Two things:
1—Carlson of Fox News, proven racist and bigot, went against the journalistic grain and showed the face of the mass murderer and named him. Might not be far behind before he broadcasts a copy of the livestream in tribute to the gunman and his ideology of white supremacy.
2—Trump, proven racist and bigot, echoed the manifesto of the mass murderer calling immigrants as invaders. He also did not condemn the ideology of white supremacy. In the same manifesto, Trump was also praised by the mass murderer as doing something good to promote white supremacy.
7
lets be clear, this is the same sentiment that is held be those opposed to immigration in this country. The problem with those fleeing central America is not that they are breaking laws beyond crossing the boarder, but that they are brown people who threaten a white majority. This is exactly what the leader of the free world is peddling.
6
In the rush to blame the Internet or media or violence in entertainment, the obvious is overlooked, that these crimes of mass violence almost invariably involve males and guns. Women are not going around shooting up churches, theaters, schools, mosques, concerts, night clubs. Something is wrong with males, who are the violent half of the human species and the ones who commit the overwhelming majority of crimes of violence. A sane society would look at this truth and restrict gun ownership by males. Males also seem susceptible to become deranged with the ideology of white supremacy, which is another reason to restrict their gun ownership.
A few of the homicidal males who committed mass murder:
Andres Breivik, Adam Lanza, Dylann Roof, James Holmes, Stephen Paddock, Devin Patrick Kelley, George Hennard, James Huberty, Nicholas Cruz, Omar Mateen, Chris Harper-Mercer, Mark Barton.
Clearly something is wrong with the way males are raised and socialized. Males seem particularly susceptible to insane and violent ideologies and they glorify war and violence and weaponry. Maybe it is time to stop exposing males to images and ideas of violence and to restrict their access to deadly weapons. Otherwise, expect the carnage to continue.
4
Not one 'liberal' or 'democrat' or 'leftie' mentioned Trump in regards to this tragedy. Not one.
It was the terrorist himself who named Trump. Pillar of White Supremacy.
And our American President responds? By using the exact same wording as the terrorist: Immigrants are INVADERS.
Both men suffer from the scourge of believing that what is on the screen via twitter or any other site is more important than reality.
Unfortunately, it is all too true. The sick belief that something is not real until it is 'posted' online.
The bodies of the beautiful souls in Christchurch are all too real.
Our President shames our nation in response and people of good conscience wonder what to do. Because the 'answer' to this terrorism and hate will not come from our leader or our Senate.
It will have to come from us.
6
He did to people of that religion what they do others over and over again.
An Australian mass-murderer choosing Christchurch for the location of his attack is no coincidence. There are other historical factors to take into account.
Christchurch, a city I know well, is known for its right-wing groups. New Zealand Massey University’s Paul Sponley writes:
"Through the 1980s, I looked at more than 70 local groups that met the definition of being extreme right wing. The city that hosted many of these groups was Christchurch.
They were a mixture of skinhead, neo-nazi and extreme nationalist groups. Some were traditional in their ideology, with a strong underpinning of anti-Semitism and a belief in the supremacy of the “British race”. Others inverted the arguments of Māori nationalism to argue for separatism to keep the “white race pure.” (from theconversation.com)
Australia was known for its white-only immigration policy. Australian Attorney-General Alfred Deakin, 12 Sept 1901:
".. put in plain and unequivocal terms … means the prohibition of all alien coloured immigration, and more, it means at the earliest time, by reasonable and just means, the deportation or reduction of the number of aliens now in our midst. The two things go hand in hand, and are the necessary complement of a single policy — the policy of securing a ‘white Australia."
To this day there is a strong undercurrent of virulent racism in Australian culture. Witness to this is the 2016 Punchbowl riots in which local Lebanese and white Australians fought with each other.
4
"The attack was teased on Twitter, announced on the online message board 8chan and broadcast live on Facebook. The footage was then replayed endlessly on YouTube, Twitter and Reddit, as the platforms scrambled to take down the clips nearly as fast as new copies popped up to replace them."
Electronic empowerment of lowlife culture has upset the delicate ecological balance of the maze. Tilt! Crossed wires sparking. The streets suddenly drowned in noxious vapors of putrifying static. All exits blocked. Prosecutors will be violated.
Engorged black plastic trash bags piled almost skyscraper high reeking in the heat.
Programming
Error.
2
I wonder what the NRA and their Republican enablers will say about this preventable tragedy. Oh, that’s right: If only someone in the mosque had had a machine gun.
1
America leads the world again. Awesome.
I took away a couple of things from what I have read about the massacre in New Zealand. First, I was impressed by their PM's immediate response. Think of how our political leaders avoid the very mention of guns in this type of tragedy. From her bold statement, I would guess NZ has no version of the NRA running their government...
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said on Saturday that a total of five firearms, including two semiautomatic weapons, were used in the attacks. New Zealand has fairly lax gun laws, but little gun violence.
“Our gun laws will change, now is the time,” Ms. Ardern said, though she did not say what that legislation would look like.
Second, our president got a dubious mention in the killer's manifesto...
A manifesto linked to the accused killer, released through his social media account on the morning of the massacre, suggests its author considered himself a disciple and comrade of white supremacist killers. The suspect, identified in court papers as Brenton Harrison Tarrant of Australia, also hailed President Trump, mocking his leadership skills but calling him “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”
5
James Holmes, the 25 year old white male, author of the Aurora mass shooting july 19 2012, said during trial : ''I didn’t think i could make a mark on the world with science, but i could become famous by blowing up people''.
Tarrant just add a new dimension to that desire : i could become VIRAL, by blowing up people livestream after some social media formatting. Tarrant ; parangon of extreme narcissism, has now is name in all media outlets on the planet.
The next 'Tarrant' is taking notes and rewieving the video, the manitesto, to see what could be enhanced to get more clicks.
Sometimes i really need a drink.
Sláinte!
2
Congratulations to the NRA, Facebook and Donald Trump. Your initiatives are working perfectly.
The NRA continues to be an un indicted co-conspirator to mass killings. Facebook rakes in the ad dollars while fecklessly allowing people to spew hate, filth, ignorance and broadcast heinous acts (I guess Zuckerberg as a sociopath has no trouble sleeping at night cushioned by his blood money mattress) and DJT - The Human Stain - can carve another notch in his bedpost of disgust while his base cheers and chants.
Well done indeed. As it turns out Democracy doesn’t die in the dark. It dies in plain sight.
5
This was put online in order to promote hatred among followers of racism. It was an attention seeking way of boosting the ego of a madman. To inspire copycats. And will.
2
There are crimes which justify the exacting of the death penalty, and this is one of them.
1
Families of the shooting victims should sue Donald Trump either in the US or the World Court for instigating criminal hate against humanity.
5
I'll mention it here since it's not getting enough Press... this gunman dubbed Trump 'a symbol of renewed white identity'. Let that sink in. Not only is Trump's Islamophobia affecting the daily lives of Muslims living in the United States, but he clearly has an influence on white nationalists worldwide.
8
Put him and all of the families of his victims out of our misery and finish him off once and for all and quickly. There is no need to allow his life to go on.
1
Much more dangerous than ISIS or Al Qaeda. These group must be isolated and neutralized. If you can't yell fire in a would like to see Facebook disappear. theatre then other more dangerous communications must be banned. If this were 1980s Argentina these hate group people would just disappear. I would like to see Facebook disappear. It's hazardous to our health. If only youth would boycott it, Better than joining the military. Protect our national security by boycotting Facebook.
Please kids, don't join the military. If the enemy doesn't kill you, you'll return to good ole USA and kill yourself.
Well that's what's happening isn't it?
2
think globally people. The overwhelming number of comments here can't see beyond their tiny local thoughts or politics. 50 or 100 people killed in an attack in a Muslim country happens about once a month, admit it, we don't even notice anymore let alone comment. It is the same hate and while we pay no attention it is fueling more hate. The deranged coward in New Zealand slaughtered innocent peaceful Muslims to revenge Muslim attacks in the West and communicate your not wanted here. The same cycle that is eating a large part of the Muslim world. ISSI or whoever is out there radicalizing kids will use the New Zealand attack to get a revenge attack someplace in the west. if Cherry picking a 73 page ramble by deranged man allows you to find your own prejudices vindicated and blame Trump have at it.
1
I blame Fox News and the president... in that order.
Attitude reflects leadership... and Fox News has been excusing deviant behavior for two decades and now deviance is normalized.
3
"This manifesto is the work of someone who understands the Internet and how to metaphorically weaponize it. He understood that he had two audiences: the anonymous racists on 8chan who would celebrate their inclusion in a horrific mass murder, and the media, which would lead the rest of the world’s search for meaning"
This is an excellent article. Great insight and analysis of how this psycho, who is probably very intelligent, weaponized social media. Mark my words, this will be a blueprint for similar maniacs who want to murder, spread their hate and create hysteria, not only online, but in the real world.
Terrorists, racists, murderers and the neo-Nazis now have a[n] new outlet, a threat that lurks out in the open but is hidden by like-minded individuals and platforms. It is fueled by words from world leaders who spew similar thoughts or are too ignorant to realize that their words, or lack of condemnation of these actions, lead to actions with deadly consequences.
2
The Christchurch killer wasn't always a mass murderer any more than all those who went to Syria and Iraq to fight for Da'esh were always mass slaughterers and serial rapists.
In North London, in the 1980s, amongst the lower-middle-class male A-level physics students I taught at Tottenham College, I heard firsthand from them about the violent discrimination experienced by Sunni Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Morocco and Algeria at the hands of mixed-race gangs of Jamaican/Irish muggers and street thugs.
I saw the mixed-race gangs at work in North London targeting Asian shopkeepers. I listened to their sons and daughters telling me how their parents had given up complaining to the Met because of the contempt and disdain with which they were treated by white, working-class cops.
This was where hatred of the West was born — in the shameful injustice experienced by hundreds of thousands of brown-skinned Sunni Muslim immigrants to the big European cities forty years ago.
