4 years on from White Supremacist Terrorist Atrocity – what have we learned?

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
65
1411

It is 4 years this week when we were shaken from our complacency.

Shocked from the belief that such malevolence could burrow into our soul.

Repulsed by the mutation of thought that could justify such cruelty and vile spite.

March 15th, 2019 is etched in our history with pain and untold suffering.

Muslims going about their normal lives in Christchurch were attacked by a white supremacist Australian who had been radicalised online by a hatred against Islam and who had gamed the incompetent Police into gaining domestic terrorist weapons of mass destruction.

I remember seeing the appalling violence appear on my Facebook feed.

I didn’t understand what I was watching.

At first glance I thought it was a video game or a movie trailer until I focused.

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I remember recoiling in horror at what I was seeing.

I immediately started searching online and found his manifesto.

It was a mix of mutated madness and unyielding hatred. His fixation on certain White Supremacist symbolic historical conflicts to construct a replacement narrative was evident throughout his manifesto and his clear devotion to being a foot soldier for this movement was verbalised repeatedly.

He knew exactly what he was doing and was arguing for his cause via extreme violence.

To pretend he was not a white supremacist with a very clear philosophy of terrorism to promote his white supremacy neurosis allows this mutation of a human being off the hook.

Tarrant knew exactly what he was doing. We should feel no remorse, no sympathy and no confusion over what he is and what he was trying to do.

He is as close to evil as one gets.

In the 4 years since his disgusting act of violence we have struggled to comprehend what happened.

The Government whitewashed the entire Intelligence apparatus of any responsibility while pretending hate speech laws were a solution.

This is the list of NZ security apparatus, many acronyms you’ve never heard of, who are supposed to keep us safe with mass surveillance powers from this very type of terrorism…

  • The SIS (Secret Intelligence Services)
  • The GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau)
  • The NSG (National Security Group)
  • The Police Intelligence Unit
  • The CNSN (Cabinet National Security Committee)
  • The ODESC (Officials’ Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination)
  • The SIB (Security and Intelligence Board)
  • The CTCC (Counter-Terrorism Coordinating Committee)
  • The NICC ( National Intelligence Coordination Committee)
  • The IAD (Intelligence and Assessments Directorate)
  • The NRU (National Risk Unit)
  • The NSPD (National Security Policy Directorate)

…they collectively cost us in excess of $100million per year, and when it comes to spying on Muslims, Nicky Hager, Me, Greenpeace, Māori protesting oil drilling, environmentalists and the MANA Party, oh the State breaches our rights all the fucking time without blinking, but a white supremacist terrorist who used white supremacy keywords online, with complaints from the Muslim Community itself and complaints from other gun owners,oh no, apparently our entire Intelligence Apparatus failed and didn’t have any idea whatsoever.

You can see why they’ve slapped a 30year secrecy clause on everything.

These Departments are supposed to be the ones who are asking ‘what if’, they are supposed to be the ones with the imagination to see where the next threat is coming from and they have enormous mass surveillance powers and resourcing to do this.

And yet, nothing.

What is most egregious is that instead of flaying these fucking Departments raw for this cascade failure, the Labour Government are bewilderingly allowing their failure to be quietly eclipsed by this bullshit ‘solution’ by implementing blasphemy laws and gender identity hate speech powers???

What has protecting religion and gender identity hate speech laws got to do with the massive intelligence apparatus utterly failing?

The solutions beyond the hate speech law are all pretty underwhelming.

• Placing Minister Andrew Little in charge of co-ordinating the Government’s response to the report and implementation of its recommendations

This was a bureaucratic failure of the entire Intelligence Bureaucracy and Labour’s solution is more Bureaucracy?

• Establishing a Ministry for Ethnic Communities to support the work programme on social cohesion

Sure, but the Muslim Community had already complained about a serious rise in street violence, so how will a new Ministry fix that?

• Establishing a new agency within police called Te Raranga, The Weave which will respond to alleged hate crimes

That sounds underwhelming.

• Extending the Safer Communities Fund so communities at risk of hate crime can upgrade their security arrangements

Great.

• Creating and Ethnic Communities Graduate Programme in the public service

Good idea.

• Establishing a National Centre of Excellence to bring together academia, civil society and government to research radicalisation and violent extremism and social cohesion in New Zealand

Lovely.

• Amending the Terrorism Suppression Act to strengthen counter-terrorism legislation

Hmmm. What? What does that entail exactly?

• Creating an early intervention programme to develop wrap-around support for individuals who show early signs of radicalisation. This will be led by police

Wonderful.

But none of that answers the core issue, how did our entire Intelligence services miss this and why?

