifies as a terrorist. Such laws might even conceivably include prohibitions on distributing their content. There are variants of these laws in most countries, and they were passed with narry a fuss because they target “terrorists” – in short, Muslims. It’s an acknowledgement that some ideas are so extreme that they become dangerous and politically destabilizing.

I wasn’t necessarily arguing that his rhetoric rises to the level of criminal conduct, but it’s abhorrent, and the real problem that it reveals is that there is one standard of conduct for the white majority, and a standard for everyone else. In our own country, for example, we’ve just seen how vulnerable someone like Rep. Ilhan Omar is to charges of antisemitism. To be clear, I’ve agreed that her rhetoric needed to be confronted - that’s not the point. The point is that someone like Omar or other minorities can’t exercise their free speech rights in the same way that someone like Fraser Anning, or Geert Wilders, or Steve King because they represent one faction within a majority that, while not constituting a majority of the voting population, is nevertheless strong enough politically to ensure that it has a voice that can still be heard, regardless of how repugnant the other 51-70% of us find them. Intolerance and racial antipathy in any form is bad, but going back to the infamous Huey Freeman threads, I reiterate what I said then, which is that understanding and defining racism isn’t just about knowing the language of racism, but also reckoning with its real-world power. History teaches us that, in reality, ethnic majorities, the majority tribes if you will, make rules with themselves in mind, and they establish their own sets of standards that everyone else has to live by. For that reason, we occasionally need artificial boundaries in place to protect everyone else against their abuses of power.

Speech I disagree with is one thing; speech that encourages dangerous behavior is quite another. You’ll never get me to agree that there’s social value in protecting the rhetoric of an Adolf Hitler or ISIS. Sure, there’s a danger that some autocrat come come along later and change the meaning of “hate speech” to include anyone who hates a regime, but overly-broad interpretations of free speech won’t prevent tyrannical power grabs, either (nor will their gun collection). So-called “libertarians” (typically right-leaning) miss the point when they propose that liberty means that we should protect hate speech, because what they’re missing is that by tolerating hate speech, you’re also tolerate speech that is essentially anti-freedom, anti-libertarian. The more a society tolerates hate speech, the more it actually engenders the destruction of freedom. There is nobody who espouses racial animus who can claim to be libertarian- at all. Racial intolerance necessarily, absolutely, always means that someone else’s freedom is deprived. This is what minorities have understood from the very beginning, and what whites - even people who consider themselves ‘modern’, ‘moderate’ and ‘tolerate’ - find it very difficult to understand, for the simple reason that they’ve never had to live on the other side of liberty.

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That’s a fair point. I’ll have to mull that one.

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Out of curiosity: do you want to stop folks who are already here from doing those things, or do you only want to stop folks who do those things from coming here?

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Banquet Bear’s very trenchant point is making me reconsider whether I really want to do either, if I’m going to be consistent about my principles. But it was never more than the latter.

Although I do always wonder about women who appear to be living a “Handmaid’s Tale” existence, and if there’s some way to offer them sanctuary if they want to get away from that way of life. Then there’s the whole question of whether they can “really” consent to living that second-class existence, or if they’ve basically been brainwashed. But we’re all “brainwashed” by our families and the culture we grow up in. It’s thorny.

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Oh puh-leeze… you’re dancing on the graves of 50 dead countrymen so that you can portray yourself as a victim too. If that mass-shooting didn’t happen none of your woe-is-me-too rhetoric would have a voice right now. I can’t stop you lying to yourself but I’m not buying it.

You’re in denial.

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…fuck off.

I’ve been fighting for social justice for a very long time. I’ve been highlighting the rise of the alt-right, the rise of white supremacy, the dangers of normalizing rhetoric coming from arseholes like Slacker, all the time on these boards. Just look me up. I’m not “playing the victim.”

That you’ve dedicated more time in this thread ranting at me than at a self-admitted racist and hater of Islam says everything we need to know about you.

And you are a fucking idiot. Slacker is in no fucking position to lecture us on “freedom of expression.” Even he isn’t as stupid as you. Even someone as profoundly stupid as Slacker has realized that his belief that Muslim’s shouldn’t be allowed into America is in conflict with his belief in “free-speech absolutism”. Even Slacker is not as stupid as you.

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Why would you post this?

It just seems callous.

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…in other shooting related news:

The New Zealand Government has moved quickly to declare new gun control restrictions, those restrictions will get broad bi-partisan support from all the political parties, many gun-shop owners, hunters, farmers and even gun lobbyists have come out in support of change.

Thanks to our Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), our socialised medical system, and a compassionate government those who died in the shooting will get their funerals paid for and families will be looked after for a few years at least. Those that are still in hospital won’t have to pay a cent out of pocket. The people have raised at least 8 million dollars for victims of the shooting in a variety of different campaigns.

Many media have been scrubbing from their archives blatantly racist and islamophobic content.

Many Muslim, Maori, Pacific Islanders, have been telling and sharing their stories of their encounters with white supremacist and the alt-right over the last five years. Finally people are starting to pay attention.

Spark, Vodafone, 2 Degrees, 3 competing companies have joined together to block access to sites that host the video footage taken by the gunman. They have written an open letter that says:

The big banks: ASB, TSB, Westpac, BNZ, ANZ and Kiwibank have all suspended advertising with these social media giants.

We can’t allow these fuckers to win.

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…from Jacinda’s speech this afternoon:

(NB: Large extract in compliance with Section 59 of the NZ Copyright Act.)

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…and in contrast, the “Leader of the Free World.”