Da'esh and its hate-filled fellow travellers exacted their revenge. Not on those responsible, of course. That's not how humans avenge themselves. But on Yazidi girls and women. On elderly Jews and an elderly Roman Catholic priest. On innocents in Paris, Berlin, London, Manchester and Stockholm.
Now, some of those who are appalled by the extremities of Da'esh in turn are exacting their revenge. Not on those responsible. But by slaughtering small children and their unarmed parents worshipping in mosques.
1
It's clear that the recent past - the last few years - has seen an overwhelming of terrorist attacks in democracies coming from far right, white supremacist and anti-Semitic (Philadelphia) - rather than radical Islamic - sources. The next time the West calls for Muslim leaders to condemn jihadist attacks I hope the West will be prepared to accept an answer in the style of Trump's.. "it's only a few.."
2
The man charged with this mass murder this morning is Australian. New Zealand is one of the more multicultural countries in the world as is Australia, but unlike Australia, has very few dog-whistlers. There is no doubt, and many Australians are saying this (but not all), that the right wing government here is stacked with dog-whistlers and people who are cruel to asylum seekers. One Australian minister has tried to deport New Zealanders back for minor crimes, people who have lived here all their lives save for their births. But Australia "imports" of his own free will of course, a white male supremacist, now charged with one of the worst supremacist terrorist acts in a peaceful, highly democratic country. For more enlightenment, I suggest Jacinda Adern, the NZ Prime Minister's speeches are the best.
Overall, my point is that racist politicians encourage this; Australia has criminalised hate speech but where is the action against them? Australia's general election is 2 months away - that is the better hope.
16
Free Speech means a citizen has the right to speak their minds freely. That would be in the context of a Town Meeting, a gathering of a political party or an opinion distributed by hand or published in a newspaper or other media outlet. Free Speech does not guarantee that one's ideas will automatically get published or disseminated to the population at large. It doesn't guarantee everyone their own radio or television show.
Just like the right to travel freely doesn't automatically grant everyone a drivers license or a passport. The internet has distorted our culture to the point where we are now forced to consider the hatred and intolerance of every anti-social type in the same light as the ideas presented by experts, trusted authorities and sincere concerned citizens.
If the internet is the highway of the future we need regulations and speed limits. Otherwise criminal enterprizes and mentally ill individuals will hi jack our national and global discourse and our species will be dragged down by its own defective and self-destructive elements.
22
@Carl Hultberg. Speech monitored and regulated by Big Government isn’t free speech
5
@Carl Hultberg It is clear that freedom of speech is the new dividing line between left and right. The right supports it, the left doesn't. The constant daily calls by the left to ban and shut down speech they don't like is impossible to ignore now. Incidents like this one are an excuse, just like every mass shooting is an excuse to attack the second amendment, even if it happens in another country.
3
@Larry: Nobody is totally free. Without some regulation none of us are free to speak freely at all. We will be quickly bullied out of the forum of free ideas by criminal elements.
These comments here are all moderated. Are you still free to speak responsibly?
6
The gunman did not act alone.
He was aided and abetted by many, many people and organizations who espouse hatred as a virtue, and spurn reason as a conspiracy. And they're not just in the US hiding under red hats or bleating like Orwellian sheep at rallies. Unfortunately they seem to be in any corner of the world, united by a common disease whose greatest symptom is the continuously evolving capacity for mankind's inhumanity toward men and women everywhere.
No, sadly, the gunman did not act alone.
5
It’s the world we live in - I’m not sure why some terrorist incidents garner more publicity than others....
Jan 15 - Al-Shabaab kills 21 in a hotel in Kenya
Dec 2018 - ISIS kills 11 in Morocco
November 2018 - ISIL kills 14 on bus in Egypt
Sept 2018 - ISIS kills 25 at parade in Iran
Aug 2018 - ISIS kills 48, including 34 children in Kabul...
..the list goes on and on - there was very little, if any, media coverage of those incidents- why?
Whether it’s a bus, a hotel, a school, temple or mosque, there’s a lot of hate in the world and it’s getting worse...not better.
The media can analyze the shooting for the next several weeks - and it’s means nothing.
There will always be mentally ill individuals that will carry out terrorist attacks....because they can.
I heard Mayor de Blasio saying we need to “weed out these individuals” - that’s impossible - these events will continue to take place regardless of the measures we take to prevent them.
3
For every automated tool deployed to stamp out racist manifestos on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, there is a skilled user who knows how to work around them and keep the party going. Company staff members could be the ones quashing these manifestos themselves, but that takes time and money that eat into profits. Far easier to just send out a bot and then throw up one's hands in false apology when the bot is crushed.
1
I just finished reading the NYT Magazine cover story, “U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Don’t Know How to Stop It.” [Janet Reitman Nov 3, 2018] — which I somehow was linked to from this article, but can’t seem to find the link now — where I read that “The F.B.I. said in a statement: “The F.B.I. does not and cannot police ideologies under the First Amendment.”
While there may well be such a limit on the America Federal Bureau of Investigations not being allowed to investigate “ideologies” or ideology based crimes, I would be quite surprised, in a country that was formed by first peacefully trying to declare its independence from the British Empire, and then being forced into have to confront that then most powerful Empire in the world, that there wouldn’t some legal allowance being made for a 21st century possibility for the American people to be able to express their ‘free-speech’ preference for a non-violent “Political Revolution Against Empire”, rather than an acceptance of living under a Disguised Global Capitalist Empire (and virtual Emperor), without that being considered an ideology issue that can or cannot be investigated by ‘we the America people’ peacefully and rationally.
1
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, in this nut case's manifesto was his praise fro Trump and purported support fro the whit supremacy movement. A number of this horrid acts have occurred because of the words and actions of Trump (see Charleston). And, even yesterday, Trump said that this was a small movement and dismissed it.
Just like far right nut cases, in post WWI Germany needed a voice fro their anti-Semitic movement; these same nut cases have anew voice. A US president almost justifying a white supremacy movement (see border wall, comments about Hispanics, etc.).
The US is directing the so called "war on terror" against the wrong people; Muslims and Arabs. Since 9/11, with maybe a very few exceptions, large mass shootings were committed in, or influenced by, white supremacy. And, once can say , like Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, the US is also exporting terrorism; Christchurch, New Zealand.
1
What is really sickening is the way media--particularly broadcast but also print--play into the hands of these murderers by offering an audience whether for merely sensationalizing to grab ratings and sell papers or political purposes. (The media's use Parkland's use to promote gun control is a classic example, and AOC's sad, self-serving, media-grabbing attempt to use Christchurch a current example.) Media has given an isolated, local event on the far side of the world, worldwide attention which really only encourage the next atrocity. Please stop glamourizing these tragedies whatever the reason.
Although the blood of these innocents is clearly to be laid at the feet of one Donald J. Trump, we as US citizens are also blameworthy. We spawned this instrument of evil, whether by voting -- or maybe worse yet, by not voting.
1
This guy is an awful, awful human being. We need to be more vigilant about hate groups. The first thing we can do is take away their weapons. Make all private gun ownership illegal around the world. Then enforce it. Arrest these people and imprison them whenever they show their faces, whether it be a Neo nazi march, or a protest, or a simple gathering. Track their correspondence and arrest them. Give them year and years or incarceration.
1
Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan 1651) expressed that the most basic foundation for civilization was the social contract not to kill one another enforced by "the sword." Not everyone agrees to these terms. Is it time for society to become more exclusive?
I indeed wonder whether the act of the gunman endorsing a YouTube star in a video that appeared to capture the shooting is the result of disruption of life in a time of great peril: effect of ongoing fourth Industrial Revolution?
No doubt the “world has the potential to connect billions more people to digital networks, dramatically improve the efficiency of organizations and even manage assets in ways that can help regenerate the natural environment, potentially undoing the damage of previous industrial revolutions”.
As the New Zealand massacre is any indication the latest 4.0 revolution may mean that “it also could lead to the marginalization of some groups, exacerbate inequality, create new security risks, and undermine human relationships”.
I am sure people of Klaus Schwab caliber would have clearly understood the effects online violence and how the murderer’s act of live streaming would be viewed and interpreted.
One thing is very clear that there huge road blocks needs clearing before humanity reaps the benefits of 4.0 Revolution, “bringing a new cultural renaissance, which will make us feel part of something much larger than ourselves: a true global civilization. I believe the changes that will sweep through society can provide a more inclusive, sustainable and harmonious society. But it will not come easily”. Klaus Schwab
Let me first say that the killing of innocent life is abhorrent and the perpetrators should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Unfortunately, New Zealand does not have a death penalty. Neither does Norway where Anders Breivik received a ridiculously soft sentence for killing 77 people.
And yet to be fair, shouldn't we also address the incidence of Muslim mass murder of innocents, which also percolates online and is far more extensive throughout the world? If authoritarian measures had not been taken by Western societies to prevent it, it would be epidemic in our own countries.
The success of Islam in spreading it's religion throughout the world in the past several centuries has been unprecedented in human history. Many of these conquests were achieved through violence and brutal internecine wars. Hate for and fear of Muslims, as rare as it is in the West, originates in that history of subjugation.
The War on Islamic Terror is still being fought for a reason. When deranged individuals resort to mass murder to pursue it, however, they become the moral equals of that which they detest.
4
@Dougal E
Your viewpoint is poorly informed. One could well say that "The success of Christianity in spreading its religion.. unprecedented in human history". There are silly things in all holy books and cruel actions committed in the names of all gods, so singling out Islam as particularly violence-prone or accusing it of subjugation is naive. Such viewpoints do not help, certainly not in the 21st century.
There is also such a thing as a wrong thing to say or at least the wrong time to say it. Your calling attention to "Muslim mass murder of innocents" "to be fair" in the immediate aftermath of innocent muslims being slaughtered can be interpreted in only one way: you justifying extremists taking the law into their own hands.
I do agree with your first and last sentence (but little in between).