Forcing through Religious and gender hate speech laws as a response to such a terminal cascade failure of security is too Nu Zilind for words.

This tragedy deserved more than virtue signalling.

The most insightful explanation as to what actually happened was quietly released just before Christmas in 2020 when no one was noticing…

Spy partners’ focus dictated lack of Far Right intelligence, GCSB boss says

International priorities dictated a gaping hole in the collection of far-right intelligence reports, according to the lead communications spy agency.

The Royal Commission of inquiry heard that the Government Security Communications Bureau got 7526 intelligence reports about terrorism and violent fanaticism in a three-month period in late 2018-19.

But not a single one was about right-wing extremism.

This “was not the result of the GCSB’s own intelligence collection settings”, the bureau’s Director-General Andrew Hampton told RNZ in a statement.

“The intelligence reporting GCSB receives from its international Signals intelligence partners is what those agencies collect themselves based on their own priorities.”

These partners had their own legal mandates, which might also influence what intelligence they collected, Hampton said.

Let me see if I can get this completely straight.

It’s not the GCSB’s fault, that mass surveillance GCSB who gets hundreds of millions to protect us from threats, it’s not their fault that there was a massive failure in intelligence because our overseas partners only provide us with substandard intelligence that is warped by their own bias and legal blind spots?????

That’s the best they’ve come up with?

Look at how this excuse implodes later in the interview…

However, he added: “GCSB shares our intelligence and security priorities with its partners and, since the 15 March, 2019 attacks, has emphasised to them the importance to New Zealand of countering white identity extremism.”

…r-i-g-h-t.

So if the GCSB had told our partners in the first place that we were concerned about white supremacy they would have provided all they had?

See how that still comes back to the GCSB’s lack of ability to see white supremacy as a threat?

We opened ourselves to NSA mass surveillance for intelligence that can’t actually spot a legitimate threat and is so secret no one can evaluate whether or not this excuse is legitimate?

What the hell have we signed ourselves up to?

We know from Snowden that the 5 Eyes enables the NSA unfettered access to everything, Key ratified that and the GCSB received hundreds of millions to upgrade, but when challenged on why the hell they couldn’t spot a basic keyword search threat, suddenly it’s all-the-big-guys-feeding-us-crumbs-and-it wasn’t-us excuses is it?

If we aren’t being protected from legitimate threats, why the hell are we in it?

How come we are less safe?

Let me be ver clear. I am in no way shape or form suggesting we give these clowns MORE powers, oh sweet Christ no, I’m merely demanding they utilise the powers they currently have!

The most dangerous mutations of white supremacy trace their narratives to certain historic events. A basic keyword search of those historic events would have had the terrorist pinging like a warning bell.

The Echelon programme that predates the Snowden revelations had basic keyword search functions, to pretend that isn’t possible now is simply not credible.

The issue here is that their own confirmation bias saw the enemy as Hager, Muslim students, Environmentalists, Māori nationals, German internet entrepreneurs and Unions.

Blaming the inability to think for themselves on biased intelligence from our Spy Lords only demands an answer to why we are beholden to those Spy Lords in the first place if they can’t spot a legitimate threat to us!

This still comes back to a cascade failure throughout the entire NZ Intelligence Apparatus to see white supremacy as a threat.

My fear is that post the Dumb Lives Matter protests where MPs have convinced themselves they survived a January 6th Washington DC attack and where the Middle Class Marxists decried everyone as Nazi Monsters that the over reaction and new Police State being forged quietly in the background will protect us or harm us.

None of that has been answered in the 4 years since that terrible Christchurch day.

 

 

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65 COMMENTS

  1. Have we learned that dividing communities & attacking the law-abiding doesn’t make societies safer? Maybe we should.

  2. Jacinda’s finest hour .This was a case of the right person at the right time .She calmed the situation down.It is a pity other leaders like Marama Davidson did not look and learn from her .

    • Trevor Davidson not only failed to learn, she used this horrific event to drive a wedge between the Muslim community and white New Zealanders, publicly branding the latter as bad, doing both groups a shocking disservice, and precipitated my withdrawal from the Greens.

    • Trevor – And yet, Jacinda could not name one of the victims 72 hours after the shootings … she hijacked this tragedy, and made it all about her

      • I am no lover of Jacinda but why would she need to know names of the victims to show she cared.
        I am from Chch and it was a very tense time as people were not convinced he was a lone wolf operator. Jacinda’s calm approach was what was needed.

      • What utter bollocks. There are some ridiculous expectations of Ardern, that don’t seem to apply to others. Criticism of policy decisions is valid but “she made it about her” is way off.

