The power of revulsion

Submitted by Lindsay
Melbourne Australia!

Thus must we toil in other men’s extremes,
that know not how to remedy their own.
- Thomas Kidd, 1580

(4/2019) I write this as the horrifying news of the mass shooting at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch is breaking. Fifty innocent people, gathered for their Friday devotions, shot dead. Fifty more wounded, countless families and whole communities wrenched apart. Utter despair that the peace they had found has been shattered forever, that the lives remade in that hospitable and generous land had been traumatized anew.

The perpetrator, who is an Australian citizen living in New Zealand, was quickly caught and charged. He pleaded guilty, proud of his vengeance upon Muslims, proud of being able to cleanse society of evil. Not a raving lunatic, just a young man who has absorbed white supremacist values and ideas, whose mind is so closed that reality has been twisted into fantasy.

News reports began to flood the world. The horror was immediate. The shock was terrible and gut wrenching for everyone who heard and saw the reports. Thousands of posts were sent in support and with offers of help. Leaders of the free world were quick to condemn the deed, and I was thrilled to hear President Trump use sober, thoughtful words of support and sympathy.

It became known that this one person killed more people from a minority group then ever before, anywhere in the world. Recriminations began about the availability of guns in New Zealand. Their gun laws are indeed lax, never having been subject to this kind of thing before, The Government admits they were ill prepared, and that it will change a fast as possible

His aim of sending his mission around the world was accomplished by live streaming from his webcam, being delivered to social media, with far right platforms alerted to the plan. Social media went berserk, flooding the sites with comment, and then jumping at the chance of hooking more viewers to their profit machines by running the headcam show in all its gory and appalling detail. Children, now used to the dystopian games where destruction and inappropriate action is made ‘amusing’, were wide eyed, unable to stop viewing the sickening pictures, unaware of the long term effect they will have on them. Facebook took down many thousands of posts seventeen hours later, but more kept coming, and are still viral. The law, seemingly unable to ban such actions, (violation of free speech again being shouted) shows that things like this appear to be beyond the law.

Muslims everywhere could hardly express their utter despair, but were not truly surprised. They have lived with such hatred and persecution for centuries, have lived through sectarian war from other Islamic sects and Christians, and now suffer the vitriol of white supremacists and their vitriolic rants of xenophobic vengeance. Many politicians, whether from fear of losing their seat or secret agrreement, inject fear and suspicion into the community, and then wonder why someone responds by killing as many as possible.

The combination of xenophobia and male supremacy has led to the growth of massacres and ethnic cleansing, to a cult of supremacy and aims of absolute power. It has always been there, whether local and often hidden from world gaze, or open and so entrenched that it is taken as normal – your Afro-American situation being the best known. Massacres of this kind, guns and bullets, are not the only way of taking lives. The Catholic church has managed to do it for centuries without leaving any visible marks. Allowing and turning a blind eye to so many of the clergy as they impose their so called loving will has been enough to destroy the lives of its young victims.

The greatest influence, however, comes from a certain strain of politician, both yours and ours, whose fear of anything foreign is due to compensation for being stupid. Clever, maybe, but too stupid and afraid to look at the whole picture, to see that acceptance of difference leads to an integrated society, and an integrated society leads to peace and prosperity. Of course it is an ideal, but even a little is so powerful that those countries who have it are at the front of social happiness and growth.

Like you, we are a racist country, and always have been. White Australia was a mantra that went underground around 1970, but has never died. Most people ignore this, living in a society that essentially has liberal values, but some far right politicians cannot forget the power it gave them. These are the ones who are using double-speak to say how awful this massacre was, but still reek of anti-Muslim values.

Most disturbing in all this is the rise of hate speech, the rant posts about foreigners taking jobs, instilling jihadic beliefs in the young, refusing to assimilate, destroying val.ues and building their hateful mosques.

Today, unfortunately, no one anywhere in the world is really safe from lone assassins. It is not organised terror cells that are the threat, not jihadists, not the mafia or drug cartels. White supremacists are by far the greatest threat, and have been for many years. Putting your colour, religion or ethnicity above that of others is the road to hatred and rabid action.

But this Christchurch Massacre has done something new: it has brought world-wide protest and an outpouring of support for the families of the victims. It has brought people together in condemnation of such actions and to help rally voices of reason, to restore a sense of community that had been dying through indifference. Let us work toward showing the supremacists that their fear is paranoid and self defeating. Let us grow and maintain a greater goodness across the world, to strengthening the family of mankind.

Five hundred and thirty nine years ago the same sentiment was expressed by Thomas Kidd: We must toil in other men’s extremes, because they don’t know what they do, and cannot open their eyes to the destruction they bring.