What's missing from this analysis, perceptive and true as it is, is an underlying cause, which is the fact that the online world fills a hole for many of these violent terrorists. The hole, often created by a disconnection from other people, IRL, as it were, is filled by the community they find online. They are welcomed, nurtured, respected, heard. They can be followers or leaders online in a way that they cannot be in life. And they can demonstrate their commitment to the community with a horrible act of terror. This is a powerful draw. While we don't yet know much about the shooter, it's likely we'll learn that he was first disconnected from people, community, meaningful work, respect and more. And that the internet provided the connection he desperately craved. The answer here is not simply more vigilant internet policing. It's creating real life resources that connect lonely people back to a meaningful life.
5
@Kim Agree. It seems to me that the oft ignored common thread in these horrific events is that the perpetrator, for years, showed signs of needing treatment for an underlying mental health disorder. In the US, treatment options have dwindled. Still, we continue to blame guns instead of building a support network for citizens desperately in need. Perhaps it’s easy to turn a blind eye to these individuals- until they kill.
Stepping back a little from the instinctual horror of seeming mindless slaughter, is their a genuine, arguable reasoning or explanation possible? The arguments given in this editorial are two: the internet and the existence of weapons of fast, mass carnage. But these explanations don't get at an underlying biological explanation: overpopulation.
It seems completely plausible that humans, like other animals detect when their territory is being over-run by others they can differentiate from themselves. Instincts, like the teeth of lion, flare up and violence ensues. Our world, during my life time, has doubled its human population.
The enzyme that acceleratives these instincts is income-inequality. It seems like a basic equation: if you have enough material prosperity, you can and do ignore your instincts; you have sufficient compensation. You don't see the problem or feel it: you are essentially unrewarded for following instincts; you are punished with loss of the pleasures of what your money and society have to offer.
If this analysis is true, terrorism is a tool to move the powers that be to re-consider the fairness of income distribution. It is the only way, after a point, to ensure domestic tranquility, their own personal safety, and really ever more money.
The internet and the existence of weapons just punctuate the essential biology of an unfairness in the tribe that needs to be addressed. It is possible with income equality to view others as a positive.
One more example of how the Internet in general; and Facebook in particular is the new "Wild West," with no controls or regulations to stop or even deter such insanity. It has become obvious to even the most casual observer; that violent extremists of all stripes have come to rely on websites around the world to spread their poison. I can hear some screaming FREE SPEECH/ FREE SPEECH even as I write this. When it comes to promoting hatred, violence, paranoid delusions, or just plain anarchy; stick it in your ear.
6
@Greg Hodges
Amen!!! Freedom from Hate Speech is worth fighting for just as much as fighting for Freedom from Religion.
1
It is said that most of the internet is driven by sexual content, and it seems to be, the rest by the personal anger, and opinionated views absorbed through both the age of television, and the age of the internet, and then espoused online. These people connect online with like minded people who give each other courage, and egg each other on, to do horrific things, like suicide, school shootings, terrorist attacks, all done more to be relevant in an age, where no one person gets more than 5 minutes of fame, because there is so much war, killing, starvation, murder, and misery, that it is on to the next image. We are in uncharted waters, that have washed over, and broken through the dam, and it is flooding everything, and everyone is its path.
2
Most of these terrorists are on drugs or drug addicts and I'm sure that's how these terrorist groups control their recruits that they radicalise with drugs and money to buy drugs. He travelled overseas to nations such as Dubai, Pakistan, eastern Europe etc etc and wouldn't be surprised if he was financed by these foreign terrorist groups. From what he wrote he's a really mixed up person and probably has a drug problem. He was also born and raised in Australia, is not a resident of Christchurch but lives in Dunedin. He never mentioned muslims or his views to anyone who knew him, was law abiding apart from some minor traffic offences, and was very polite and caused no problems in society. The terror threat is still on high and police have told everyone to go about their normal business but be vigilant. I saw about a two minute clip on some chat site and someone had a video link but after reading the news, the person had left out bits of the killings to make the video look like a video game with no speaking. This is a symptom of something wrong in society and someone needs the guts to look at this honestly so it doesn't happen again. NZ is in a position to make unique laws so it doesn't happen again like banning all automatic weapons from sale to the public as we are not at war.
1
It's not Trump. It's not Facebook or Youtube. It was a lunatic with an agenda. It's extremely difficult to stop these kind of people. Just because they have an instant audience via the internet doesn't mean the internet should be curtailed and locked down for the rest of sane society. Just as with firearms, the internet can be a weapon for evil deeds. That shouldn't necessitate a lock-down for the the rest of us.
3
If people really want to prevent these things in the future, shouldn't they abstain from wall-to-wall coverage of them?
1
I hate and despise sick people who use guns to murder innocent people, but I do not fear them. I fear people who use actions such as these to call for bans and limits to the freedom of things. In this case a limit to the freedom of social media on the internet, it is these people, and people like them, who cause all the misery in the world.
4
Lawmakers here in the US have to first start by banning the President from tweeting or using internet for public communication! Unanimous Gag order, pronto. The world will adjust accordingly.
5
Reality, the actual world, is being reduced to a mere adjunct for the fake reality that is the World Wide Web. Seems that the acts of this killer and of others like him were designed more to make an online impression than to achieve any result in the offline world. Sad. Pathetic. Bizarre.
These shootings have become a normal part of life, we cannot be surprised by them anymore. Tragic, yes, but surprising? Not in the least.
Only the place and shooter changes.ll.
“Murder for likes” - in another era this just would have been a creepy Black Mirror episode. Unfortunately it is heartbreaking reality.
4
Great boost for social media. Capitalism rules the world. Money over people, Anything else is evil socialism.
The internet is a utility and it should not be restricted. Because we have the ability to drown people in our bathtub or to electrocute them, does not warrant that water and electricity should be taken from us.
The elephant in the room is guns. We have too much access to them. We believe the hype that they make us free and that our lives would be meaningless without them. Who needs semi automatic weapons unless you are planning to kill people. RESTRICT THE GUNS!!
The question must be asked why the internet platforms are not held responsible for their content. "The laws of some countries describe hate speech as speech, gestures, conduct, writing, or displays that incite violence or prejudicial actions against a group or individuals..."
Is there a difference between actually making the speech and facilitating its world wide dispersion. Facebook makes billions off its platform but takes little to no responsibility for its content. The consequences are immense: distorting the democratic process and inciting mass violence and murder.
It is time to make those that spread hate speech just as responsible as those that write it. Perhaps a liability suit by the victims or criminal charges against the social media platforms might change this growing cancer on our democratic civilization might change the status quo.
2
The author of article: "In some ways, it felt like a first — an internet-native mass shooting, conceived and produced entirely within the irony-soaked discourse of modern extremism."
What's an "irony-soaked discourse" and why is that a bad thing, so bad it's directly associated by the author with modern extremism? Would the author of this article say it's at all possible to preserve the concept of irony, that irony can exist say, if we do not soak our discourse in it but just sprinkle a bit of it into our discourse? In other words the author seems to suggest it's possible to have too much irony in discourse and that an increase in irony is directly correlated with modern extremism, therefore irony should be reduced.
But what would it mean for human native intelligence and education to reduce irony, to try to set levels of irony so we do not arrive at "irony soaked discourses" which "obviously" lead to extremism? Perhaps the author should actually look up the word irony, see what it means, before being against irony soaked discourses not to mention associating them with extremism. I would go so far as to ask if it is at all possible to have an increase in human intelligence and creativity without increasing irony. Can we imagine a Wilde or Kafka or Feynman or any decent comedian without irony? Modern extremism--of left or right--actually seems to me deficient in irony, the ability to compare/contrast, play this off that, to humorously flip over on oneself.
3
Wow. Not sure that was the intent. I don't think they actually meant to discredit the concept of irony, though it is ironic to be so serious about irony.
7
I understand that sentence totally differently from you, and I’m fairly sure the author does too. They are saying that far-right discourse on the internet is soaked in irony, not that all irony-soaked discourse is bad or far-right.
Eg. The alt-right used memes to convey their message =\= all memes are tools for alt-right messaging
You see the difference?
I don't have a clue about what that dude wrote. And I have found that life is saturated with irony.
He feels so passionate about the subject wanting us to share his perception or at least see clearly how he feels and thinks about it , yet writes in such a way as to be opaque and THAT I find to be ironic.
Though I confess I didn't read the article so maybe I would see it differently. I'm not being ironic just lazy.
The white nationalist groups now pose more of a threat to our safety than Islamic terrorism. We have spent trillions in the war on terror all the while ignoring the white supremacist nationalist threat. Is it because they are white and we all, most of us, are white, so our tribal instinct regards them as "same" despite their behavior which is not same? Or is it?
For, overseas we bomb and drone innocent Muslims, millions of refugees result, deaths and injuries too numerous to count. So how are we really different than our newly arrived evil perpetrator? Now that too is irony. He is us when you look behind the curtain.
"Do you have any evidence to support your wild eyed idea?", you ask.
Trump and his Republican minions.
Obama was slick, a virtual magician acting and doing the same in plain sight yet we did not see.
Now it's out in the open.
1
Hate to say it, but this only confirms China's efforts to control internet access. As one Chinese told me, "If China relaxed its controls on free speech, the country would implode."
4
We are entering a feedback loop with this extremist behavior. Our right wing leadership is feeding off of it, and feeding into it, as these incidents continue to occur world wide. The shootings will increase and involve more victims in more places until we, as a society, agree that it must stop. There are two solutions: controlling the types of arms that are allow freely into civilians hands, and education. Arms control should include thorough universal background checks, and tested, time based licensing (like driver's licenses) so that the government know who owns what arms, and that the owners are capable of rational thinking, and have appropriate knowledge of the arms they own. We need to move now, not later. Not when the NRA agrees. It is time.
16
It's arguable that the journalism profession, intentionally or not,
is responsible for the domination of the internet by social media.