        • Wheel – okay, tell me the names of the any of the murder victims (without Google, and other search engines)…Why is this important? It allows you to understand my problem with Jacinda making it all about her…

          • difficult to appear on tv with the corpses of people murdered by a rightwing gun nut…but survivors, relatives and community leaders got plenty of airtime nathan

            • gagarin – so Jacinda knew the names of the victims, or at least one? Or, is that not hard for the former Prime Minister…

              • did I say that nate? no I didn’t you might be able to put words in others mouths but not mine OK?

                now address my point if you please

      • Nathan “She made it all about her “ Not really. She did a good job as a calming influence in situation which could have spawned global repercussions. It was Marama Davidson and co who hijacked the Auckland vigil for racist purposes, polar opposites to the PM.

        • Gentle Annie – What did Jacinda actuality do? What was the outcome? It was Winston Peters who calm down the Muslim countries, by going to Turkey…

          • Nathan. In the immediate aftermath, Arden was filmed globally as kindness incarnate, embracing and commiserating, saying that we are all one people etc, although the secret agenda of te Puapua has since suggested otherwise, as did big mouthed Marama.

            • Gentle Annie – All true! But, attempt to answer the following:
              1. Why is the Royal Comission on the tragedy being held back by the Government until after the election
              2. What laws/actions were developed to prevent this type of tragedy from happening again?

  3. Despite the horror we have become a more divided country which is very disturbing.
    New Zealand a divided society, a complete mess.

    • Bob the first. Reluctantly, I agree, we are a divided society. Snoop on the neighbours ? Don’t speak to the neighbours ? The madness of identity politics, persons with plaits, persons who knit, all nuttiness, for which a sicko Australian runt can’t carry the blame.

  4. After Iraq and Afghanistan, America is to shy to go anywhere let alone get caught up in Ukraine. So they’re looking for suckers to do there globalist duties. This isn’t a foreign policy or defence issue. It’s a bloody police issue.

    Like what even is a threat that triggers a national security alert? This whole hate speech bent is just cope. Satellite ease dropping is supposed to make an invasion abroad impossible. Yet one dude on made it all look like we’ve been America’s nice little sucker.

    • Are you Marama Davidson?
      I have seen zero proof of this, he was a loner piece of shit short Australian, please supply links to your claims.
      This unproven insinuation that NZ was full of white supremacists was used to push through all sorts of Orwellian controls on kiwi citizens.
      Other than the small handful of dropkicks in Chch NZ has Buggar all of a white supremacy problem compared to most countries.
      So prove your assertion or show yourself to be enabling more social division by the government.

      • Keepcalmcarryon Correct. He was a small town misfit, a reject, also a physical runt from a sub-optimum family, who received an inheritance and set off to travel the world from a position of ignorance and limited intelligence. A bit like incels who hate women, because they can’t score one, but don’t perceive it as being their own fault.

        In other circs, he could have been a state house boy like Douglas, Labour’s Paula Bennett, who get power and pull the ladder up after them, IMO, flawed individuals. Without his inheritance this creature would likely have remained a twisted failure one way or another, and these terrible murders may not have occurred.

        And now we are also paying a heavy price. When a government agency like the SIS issues some sort of brochure, advising citizens to start spying on each other, and to report each other, we’re a sick society. This has never been a good country in which to be different anyway; I think it was de Gaulle who said,” Vivre la difference”, but in New Zealand it’s been a hanging offence, and the spooks behaving like a third form spy club aren’t being particularly helpful.

      • where did he live, how did he get the murder weapon, who was supporting him with money, how did he avoid effective police vetting…carry on

        • He had an inheritance for money and was incorrectly vetted by police for a gun license here.- granted police lied about it at the time so your lack of knowledge might not be all your fault.
          Those are facts.
          Don’t make shit up, misinformation like yours was used to bypass normal law making after the Chch shooting, something we are all worse off for.

            • He bought the guns with the license he shouldn’t have been given.
              No conspiracy there.
              He had automatic entry to the country as an Aussie under CER rules.
              No conspiracy there.
              Which rock have you been sleeping under to be so uniformed?

              • yes but peoples backgrounds can be checked by immegration hence the current kerfuffle about ‘pansy potter’ I’m guessing his internet footprint provided plenty of warning. keep calm

                • You’ve lived in New Zealand long enough to know that no one is ever held responsible when the failure is at an organisational level, especially if it reaches the higher levels. If one person alone can be blamed, they are going under the bus, but if not, ranks close very quickly and no one is held accountable, and no faces any consequences. Erebus, Cave Creek, CTV Building, Pike River, Tarrant…

  7. Don’t know if any of all these security agencies were even needed. If I recall correctly, an individual that had contact with the shooter through the gun club reported concerns about this guy to the local coppers. Apparently they simply dismissed the concerns. If so and the police had been more active on the claims, maybe the massacre could have been avoided.

