1 year on from the obscenity of a white supremacy terror atrocity – the rage of grief

I had a list of things to do this week.

On top of that list was write a 1 year reflection blog on the March 15th white supremacy terror atrocity in Christchurch.

I put it off.

All week.

I didn’t want to write it.

I didn’t want to pause and examine the wound, so anxious have I been to move on and not reflect because of the incandescent rage it still pierces me with.

I am so angry that the security apparatus in NZ, with its mass surveillance powers, its enormous funding increases, its unchecked agency didn’t see a white supremacist planning a terror attack on our soil for two years because they were too focused on spying on Muslims, Māori, Environmentalist activists and Greenpeace.

I am so angry that people from different lands who turned to NZ as a safe haven from the hatred that spills over in so many other fragmented places on Earth were not safe from that hatred.

I am so angry that we failed to protect them.

I am so angry that the good people of Christchurch were forced to endure another tragedy.

I am so angry that Muslim Women had chronicled and complained incessantly that street violence against them and Islamaphobia was rising in rhetoric and shamelessness, yet nothing was done to protect them.

I am angry that some Gun Owners had the audacity to claim they were the real victims of this terror atrocity because their favourite gun was banned.

I am angry that the virus of white supremacy haunts this land and that racism is never acknowledged in NZ, so desperate are we to hold onto the ‘but we have such good race relations’ cultural security blankets.

I am angry that the terrorist had multiple complaints laid against him from other gun owners coming into contact with him and nothing being done.

I am angry we still don’t have a bloody gun register.

I am angry at the woke activists who wanted to conflate micro aggressions to macro violence and blamed white people for this atrocity.

I am angry that many of those white people don’t accept they are racist.

I am angry that I read the manifesto and saw the debasement of reason with fatuous lies and sewer level falsehoods masquerading as justification for an obscenity.

I am angry that I saw the Facebook livestream.

I am angry I had to try and explain such toxicity to my daughter.

After 12 months of wretched anger, I am left deeply saddened at this injustice and thankful for the grace of the Muslim community, the courage of Jacinda’s leadership and the basic decency of so many unknown NZers who reached their hands out to help rather than pull away in fear.

I hope the trial of this miserable wraith of a person who caused such unimaginable damage provides a sense of closure while opening us up enough to discuss what needs to change in us as a culture to ensure such warped hatred doesn’t spawn here under the rocks again.