Here's why. First, remember that the social media are not the
internet. They are websites on the internet, just like mine and
thousands of other privately managed sites, as well as those of
businesses and government agencies.
Now, some history.
The news media discovered the internet in the late 1990s, about
the time the blog was invented. The format of the blog is congenial
to journalists because it allows them to hold court online just
like they do in print. Therefore it's hard to fault the press
for their enthusiasm for the blogosphere back then, which to them
*was* the internet. Said enthusiasm fueled the rise of Facebook
and Twitter, which are topologically equivalent to networks of
blogs. That is, a blogger's audience is equivalent to his followers
on social media.
In contrast to social media, the forum is a structure wherein
all participants are equal and therefore encourages dialogue and
debate. Therefore it is
is profoundly more democratic than the social media.
(Reddit, minus its
upvoting and downvoting gimmickry, is a large-scale
implementation of the forum structure.)
Forums could be restored to prominence
eventually, but it would first require help from a
critical mass of influential journalists able to see the big
picture I've outlined here.
3
Unrestricted freedom, as on the internet, is a recipe for chaos. Extremely cheap unit economics and failure to categorize and monitor harmful consumption of the internet will be its undoing.
7
@Harsh
Agreed next it will be mass murders in the thousands .They needed the police to bring it to their attention. Enough is enough.
1
@Harsh
The "too much freedom" argument again? Why not just come out and say, explicitly, that "categorize and monitor" really means "censor?" As for chaos, well, totalitarian societies certainly are not chaotic. Show trials and gulags see to that.
1
I was taken aback by the speed with which the New Zealand prime minister spoke of gun law changes as a result of this carnage. Here, in America, we continue to offer thoughts and prayers but nothing concrete to stem the mindless murder of our own citizens. The second amendment never intended the state of affairs we are subjected to daily. Read the second amendment. Then read it again. We have allowed a monster in our midst.
61
@Thomas
So what is her brilliant idea, and why did it take a massacre to mention it, whatever it is? Tell us all how promising "change" is actual change, whatever that "change" is. Bonus points for explaining how America's Bill of Rights has anything to do with New Zealand.
3
@Ed The Second amendment allows , accidentally, the maniacal obsession with assault weapons . No political spine has been shown to curb the manslaughter here in the U.S. I'll take a politician willing to say that change will happen rather than NRA backed representatives who seem to timid to address gun violence.
According to me, it has been talked little about the RESPONSIBILITY of the several actors who played a role in the happening of this tragic terrorist attack.
Such as, the President Trump who was mentioned as a source of inspiration in the manifesto.
The Chief Executives of the social media platforms who don't tight their policy rules to reduce the impact of hate speeches and videos plenty of actual live violence. Beside, of course, the shooters.
Nevertheless, they're the result of a culture of hatred and racism that is hiding itself behind "noble" purposes, such as the protection of a Country. And my attention was caught by the words of the Australian mass who claimed to be, as a matter of fact, a fascist and he's proud to be so labelled; whereas a Nationalist leader like Trump doesn't recognize either the issue and how his anti-migrants campaign contributed in enhancing it.
19
The government created the internet utility. Utilities must be regulated to protect us. The retail platforms using this utility and the weaponization of our constitution to create more billionaires is changing our democratic form of governing.
12
Watch and learn. Soon we will see a national response to a mass shooting that America should have adopted decades ago. I think it will be direct, very largely supported by both sides of politics and most importantly, by the population of New Zealand. And it will take weeks only to achieve. If only the US could do the same.
22
@MaccaUS
Agreed. This is from Radio NZ's website:
Council of Licenced Firearm Owners chairman spokesperson Nicole McKee said authorities and the firearms community need to ensure the safe use and control of guns to guard against people who should not have access to such weapons do not get access.
"We have made it clear to some govt agencies that we are open, not to lobby them, but to have some frank discussions about what we can do to assist this country to ensure that this sort of thing cannot happen in the future," Ms McKee said.
"It's not about lobbying, it's about how we can ensure that everybody in our country is kept safe."
Imagine if the NRA felt the same way.
16
People who actually hate will always be able to access these videos. Its impossible to stop. The only thing that keeping these videos a secret accomplishes is to prevent society from coming to terms with itself. It PREVENTS real action like banning assault weapons or limiting the number of guns that a person can own.
How do I know this? Because I watched the entire uncut video. I found it using a simple Google search. I wanted to see it though because I am fed up with the media trying to keep our heads in the sand. I'm fed up with how our society wants to be safe all the time and never triggered ever.
So I watched the video. I watched the whole thing from start to finish. I had to turn off the sound, it was too intense. I watched that terrorist slaughter people. Instead of reading some sentence that said he shot into motionless bodies, I watched him shoot into motionless bodies. I saw dozens of people die in a few moments.
After I watched it I threw up. After that I decided that we need to ban assault weapons. I own an AR-15. In fact I own 10 guns of various types. I never thought I'd say this, but I dont believe I should be allowed to own a gun that can shoot 30 rounds in 15 seconds, or own 10 guns at once.
I've posted three comments now. That video triggered me and it changed how I view gun ownership. 17 minutes, that's all it took. That 17 minutes was more powerful that 1000 NYT articles. Those articles never changed my mind. This video did.
54
@Jacqueline
Good for you that you were moved enough to see reason and ration. But how many more will watch this video and not see HUMAN BEINGS being slaughtered but something less; the enemy, the vermin, the invasion? trump and others like him categorize these people as "others, as lesser beings, as something to fear and hate, denigrate and despise. This is essential to an authoritarian government. The words are intentional. The dehumanization is intentional. And for the true believers watching this video it will have no impact at all. And this, also, is intentional.
5
There have been so many mass killings- before and after Facebook... and the internet in general. After watching the 17ish minute long video and reading the manifesto... well, clearly education is needed. Exposure to diversity from a young age is needed.
Pulling videos and putting reality in a closet so that people don't experience feelings of unease and disgust and horror doesn't help. People must be made uncomfortable and horrified so they understand reality- and so conspiracy theorists can't deny the crimes or put the blame on some boogeyman.
7
We need reasonable, common sense controls on the media.
7
@cannoneer2
Who really needs five social-media accounts and high-speed internet?
In the end nothing is going to change the behavior of platforms like Facebook until its executives are held personally responsible and legally liable for the criminality they profit from. As citizens we can dump platforms like Facebook by quitting accounts and disinvesting in stocks and other financial instruments. Also do not visit web pages that carry their links and sign ins. There is no moral or ethical salvaging for these enterprises. Is sharing s photo of your dog and Sunday’s chicken dinner worth the moral and privacy compromise necessary to support these creepy internet moguls?
14
I actually saw the video. I was watching television when the news broke and it was available--the whole fourteen minutes. I am sure he would have done it even if their was no way to stream it. He seems like a true fanatic like Brevik of Norway who did not stream it. Perhaps law enforcement can use it in some way to prevent future such incidents. I did not realize that there is no place to hide in a mosque prayer room because there is no furniture. The victims actually stood clustered in the corners of the room, where the killer mowed them down. I believe there are many deeply anti-muslim people who on viewing the video were appalled at the killer finishing off a wounded woman who was crying out for help. There is racist behavior and then there is demonic behavior.
6
The underbelly of technology has always been mass murder.
4
Democracy has got to learn to protect itself, and not just from foreign influence during election times. Nothing new here. There is a reason why Socrates was so pessimistic about the advent of democracy.
The fear of stupidity (people who vote against their interests for example) can easily be replaced with that of extremism. The absolute and blind belief in freedom of speech is meaningless without any sense of responsibility.
People who call for hatred and mass murder must be stopped and held accountable. And as mentioned in Kevin Roose's piece, social media companies have been playing a very equivocal, sinister role vis-a-vis the extremist web sites and platforms.
11
@Dauphin An open society cannot tolerate intolerance. tRUmp has evoked the shadow of the American psyche to conscious awareness. It is our opportunity to finish what the Union was to merciful to complete during Reconstruction. Consider how many lives may have been spared, how many tears we may have conserved had the Union the courage to eradicate what is incompatible with a healthy civilization.
4
@Red Line
"Trump has evoked"? Maybe you give this individual too much credit... As far as Reconstruction goes, whether it is the historical one (1865-77), or what our country actually needs right now, Trump is clueless and has failed. Worse still, his ongoing, coded silence every time the white supremacist paradigm is on the news reveals that he will never be our national moral compass and true leader.
I see a direct parallel between the New Zealand genocidal acts and the election of Trump. Both are propelled by targeted cyberspace weapons.
11
Quaint as it might seem, our nation was better off with the media gatekeepers that once led modern America (ABC, NBC, CBS). Imperfect and profit driven, those news outlets worked well. The Cronkites, Rathers, Jennings', and other anchors, working with professional teams of editors and reporters managed to keep us abreast of national and international happenings and helped lessen the impact of radical extremists of all stripes and led us to a consensus as a nation. Today, that somewhat simplistic media world is no longer in charge. The new media of cable (CNN, MSNBC, and FOX) have taken the anachronistic thirty minute newscast and turned it into 24 hour machines piling up profits and keeping viewers hooked on a few simple stories. And as weak as these cable companies are in their mission to keep us in truth, facts, and civility, we are now in the throes of faceless civilians, profiteers, and thrill seekers who inundate at the high speeds of broadband bringing us false stories, lies, and hatred consumed by millions every second around the world. How horrible that Facebook and others would allow the premeditated murders of these innocent people in New Zealand to be broadcast live. Unless the Congress immediately works to shut down the live streaming of such evil content, we have crossed a Rubicon filled with more of the same - hatred spewed, hatred acted upon!
3
@KenRC
I could not agree with you more KenRC and am proud to have my name published with this response--Bless you!!
For a topic like this, 1500 characters is not enough. Institutions like the NYT should do a better job of collecting ideas openly from the public. They should be a platform for substance. I visit some gnarly places online, where a lot of violence from the cartels is featured. But US newspapers will not run a story with death and blood in full display. Well, that's where the world is right now, and we need to know, all of us, what the price is of a cartel war–to feed America's habit. Or what the words of a president can incite.
