March 15th Terror attack 2 years on – winners & losers

2 years ago I was walking into MediaWorks to appear on an end of week political review. There had been stories circulating of mass shootings in Christchurch and the show got cancelled 10 minutes before we went to air as the magnitude of casualties started to jump.

I was on the phone talking with contacts and the enormity of what we were facing started dawning on me.

I accidentally watched the video on Facebook as it appeared in my feed and the grotesque shock of what I was witnessing almost made me sick. Within 20minutes I had the terrorists manifesto and was reading his insane justifications for his white supremacy terrorism.

The horror of that day should stain us, it must stain us, it would be wrong if we didn’t allow this to stain us.

We must wrap our love around those injured and we must never allow this to ever happen again.

Here are the winners and losers marking this 2 year anniversary of trauma since the Christchurch terror attack.

WINNERS:

Jacinda Ardern – Her remarkable leadership in this moment of national atrocity set the stage for kindness to become a tool for immense political good. Her empathy, her decision to wear the headscarf as a mark of respect, her immediate leadership, her ability to reach out and comfort during intense grief. She led with the Christchurch Call and banning these types of guns. Her immediate position was ‘this is not us’, she refused to speak the terrorist’s name and she pulled the entire country through a moment of shock and horror. She made us all proud in a way we never knew we could feel pride.

 

Muslim Community – The incredible forgiveness and grace the Muslim Community have shown the rest of New Zealand in the wake of this appalling violence has reset our consciousness and our parameters for what it is to be included and what it means to be a New Zealander. In their grief they have taught us more about love than we could have possibly imagined.

 

People of Christchurch – After all the earthquakes, for the people of Christchurch to have to experience this grotesque spasm of hate is a terrible pain for that city. The courage so many ordinary people showed that day in the face of such evil extremism is something every Kiwi can take deep honour in.

 

Police response on the day – The incredible speed the NZ Police operated that day, and managed to end this without violence is testament to them as a force when dealing with an immediate crisis as foul as this. They all did us proud that day.

 

NZ Justice – The white supremacist terrorist was shown NZ Justice, full of mercy within a fair trial where he had full access to his legal rights. Some demanded we send him to Australia and they could deal with the cost of his imprisonment but it is righteous he taste NZ justice and serve his full sentence here no matter the cost! He is in our maximum security prison for life and has only half an hour of the Living Channel as entertainment each day. That in of itself seems a punishment beyond endurance. Our Legal system was tested and it stood up to scrutiny while history was watching. Our merciful justice will reverberate down history’s long corridor well after his bones have withered into dust.

 

NZ Intelligence Apparatus – One of the biggest winners are the NZ Intelligence Apparatus who suffered a total and utter cascade failure and have managed to get away with it!

When it’s Nicky Hager, Māori Nationalists, Environmentalists, MANA, Greenpeace and Muslim students, the Intelligence Apparatus can’t move fast enough to breach their civil rights. However when it is a white supremacist plotting a terror attack for 2 years on NZ soil and who had numerous red flags pop up, suddenly our $200million per year Intelligence Agencies are useless???

This is the list of the 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, and I WILL CONTINUE PRINTING THIS LIST until you start appreciating how enormous a failure this was…

• 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)

…watching the Left allow the entire NZ Intelligence apparatus off the hook for their total failure with the Christchurch terror attacks by demanding hate speech laws is one of the great intellectual failures of 2020 and 2021.

 

LOSERS:

Greens – In the puritanical world of the woke, micro aggressions lead immediately to macro violence, and this is where they get their sanctimonious righteousness to micro aggression police anything that triggers them. In the wake of the atrocity, Jacinda spoke clearly and firmly that this violence isn’t us, sadly the Greens and their middle class identity politics clique couldn’t help themselves and of course blamed this terror attack committed by an Australian on white New Zealanders. So many Aucklanders were sickened that the woke and the Greens would blame this on all white people it led to a mass walk out at the Auckland Domain memorial.

 

Manbaby Gun Owners – These fucking ungracious Manbaby pricks actually have the audacity to claim they are the real victims of this terror attack because they have lost the right to own their favourite sub machine gun toys. If it looks like a sub machine gun, sounds like a sub machine gain and kills like a sub machine gun, it’s a fucking sub machine gun. Civilians don’t need sub machine guns. End of story.