  9. What about the subsequent terror attacks on people in public in NZ? Do they not deserve to be remembered too?

    Auckland terror attack: Victims aged between 29 and 77, three still in critical condition
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300370823/auckland-terror-attack-victims-aged-between-29-and-77-three-still-in-critical-condition

    Terror is terror, and attacks on the public should be condemned the same way.

    Meanwhile in terms of public loss of life, the failed CTV building where 115 people lost their life, many foreign students, due to faulty design and checks.

      • He has no more problems at all, but when someone decides that their only way out is to douse themselves & their car with petrol, and set themselves on fire on a busy public street, it tends to expose that there are some significant underlying problems in New Zealand (and you, more than most are well aware of a number of them).

  14. ” The Government whitewashed the entire Intelligence apparatus of any responsibility while pretending hate speech laws were a solution.”

    ” when it comes to spying on Muslims, Nicky Hager, Me, Greenpeace, Māori protesting oil drilling, environmentalists and the MANA Party, oh the State breaches our rights all the fucking time without blinking, but a white supremacist terrorist who used white supremacy keywords online, with complaints from the Muslim Community itself and complaints from other gun owners, oh no, apparently our entire Intelligence Apparatus failed and didn’t have any idea whatsoever.

    You can see why they’ve slapped a 30year secrecy clause on everything.

    In 2017 Ardern promised that most transparent government ever.

    Six years in and with the news this week that officials will not release any information regarding how many endangered marine mammals have been killed by our own fishing companies effectively breaking the law.

    Mr Nash is minister of oceans and fisheries and should be accountable and explain why this information is suppressed !

    I am coming to the conclusion that like the previous National , ACT , Dunne , TMP government that operated as as Joyce famously stated as ” almost legal ” that this administration and its officials continue to withhold unpleasant and inconvenient information when it suits their agenda similar to the corporate approach which is citing ” commercial sensitivity ” when the evidence is just to unpalatable for the hobbits to deal with.

    We are being denied the facts and truth for our own good. No one wants things to get out of hand that could diminish confidence in our establishment or government and cause a fracas at parliament.

    We are the proverbial mushrooms in the dark and fed bullshit.

  15. Gentle Annie – What did Jacinda actuality do? What was the outcome? It was Winston Peters who calm down the Muslim countries, by going to Turkey…

  16. He’s not a terrorist he’s a sad Aussie nutjob who couldn’t get assault rifles in his own country so he came to ours because our laws were slack at the time. Jeez don’t give him credit for anything other than being a dangerous loser.

    • Tarrant is a terrorist and he chose to carry out his attack in New Zealand because of our generally welcoming stance on immigrants. He chose to use firearms specifically, to stir up a backlash against licenced firearms owners, who he regarded as soft & complacent. It’s all in his manifesto, read it sometime, oh wait, you aren’t allowed to read about his motivations etc, you may only know the approved truth.

      • Brenton Tarrent was of the Brevick/Azov/white ethno-nationalists school of beliefs.

        ‘No comment’ commenting above makes it sound like he was some kind of NRA extremist ,,, Some gun owners getting rarked up into action were just a part of the means to his delusional ends.

        He was calling out to the hardcore loony extreme right ,,, and leading by example by fighting in their version of a ‘culture war’,, to defend us from ‘white Genocide’.

        Tarrents first three lines written by his own hand in his manifesto were …..
        “It’s the birthrates.
        It’s the birthrates.
        It’s the birthrates.”

        and from https://aijac.org.au/australia-israel-review/a-manifesto-for-murder/ –“The main idea Tarrant tries to advance is that, as a result of mass immigration and the higher fertility rates of the immigrants, Europe is “experiencing an invasion on a level never seen before in history… [a] WHITE GENOCIDE.” “It’s the birthrates” is the slogan that opens his introduction.

        The very title of the manifesto, “The Great Replacement”, is a right-wing conspiracy theory,”

        ,,,, He was calling out to the loony racist right alright https://rumble.com/v2duamk-cultural-marxism-maddness.html ….

        … Or I’ll be a cultural marxist :0

        • My comment in no way implied “he was some kind of NRA extremist”. Tarrant deliberated set out to screw over law-abiding, licenced firearms owners, and thanks to Ardern & Co, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Ditto for helping to divide our diverse, multi-cultural society.

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