About five years ago, I was steps away from Donald Trump. I was working for a livestreaming company and testing wireless reception for one of his events. He stood there with two tourist posing for a picture, glowing with fame from "The Apprentice". He's a product of vanity, and self aggrandizement. A man who said just hours before the Christchurch attacks that he has the "police, military, and bikers" backing him. Trump is the worst leader for this time of chaos. He has no idea how to execute, and he has no idea of what to say unless it's the wrong thing. That man has to be voted out and the United States needs better leadership.
The technological cat is out of the bag. Even if social media sites clamp down on content, technology exists to duplicate any function of Twitter or Facebook. Linux, nginx, software defined networking, streaming servers, Hadoop, MariaDB, etc. Do not underestimate the creativity and reach of driven, intelligent individuals.
9
Terrorist, terrorism, white supremacist radicalization?
Not a mention of it. Not a word? Why not?
If this person had looked like a Muslim (whatever that means) had a Muslim sounding name (again, whatever that means) had ME heritage (again, whatever that means, there are numerous religions, ethnicities and skin colors throughout the ME), the headline would have had terrorist in it and radicalization would have been mentioned time and time again throughout the column. And most of all there would have been no attempt to discuss this, no words of wisdom such as "Motives are complex, lives are complicated, and we don’t yet know all the details about the shooting" (known as "act of terror if a non-christian, non-white is the perpetrator).
How does this help, it just doubles down on what hs been
6
We need to stop thinking of these things as isolated incidents. We are at a confluence of structural unemployment with all non service jobs shifting offshore (not stoppable), a self-feeding and re-enforcing stream of content, driven by affinities of ad-serving, and significant influxes of foreign peoples and cultures in many countries (not just US) that erode a sense of shared culture and beliefs and exacerbate the economic loss of native born citizens.
I find this article examines an important understanding, which hasn't been brought forth before, yet does does not draw out (no fault of author) one of the salient points in this tragedy, that has often been MISSED.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/adam-serwer-madison-grant-white-nationalism/583258/
For those who haven't been to Christchurch I regard it as the most benign of cities. It was the first place I visited outside Australia and it is a place I will always go back to. And that is why it was chosen.
We live in a world without borders and regrettably one of the greatest exports is hate.Soon after the Presidential election in 2016 I was in a supermarket in Melbourne. I noticed a guy with a shirt that read Hillary. I turned to him to remark I wish she had won. I then noticed the rest...Lock her Up and he proceeded to harangue me with a tirade. We were 10000 miles from Washington but the poison had no boundaries.
In 1907 Gandhi established a movement of non-violence. I suggest throughout the world we organize a day of non-violence where we march to renounce violence, to disarm weapons of hate and to disarm hate. It is long overdue.
14
The ultimate cutting edge performance piece live streaming at the Zuckerberg Gallery. Authentic Edgy Post Modern Masculist Action Piece celebrating the beauty of total Freedom and the absolute right to individual Self Expression. Mass Murder is now our Art
12
"The politically conservative Daily Caller News Foundation using data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), found 92% of all "ideologically motivated homicide incidents" committed in the United States from 2007 to 2016 were motivated by right-wing extremism or white supremacism. "
7
It's too bad that we the people can't VETO! President Trump. I'm 76 years old and knowledgeable re American history and consider Trump the most dangerous leader our country and the free world has ever had. Over the past few weeks I've begun to wonder if Trumpsters would turn to violence on the president's behalf when investigations by Special Counsel Mueller, the House of Representatives, and New York are concluded or ongoing. Fake news? Hoaxes? NO!
8
In 1985 my wife and I took a bicycle trip in New Zealand. We spent 7 weeks there. One thing that helped us pick NZ as a destination was reading the book "Miles From Nowhere" - a book about a couple who cycled around the world. The chapter on NZ was titled "Friendliest people on Earth!"
Now it's 2019 and I can say I've never met a better bunch of humans than the Kiwis I met on that trip. I've been moved to tears twice today. I cry for the victims families and just the people of NZ.
No matter how much hatred is spewed out over the internet, by politicians, clerics, white haters, black haters, whomever. - it is not the new normal. It IS not normal and never will be normal.
I want to say again that I am so sorry for the good people of Christchurch and all of New Zealand - especially the Muslims right now.
As a society we need to get rid of the notion that it's okay to spread hate and lies about people. Social media companies need to be indicted for making money off the dissemination of hate speech. They are not without guilt in this, they are co-conspirators just like the getaway driver in a bank robbery.
As a lifelong citizen of the U.S. I think we could learn a lot from New Zealand about civility, inclusiveness and kindness.
God bless the Muslims.
9
The perpetrator wrote among other things...“Fortnite trained me to be a killer and to floss on the corpses of my enemies.”...Our children are constantly exposed to a culture of death disguised as innocent video games. Who will address this great experiment performed daily on millions of video game players across the globe? Tobacco product have labels on the inherent risks of smoking...Shouldn’t video games carry similar warnings? “Risk of addiction, time wasting to the extreme, alienation from real life, suppression of any noble cause or sapping motivation for anything /something constructive”...
10
I watched the whole thing. It definitely was pure evil. The guy was 100% calm the entire time. He ensured that anyone he shot died. It was horrible. Those poor defenseless people.
I own an assault rifle. I actually own the same rifle that the shooter used, except he covers his with racist graffiti. I had never watched a video like that but was angry at the media for "protecting" us from the real world. I had to visit Best Gore to see it. After seeing it... I'm willing to give up my AR-15.
I wasnt convinced about gun control until I saw the gun I own slaughter people. It was so methodical. I had to turn off the sound. People who believe in unlimited weapon ownership need to watch this video. I've watched videos of war and disasters, but this was something else. The media NEVER shows that, but it convinced me 100% that owning assault weapons is wrong and evil.
It triggered me and it made me sick. I saw the world the media hides from us today. I needed to see that video. It changed me.
I dont believe that I should have to visit a site called Best Gore to see something that literally changed my views of gun rights in 17 minutes. In the real world 49 people were brutally murdered by an evil racist, and if all of America saw that video they would ban assault weapons tomorrow. I cant believe I'm saying this, I've posted dozens of comments in support of gun ownership to this newspaper. This video showed me how ignorant I was. I cant even look at my AR. I want it gone.
14
I had a middle schooler try to put up a piece of paper with “subscribe to pewdiepie” over what I had on the document camera before class. I had no idea what it was, had never heard of it, and said no.
After school I read this article. The child is a minority and probably no idea of the connections. These students are on YouTube whenever they can, and they think they can get rich like this guy. Another reason to monitor your child’s screen time. Needless to say I’m having a talk with this student Monday.
2
Large online platforms such as Facebook and Google/YouTube should be required to conduct real-time human monitoring of all large accounts—say, with more than a million followers. Please spare me any tears about the cost.
3
I'm unable to identify one good thing social media has given the world that isn't far outweighed by the self-indulgent narcissism, circular impulses, and sociopathic malignancy it spreads, namely via Facebook, Twitter, and the many wing-nut and Dark Web sites that I've never seen (and hope never to).
5
Funny, I don’t remember any mass shooters being inspired by Obama, Clinton, or either Bush when they were President. I think it seems words and hateful comments have consequences.
8
The lack of enforcement on social media of any kind of norms to prevent hate speech should be of major importance in the upcoming presidential election. The right to free speech does not include making terroristic threats and spewing forth hatred against people who have a different religious faith, different skin color, who speak a different language, and who are immigrants.
While their concern has been solely about profit and not people, social media has allowed the explosion of hate and hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, and Blacks are reported to be at an all time high.
The Fox network earns their billions of dollars by allowing their hosts to openly promote conspiracy theories and racist dogma about Blacks, Muslims, and Hispanics on a nightly basis.
People have a right to vote for whatever political party they want to and they are entitled to their opinion but we must realize that lines are being crossed, innocent people are being murdered, and those who have not been the victim of a fatal attack often have been accosted in public places because of the color of their skin or their religious faith.
We have the leader of the free world spewing forth
his vile hate every day. He has made those who have hatred in their hearts for other people feel emboldened and empowered to express it whether on social media, on the Internet and in public places throughout our country.
If we truly want to make America great again we must put an end to this madness in November of 2020.
6
I agree but I don't think we should wait until 2020 to make changes. All the illegal activities of this administration need to be investigated and (if/when found guilty) they all need to be put in jail post haste. Don't waste time impeaching. If Trump is guilty just put him in jail. then impeach him.
1
Internet is not the problem, nor is Facebook. Freedom of speech is like freedom of movement , people must have it to live freely. But freedom to say anything that encourages violence , TO ANYONE , should be taken as a threat to all in society. We don’t allow people to waive weapons in your face , so why words of violence. There is no slippery slope here ,just like keeping ANY weapon out of peoples hands who do not show responsibility. But Facebook is a problem when they scheme to take any money for anything to make a buck & injure their clientele. That is the problem with Facebook.
1
I understand why internet sites are removing links to the shooter's video, but I think his manifesto should be available online for people to see. It wasn't until I read through it that I understood the kind of filth going around extremist corners. Let those that want to see it see! Show this crazy ideology for what it is: crazy!
1
Blaming Trump for this is a cop-out and weak, the them and us rhetoric is a couple of thousand years old, I'd say that 9/11 fuelled things from a "western" perspective and I don't recall much calming during Obama's administration either.
This makes the headlines every time it happens in any "developed" country, similar incidents happen almost daily in back of beyond countries and manage to squeeze into the news before finding out what the Kardashians did next.
2
Can we understand this madness? In the chaos can we discern structure? I think yes. We are living through the most profound changes ever seen on this planet. Technically, culturally, structurally, the old ways are being discarded so rapidly a great backlash is bound to occur. Those who fear change, fear losing their places in the cultural hierarchy, can be expected to lash out. But change can’t be stopped. It is not going to be easy, but the new world we liberals hanker for will happen.