How we didn’t listen to victims – One of the cruelest ironies here was that the Muslim Community had been complaining about a spike in street harassment and intimidation for years leading up to this atrocity. We should have listened to their fears with far more care.  The manner in which we haven’t supported all those lost and hurt by this terror attack is unacceptable and a whole of Government response is required. It pains me to be so critical because we did so many things right in response, but the lacklustre processes for extra resources have been a shambles.

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Hate Speech Legislation – In response to this atrocity, rather than hold the failures of the Intelligence Apparatus to account, the Government have decided new Hate Speech laws are magically required to prevent the next white supremacy atrocity.

Apparently a blasphemy law and criminalising the misuse of pronouns will keep us safe from white supremacy terrorism!

I read the terrorist’s manifesto and I don’t recall him referring to Trans Allies or gender identity, so why criminalising the misuse of pronouns is being mooted as a response to white supremacy terrorism is utterly beyond me and if NZ passes religious hate speech laws, I’m afraid I have no choice but to immediately break that law for the sake of our Democracy!

Remember, this new religious hate speech law will specifically target ‘hate’ towards religious beliefs???

But many religious beliefs are ridiculous. Under this law, ‘The Life of Brian’ would be considered hate speech…

From the archive, 30 August 1979: Nothing funny about Life of Brian’s Jesus joke

The Catholic archdiocese has called Life of Brian a “blasphemy”, adding that it was a “crime against religion which holds the person of Christ up to comic ridicule.”

The Jewish groups are equally damning. They regard the film as “grieviously insultlng,” and have described it as “a vicious attack on Judaism and the Bible, and a cruel mockery of Christian religious feelings as well.”

…I philosophically hate religion for many, many, many good reasons, but because NZ is a liberal progressive democracy, I tolerate religion.

I tolerate Scientology, I tolerate the Exclusive Brethren & I tolerate those who believe in a magical invisible flying wizard for all their personal choices!

I also tolerate that they don’t pay tax – BUT I SURE AS FUCK refuse point blank to fear them!

We lose free speech to criticise religion? How the hell is that anything other than a victory for the terrorist?

This is a liberal progressive SECULAR Democracy, if you want to believe in crazy myths and crazy invisible magical flying beings, that is your total right to, but equally, it’s my right to mock those beliefs when they collide with my individual rights

It’s particularly galling because the problem wasn’t hate speech laws, the problem was that the entire Intelligence apparatus of NZ didn’t bother doing their job, which is to protect us from the next possible terror threat!

 

White Supremacists – Remember Comrades. We may disagree on many things, but there are some things we must always agree on, smash white supremacy Nazis. Always.

 

CONCLUSION:

There has to be a way to protect minorities so that they have the same agency as everyone else that doesn’t buy the Left into a destructive free speech war we will lose.

Everyone in a liberal progressive democracy deserves the same agency. Muslims, Queer or Trans people shouldn’t feel abused and threatened or frightened of simply being in public.  Graeme Edgler has written extensively upon this and makes excellent points on how we could balance freedom of speech with the right to not feel threatened.

The debate must be focused on anti-harassment, not free speech!

It must also be focused on better public broadcasting and more regulations on social media (including taxes to fund that journalism) to stop the algorithms from weaponising debate.

The Prime Minister is emotionally welded to the Christchurch atrocity because she waded so deep through the trauma and raw pain in its aftermath.

She almost had to have her arm popped out of its socket to finally cancel the Christchurch memorial last year and only because the eruption of Covid might have tuned the memorial  into a super spreader event, and I think even Mohammed would roll his eyes over the irony  of that.

Jacinda wouldn’t be human if she hadn’t been imprinted deeply by that grief and horror, which unfortunately means she will burn any and all political capital in forcing these hate speech laws through, which is inane because this happened from a cascade failure of the intelligence services – blasphemy laws and gender identity hate speech isn’t a solution to a cascade intelligence failure!

This massacre, this horror inflicted upon innocent people as they went to worship by a white supremacist terrorist should shock us and live with us as a constant reminder that hate and violence can not, must not and will not warp us into the monsters the Terrorist wanted us to become.

We are better than his obscene vengeance fantasies that have no relevance in the real world.

We should pity and turn away in disgust at the white supremacist terrorist, we will never bow in fear to his malevolence.

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