The leader of New Zealand said that gun control laws would be made stronger immediately. Whether that's true or not, look at us. Our gun deaths are VASTLY more than theirs--and we do NOTHING.
The National Rifle Association is a terrible, negative influence on American life today.
18
@bnyc ... I'd put money on it happening.
I'm sorry that the US considers such an option an infringement of their human rights.
4
@bnyc
New Zealand and Australia have some of the strictest gun laws—fat lot of good that did. So those who plan to commit mass murder just might ignore the law—eh?
if we dont come face to face with evil we will lose sight about what needs to be done to stop it.
Take the Vietnam war. The first televised war. The first war where citizens at home saw the violence of war and stopped glorifying it. Do you think the anti-war movement that eventually succeeded and lead to a phase-shift in the conciousness of society would have happened if citizens at home did not see the true savage and immoral evil that war actually is? No, I dont believe so.
This movement to protect ourselves from being triggered by anything, this movement to remove any mention of the shooter or to face his terroristic violence, is, in effect, an effort by our society to put our heads in the sand and shy away from what is actually happening in the real world.
We need to be triggered to change our perceptions. I watched the entire video... it made me sick. It also convinced me that my ownership of an AR-15 assault weapon in wrong. I would not be posting this comment if I hadn't watched that video. I would be arguing against an assault weapons ban.
No longer. I was triggered and it changed me fundamentally as a person. It made me throw up and I will have nightmares tonight, but it was worth it to come to an actual understanding of the real world and how my actions are perpetuating a culture of violence and death. I want assault weapons banned NOW. I will never fire my AR again.
The video didnt glorify violence to me. It convinced me to start working to end violence.
21
@Jacqueline
With you 100%... I watched the video, and swear on Steve Buscemi, I changed my tune from pure 1st Amendment support to "we've gotta get run of guns... all guns"
As a gun owner, I couldn't help but think that even a semi-auto handgun could have done as much.
That was ENTIRELY too easy. Everyone SHOULD see it...
I'm not even going to sell my guns. They're going to be lawfully and safely destroyed.
8
@J
I got this wrong... obviously I meant second amendment... it's late.
3
@Jacqueline People SHOULD NOT WATCH that video. The whole reason someone does it is because the apparent imprint they would leave on the world. Glorifying these acts (even by watching them out of disgust) will only serve their purpose. While I think you have a valid point, you cannot compare the Vietnam War to this act of terrorism because the reasons behind carrying it out is VERY VERY different. The Vet war was carried out because of American Imperialism and in that case it was beneficial for the world to have seen its horror. But the reasoning behind this shooting was just to leave an imprint on this world.
Yes, I think social media is one of our biggest challenges as a society because it is both a good and a bad influence on all of us. But nobody seems to talk about the violence in our media in general anymore. The increase within a couple decades of cynical and ironic violence in books, television and movies is astounding to me. I picked up The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo when it was wildly popular and was repulsed by it. That we watch, read and listen to this kind of graphic violence constantly in our culture is troubling. Some people are already troubled or sensitive to violence. When our whole culture shrugs at graphic scenes of violence, when we choose it as our entertainment over and over, aren't we all guilty of creating a more violent world?
17
And yet, are all people born of violence, violent? The answer is no. It is a conscious choice.
3
@ColoradoMother
I just read another comment that was very quick to the use "personal responsibility angle" in reply to you. Completely unsurprising of course. But maybe all of us who do NOT choose to be violent are nevertheless impacted by the way it has been so normalized in entertainment, and in particular how stories create the impression that sociopaths and psychopaths are seemingly everywhere terrorizing people, but paradoxically are not that different from the rest of this.
And I suppose we're not supposed to really worry about these things that much, since no one we know, and maybe no one we've ever known, actually IS a "Dexter". What he does (and gets away with) isn't supposed to provoke any sort of moral consideration for us, in the way that the violence in, say, Schindler's List did. We're just supposed to look at Dexter and say "very clever, yeah. Great story. But of course, NOT REAL. So what do we watch next?"
But is that the full extent of the impact?
2
"It would be unfair to blame the internet for this."
I blame Facebook live for allowing live videos to be posted to the world without any review whatsoever. Facebook claims to be monitoring activity and taking content down when they violate their policies, however, there is no way to do this with live videos.
A responsible company who actually cares about how their platform is being used would at the very least force a delay on the live videos to allow for content to be reviewed. Posting text that's hateful or otherwise terrible is bad, but having the ability to post live video of a horrible crime scene to the world without anyone even glancing at it puts way too much power into the hands of anyone who wants to use it, for good or for bad...or for horrendous.
When will Zuckerberg and his crew finally wake up?
42
@WeVo agree with your post. Others, including myself have posted about introducing delays on the live videos on Facebook and the like for content filtering and monitoring. This will require regulation. I strongly doubt the companies will self regulate. Rather Zuckerberg is likely to think such intervention would harm his business model by making live posts perhaps less attractive to his consumers ( but this means less attractive to terrorists too).
7
@WeVo
I wonder how much it would cost Zuckerberg to self-monitor live videos?
Or am I being cynical in assuming that cost is the only (or main) consideration?
4
The town-crier, the printing press, the radio, the TV. The internet has just made it easier to perpetuate the underlying problem that mankind rarely to never addresses—itself.
13
@angel98 What's the difference? A newspaper or TV station publishing false and defamatory material, or inciting a crime, would be subject to civil and/or criminal penalties.
Somewhere along the way, the powers that be agreed that internet sites were mere "pass through" or "delivery" sites with no responsibility for "republication," that traditional media face. That needs to change.
1
This is just a more deleterious effect created by the way of the ugly web of identity politics now stomping through our polis and, worse, with a means to metastasize at the speed of light.
It is Newton's third law at work in the world of identity politics and the domination by the left of the public square of open political debate, especially seen in our Sovietized mass-media that pretends fairness and openness but protects the "accepted" group-think dogma at all costs.
In many ways, this is the dark-side of what began with Marcuse and fellows back in 1960s--"the action of masses or classes capable of subverting the established system in order to build a socialist society." Now the right has seized the same metaphor but with other means.
Sad to say, it seems this will only get worse; the momentum is on the side of an overdetermined collapse of the cultural ethos. Where to go from there?
6
@Alice's Restaurant
Oh please.
You cannot seriously be trying to blame a racist, bigoted mass murder, a slaughter of Muslims peacefully at prayer by a white nationalist afraid of "the other," on the Left.
This is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order. It also has absolutely nothing to do with identity politics as understood by the Left - which is trying to help oppressed groups who suffer from entrenched de facto and sometimes de jure discrimination.
Nor does your claim that the Left "owns the public square" make a bit of sense considering the history of fascism which is ongoing, which has always used media brilliantly; and which we see exemplified by the sad fact that Donald Trump has his own 24/7 propaganda network on TV supported by hate radio and social media, and which we cannot escape.
No. If you want to discuss "identity politics" in conjunction with this horrible attack please be honest. This is the identity politics of right wing white "christians," especially men. who are seeking to continue their dominance of everybody else and who apparently as just terrified that women and Muslims and Jews and other people, people of color especially, might actually acquire something akin to acceptance and equality.
8
@Alice's Restaurant
Flagged. "Alice's Restaurant" is blaming the Left for a terrorist attack committed by the extreme right. In other words, this person is defending the extreme right and therefore supporting and promoting international terrorism. Why isn't the FBI investigating this terrorist's threats?
5
If he indeed was influenced to do that by Social Media, there are significant geopolitical implications
As we know that Russians stoke right-wing anger on 4Chan, Facebook, FoxNews, and Breitbart.
The question thus becomes this. Does Vladimir Putin and government of the Russian Federation bear partial responsibility for this massacre?
7
@Tembrach..:I was looking for comments that blame this on President Trump but blaming now Russia for this even tops that. Why don't you blame all the 10 global wars we are conducting from Syria to Afghanistan for sending swarms of refugees to Europe and Australia. These countries can't handle millions of immigrant refugees soaking up huge sums against their budgets. That fact of unwanted millions of immigrants is a major factor in anti-immigrant furor happening across the globe.
1
When you boil this thing down to its basic constituent parts - this guy had two main goals he was trying to achieve here -
1 - Manipulate the Internet and Social Media via a carefully-planned and meticulously-thought-out strategy to maximize global effect and horror - while adding fuel to the fire which is the 24/7 media stream of everyone's lives being broadcast live, in real time - thereby causing the world to talk about this non-stop for days and weeks on end --
2 - Ignite an explosion which would widen the already-immense chasm between the politically-extreme right and left - resulting a heightened level of salvos and bombardments of accusations, blame, hatred, vitriol and the insistence that "something must be done" about "those people" living on the other side of the chasm -
As far as I can tell - so far - he's been completely successful at achieving both of those goals...
13
In this deeply saddening tragedy our thoughts go out to all of those in New Zealand who have had to endure the unthinkable attack in their peaceful, compassionate country. There is an entire world who cares and wishes you comfort and we reach out to our Muslim friends.
What are we going to do about this? White nationalism and supremacy are a threat and a growing problem that our leaders need to confront and not pretend that it is only a few people. As the Prime Minister of New Zealand Ardern said today about the attackers "You may have chosen us but we utterly reject and condemn you."
21
At what point are we going to discuss the gateway drug to extreme right wing content: Fox News.
Long before people clamor for edgy memes, and far-right forums they must begin somewhere. The opinion shows in the morning and during prime time are instructional pieces on racist dog-whistles and right-wing resentment. And in the recent case of Judge Jeanine claiming a Congresswoman who wears a hijab is "antithetical to the United States Constitution," overt racism.
It's time we look at how the media we watch helps shape these dangerous views. And in the case of Fox News, the views of our President.
37
@MK
totally agree.
But don't forget Facebook, while it may not be a Faux news, it carried the live-stream?
WHY????
time to seriously look at the damage a seemingly inoffensive site has been a big player in more than one detrimental outcome of "news".
17
@MK It's easy to blame Fox News but they didn't create their viewership, they merely make a huge profit from it. Some are no doubt stirred up because of watching but most watch it because they want to be stirred up. Hate will find it's swamp.
Yes, Donald Trump shares those views and he was elected. Fox News was not always his champion, only when their viewership demanded did they go totally off the deep end.
@Kathy, no it's a two-way street: Fox shapes its viewers while its viewers shape it.
5
Condemnations of 'hate' are important. But the media is condemning all these acts as "hate" so as not to leave any group out. This is understandable. Hate encompasses a whole range of acts and beliefs that are contrary to our collective values.
But that's the problem. By lumping all these acts together as 'hate' we miss that fact most are driven by the very specific ideology of white supremacy.
What supremacy is more than hate. It is a series of ideas, drawing from history, culture, economics and even science arguing that there is a hierarchy in the world and white men are and must remain at its top.
The violence that erupts in the name of white supremacy is like the tip of an iceberg. When navigating its waters much of its real danger lies beneath the surface.
Like any ideology it can only be addresses by a a more powerful counter narrative that also includes history, culture, law, politics and the political economy.
We mistakenly believe that we can pass laws and warn law enforcement and somehow the base of the iceberg will melt away on its own.
Defeating white supremacy and its fascist handmaiden requires a constant, relentless effort and even then it will take generations.
Opposing hate, for all its good intentions is like waving a magic wand but neglecting to do the hard work.
That work must be done in every American institution, no exceptions. It must draw on our expertise and knowledge and it must be constant. We owe nothing less to its many victims.
23
On the same day it became public that the self declared proud Nazi said in his manifesto that New Zealand has an invasion of supposedly evil foreigners, Herr Trump used the very same words for the US of A when when vetoing Congress' bill against his shameless national security edict.
The man who doesn't read and is briefed on "security" by his ever smiling son-in-law, the de facto Chief of Staff of the White House, then said: "I think it's a small group of people".
What's next? When a crazed copy-cat does the same here?
Oh, it happened already when a white supremacist yelled death to all Jews and murdered them in the Tree of Life Synagogue because these 'evil' Jews helped "them brownies" from our southern boarder immigrate to the US.
30
Has Steve Bannon condemned the attack yet?
9
Dear NYT, where is the *face* of this terrorist? I have clicked into three articles and have not seen a single photo of him. If he were a brown person, his picture would be front-and-center in every article about this despicable act.
7
My understanding is that they want to downplay his profile in the media, with the idea that could deter copycat wannabes.
7
@What
In Australia, New Zealand and UK, a person is considered innocent until proven guilty.
Therefore their photo cannot be broadcast or printed.
Even if caught red-handed, this law applies.
I was totally shocked when visiting the USA in 1974, to see 'perp walks' in which the person was clearly identified.
Instead of ending the evening news with a light, happy story, it always featured a perp walk, and the person being walked was always black.
There's a bloody good reason I've never been back.
4
@What
Not showing the shooter’s face is intentional, and rightly so. These terrorists want glory, and this person in particular is an internet adherent hoping to get people to rise up for his despicable cause. Depriving him of the platform is the right thing to do. (And I say this while still being sympathetic to your point that brown skin unjustly gets vilified more than white skin.)
Not the first time that criminally warped minds wanted fame
Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian extremist killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in 2011. A craving for attention was a major factor
The press, the media, contribute to it, by splurging their names on the front page
"Brenton Harrison Tarrant," why is the NY Times , a global paper, putting his name on its front page ?
You are giving him what he craves.
8
As fair an article as one can expect from NYT.
1
The terrorists who planned and did this massacre wanted to get it splashed across the news media, the internet, and the world. It -is- news, but the press worldwide, and the internet content platforms do NOT have to play into the cruel and evil intentions of the weak pathetic losers who did this attack.
No names, please. I don't care to know who the criminal b**rds are, nor what they look like. Please show restraint and self-control and deny these... the platform, the exposure, the notoriety they pathetically seek for their worthless 'cause'. We throw away trash with barely a glance or thought of it; we should do the same for these worthless scum. Report the news, please, but please NYT, do not give these b**rds what they want by over-exposing them.
7
It just makes me think that people should be reminded that these massacres have precedent in the machine gunning of so many Africans and Arabs by the British and the French and let’s not even think about the cold blooded murder enacted by Belgium in the Congo and Germany in Tanganyika
This sanctioned killing by Cecil Rhodes and other Racists had been sanctioned by the Nation states and never in modern times sufficiently denounced and admitted as a “terrorism” against a people. We don’t learn enough in school of the brutality of our Western Culture Just mostly Hitler. Our own people , the offspring of these savage agressors have never been put in a healing process which begins with true accountability, nor have anywhere near sufficient reparations been granted to the victims of the savage terrorism of Western civilization. Is it any wonder that these killings are springing up when our societies ha ve advanced on the results of this bloodletting of Black and brown peoples and are practically mum on this history every time sick individuals take so many lives. The connection is there. Beyond getting rid of a trump or Orban, we need to recognize these crimes against humanity, own up to them , work to repair the damage and educate the future generations.
11
Hey, quick question not about this particular story. I noticed on the BBC story that’s up right now about this the suspect’s face is blurred in a photo of him entering a courtroom. Does anyone know if that’s a law in Britain or New Zealand or why they might have done that? I would have asked on the BBC site but there’s no comments section. I know this is far from the main point but it’s going to drive me crazy until I know why.
@Linda
I just noted this with someone else. Psychologists have been begging the media to stop naming and showing images of mass shooters in the name of depriving them of the very attention they crave. Quite a few journals are now taking this step.
Anderson Cooper announced during the Parkland shooting that he would no longer use the name of the killer or show images.
It's definitely a step in the right direction.
14
@Linda
Because the New Zealand judge in the trial ordered it. There is no explanation for the judge's reasoning bur the Commonwealth tends to respect rulings from within its larger judiciary - i.e., New Zealand law does not apply in the UK but rulings are respected as such by the media. So far.
As to why the judge ordered it? A myriad of reasons spring to mind but, I suspect, the main one being that this trial will not be compromised in any way.
3
Maybe to deprive him of the publicity he is seeking.
Mr. Roose ended his column one phrase too early:
"We will feel it for years to come....and we don't yet know how to fix it."
1
People with an open mind don't radicalise to violence. It's a psychological condition.. the right wing authoritarian mindset - shared with jihadis. The key to understanding it is to understand unresolved inner conflict and how the projection of their inner conflict (often around sexuality, identity, authority) onto the world means they think they can resolve their problem by picking a side.. the more extreme the attachment, the better - and acting on it. The unspoken axiom underlying all this is that they think it's easier to change the world than change themselves... and for some of them, it's right.
Tarrant's "manifesto" - and I've read it all - is a mish-mash of contradictions reflecting his inner conflict. All the accusations he levels against Muslims - everything from colonialism, "invasion", slavery and cultural domination can be levelled against the white Europeans and their domination of the aborigines and Maoris. He shows no sense of irony. Tarrant is stupid. Thick. Emotionally retarded.
The real futility of his attack is in his statement that even if all immigrants were sent home, the White man - and his culture - is dying ("suicidal, nihilistic..") caused by the white man's weakness,, and doomed to decay. So why kill for it?
Tarrant is an abomination. He shares his mindset with the jihadis.. confused, vaguely anti-authoritarian but mostly a loser and irrationally angry and the wrong target. It's not an ideology. Let's not give him that. It's a psychopathology.
27
@Jacques
This should be an NYT opinion piece and is one of the most insightful things I've read about this attack. I cannot disagree with a single thing you've written.
If only there was a simple follow-on paragraph with a solution but, of course, there is no simple follow-on text that could be written.
1
time to regulate the internet methinks - break up the 'too big to fail' multinational corporations controlling the internet who profit from this nasty extremism
when extremism is encouraged by the very algorithms that track and help us, then we are going down to a nasty place
time to clean up the internet - starting with regulating the companies that profit from it.
10
@Frank
And while we're at it, let's clean up the federal parliament - get rid off the right-wing (including members of the dog-whistling Coalition)
"...the irony-soaked discourse of modern extremism"
Irony. What irony? Either I'm missing some new twist in communication or this is yet another self-defeating attempt to not take online bigotry at face value.
The misogynist sites, the racist blogs, the religious bigotry, the homophobic ranting ... none of these people should be treated as "just trolling" online or anywhere else. They either write or say vileness that they already think or they're in the process of talking themselves into becoming more vile while supporting and encouraging others who've already gone there.
I see no irony in any of this. These people are as serious as a heart attack (or a murderous rampage).
12
There is no offline equivalent of the experience of being algorithmically nudged...from gaming videos to neo-Nazism.” - this is, for me, the central key that unlocks this phenomenon. We know the benefits that technology and connectivity have brought - I could list a dozen ways in which accessibility and medical progress have been brought on because of the internet - but we should not overlook the fact that the internet at its heart is a platform of advertising revenue generators, and that revenue is driven by algorithms that feed on our desires, and the easiest desires are the base desires of ‘fear and destroy thy neighbour so I can protect what is mine’. We know too that our algorithm targeted desires are those which are mostly short term and fuelled by bursts of short and intense attention, which has given rise to dialogues composed of short tweets, of rapid cut YouTube videos that leave no pause between words but rather pile image upon image and sound upon sound like a multi-sensory overload of inputs that we can’t look away from. I mention this too in relation to the Anime references the Christchurch shooter made and the popularity of Anime within 4chan and similar communities - hyper-colourful, hyper-violent, hyper-sexualised, like the video games the shooter ironically mentions and yet so unironically lived out. We need to take back our better humanity from the algorithms that are teaching our young what they think they desire and which can lead to violent fantasies IRL
6
@Craig Smith
Well said.
If I go on google or a social media site and look at a "car", or not even actually click on the search just have it in the search box and within minutes my email is bombarded with car ads. I can even click on the good old NYT online newspaper within minutes and it will have automobile banner ads for days. So someone please tell me why these same social media sites have such problems tracking video posts and live streaming of a mass murder and the mass murderer. Commerce is one thing but crime?
24
Where’s the intelligence community on this?
7
@itsmildeyes
Actually, the FBI has been warning for years that the single greatest threat we face is white extremism, by a very wide margin. How wide? 71% of terrorist acts over the past few years have been executed by WEs. The FBI has been banging the drum for quite some time. It's time we paid attention.
There was also a superb and utterly chilling documentary in the wake of the Pittsburgh slaying made by a man who has been studying neo-Nazis for decades. It was terrifying. We cannot begin to grasp how organized this terrorist group is.
The ever superlative Frontline and Propublica also have chilling documentaries:
https://www.propublica.org/article/propublica-frontline-documentary-chronicles-white-supremacists-neo-nazis
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/inside-a-neo-nazi-group-with-members-tied-to-the-u-s-military/
2
@itsmildeyes, they are stumped. Look at the old Guys running our intelligence departments, they are pre internet dinosaurs!
@itsmildeyes
Try "shambles".
To appease the ambitions of Peter Dutton (see wikipedia), he was given the opportunity to combine all intelligence departments in Australia into a 'super ministry'.
This has been a disaster, as apart from anything else, they all have different computer systems & databases.
Just this weekend, the union for the Australian Federal Police asked they be removed from Dutton's control because it has destroyed their integrity.
Also some lives, as a number of AFP officers have committed suicide, most at work.
It's not so much as Tarrant 'slipping under the radar', as the radar being aimed at such dangerous miscreants as conservationists & anyone who will stand up to corporate greed.
Of all the videos that ISIS, al-Shabab, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and like-minded terrorist groups posted, the 17-minute self-recording of the Christchurch terrorist is the most shocking and inhumane.
It is telling that the video and the primitive tract remained available on White Supremacy sites long after Facebook and Twitter closed the accounts of the mass-shooter.
For more on this horror, see
https://www.reflectivepundit.com/reflectivepundit/2019/03/the-christchurch-terrorist-the-personified-evil.html
3
The media needs to continue not naming the perpetrators so as to not give them the attention they desire. They are less likely to inspire copycats when they remain anonymous. The NYT named two murderers in this article when they could easily have written around that.
3
This guy is the white Bin Laden. Bin Laden achieved his goals and let's see if this guy manages to as well.
Trump said he doesn’t know enough yet to make a determination about the perpetrators of the massacre in NZ.
Can someone get him an intelligence briefing? Or log him onto nzherald.co.nz?
Can you hurry, please?
And can you ask him not to dog whistle instructions to his homies encouraging violence in the event he’s indicted or doesn’t get re-elected? Thanks.
15
Like a disease, these right wing nationalists and the politicians that either endorse them, Donald trump and Steven King or condone them by their silence as does the entire Republican Party need to be excised by any means necessary. These people shouldn’t be breathing air.
6
When the Internet first came out, I always knew that it was the information age. Another concern of mines was, this was also a cesspool.
There is only one word I can call the gunman, a coward. Beware, there are still many of these cowards out there.
9
@RC
You are right and they are all in Trumps GOP Republican Party . Shame full.
2
This was a tragic inevitability. When you have one of the most powerful leaders of the free world saying things like "There are good people on both sides.." taking much longer than is appropriate to condemn hateful actions & verbiage and then doing so half halfheartedly. Add to this toxic mix not condemning thinly veiled hate rhetoric spoken by others in his party along with frequent encouraging side glance nods to extremest groups, it is easy to see cause and effect. One need not be American, ignorant & hateful to now feel emboldened.
Over the past two years, Republicans remaining silent, offering up the faintest admonishments or allowing themselves to be swayed by semantics over common sense right & wrong. This is how we as a society have gotten here.
9
@Wayne
It's not just Trump.
This horror began with the vote buying of the Tampa affair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampa_affair
It's been a 20 year spree by Australia's (misnamed) Liberal Party, using race hatred at every turn to gain & hold power.
Tarrant has spent almost his entire life mired in a country consumed by the hatred orchestrated by John Winston Howard, his henchmen, & the media controlled by Rupert Murdoch.
If you don't believe this, do a search of Fraser Anning.
Just ban all the guns.
3
Some one needs to say it; Trump has blood on his hands. When you play to fearful people's fears you will inevitable incite violence. It is the only conclusion that can come from that rhetoric and mindset. He is the worst kind of human being; one who has the platform to inspire and bring out the best in all of us, but chooses to bring out the worst. Shame on DJT.
9
Something like this happens and all everyone wants to do is affix BLAME! Like that will do any good..?
Go back to the Roman times ... they were doing the same thing in 155 BC .. Still nothing has changed!
"It would be unfair to blame the internet for this."
Nonsense. One aspect of the internet is directly to blame. The "free" marketing model used by Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al. is directly behind this. In order to get us to do what they want (control our behavior), they play to the emotions that are easiest to manipulate (anger, rage, resentment). We are not customers. We are the product. They sell us for a song to bad actors of all kinds, who coopt their algorithms and market power. Their market power, in the absence of proper regulation, is uncompetitive and extreme--they are monopolies, oligopolies, and natural monopolies.
2
Two points I would like to bring out. One New Zealand has lax gun laws compared to Australia in relation to automatic weapons. It would have been far more difficult for this Australian citizen to obtain the weapons in Australia with its restrictive gun laws. I see New Zealand is about to rectify that. America take note.
Point two, the internet and online social media should be treated the same as person to person interaction. You are responsible for your own actions. Therefore if you wish to join online social media etc, you should be required to be vetted as you would getting a bank account or a passport. Secondly when communicating online your full name and photograph must appear. This will reduce the anonymous sites which can incite others indirectly without any blame falling upon them as Mafia bosses and some current very high profile persons are doing at present.
The failure to abide by these laws would result in similar penalties available in the real world.
Countries that fail to enact such legislation would be excluded from from these forums until they abide by the system. This is not an invasion of privacy as these are the same laws we use to protect our ourselves now.
5
Freedom of speech--yes. Incitement to violence--NO. Social media has to stop supporting and encouraging incitement to violence.
4
Notwithstanding the senseless murder of unarmed civilians in an act of prayer, the fact that that the alleged perpetrator(s) used technology to espouse their cause and agenda has taken it to the next level. The instant dispersion of data be it video, images or memes will make the whole world a more dangerous place now. For that matter even 9/11, Bali, London, Birmingham, "green on blue" attacks, et al will now become the justification for such tit-for-tat actions.
The media says Face Book and Instagram has immediately used artificial intelligence to remove these offensive images and for this they must be appreciated. What really should have happened in this case (alleged live video) is they need to use this so called Artificial Intelligence to immediately send out a warning to Police and the Army with GPS coordinates that there is a madman with a gun and a camera on his head looking to murder innocents. Now that would be something that could make the world a bit safer hopefully.
A very sad day for humanity and whether one loves or hates each other's religious beliefs, killing another takes us back 500 years ... before Facebook and Instagram.
Everyone is blaming social media for not policing/stopping posts and videos of society at work. What oxymorons! That made Facebook, Twitter and the rest so popular in the first place. Now all these fans, advocates friends, whatever their named want lines drawn that simply can’t and won’t be done.
Put another way, news is news and you can’t censor live news. Period. The billions of Smartphone users out there thrive on live news. News of cooking, eating, playing, overdosing, being shot and killed by cops and hoods, break-ins, births, murders, calamities, and every so often, good news as if it really balances the scales. As the adage goes: as you sow do shall you reap. The cow is out of the barn and it ain't coming back in.
We've seen quantum changes in most every aspect of our lives and the environment around us. The thrills and glamour, the raging appetite for more, the unabated rush to liberal denouncement of culture and reason all now enmeshed in fueling the hopes, despairs and devious psyches that now have a stage, a theater to showcase, share and express that which empowered and enabled their very essence and being.
The sick, the smart, the poor, the lonely, the lost, the powerful, the wanting, the odd, the leaders, the users, the losers, the good, the bad and the ugly, the grabbers, the thugs, the saints, the perverts, the idealists, the fatalists, the pure and the ignorant Innocents can no longer be expected to lay silent. This is the future, our North Star.
1
The answer here is quite simple:
We have the technology to monitor and identify hate groups and their members. The groups should be outlawed and banned, and their members arrested.
These people are marginalizing sovereign power to protect citizens by thumbing their noses in broad daylight. They are bullies. The only way to deal with a bully is to hit them harder than they hit you. It’s the only way they will stop.
2
My son was exposed to this video by classmates during class. The footage was disturbing but he said he was more disturbed by his classmates' reactions. No one seemed as horrified by it as he was. He shielded his eyes after one glimpse. One kid's reaction to seeing a child shot multiple times was, "oh, gross." They watched the whole thing and forwarded it to others.
These kids are so desensitized to violence.
25
@djm That is absolutely terrifying. Thank you for sharing, but I wish I could unlearn what you said.
12
@djm - 'These kids are so desensitized to violence.'
watched any US blockbuster action movies lately ?
what was that thing - something like by the age of 10, a child in the US will have seen onscreen something like 10,000 acts of violence and murder, but almost zero acts of loving sex.
there's your training.
@djm
Like Tarrant, these kids saw it as a video game.
1
Of all the places in the world, New Zealand. Of all the people in the world, its citizens. As the level of hatred falls to its lowest level, the spirit of this nation will rise to its highest.
We are all Kiwis.
1
he tweeted his condolences ..
touching
2
Shame on people to blame trump for this horrible act, he also stated he was an eco-anarchist, does this mean that AOC also had a role to play in this?
The person who is to blame for is the shooter, please don’t politicize this
3
Another great reason to stay away from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Who needs these unsocial media outlets? Donald Trump, perhaps?
5
Please don't overlook the probable involvement of Putin's troll farm in instigating this massacre. The Russian cyber warriors play both sides of issues against each other on social media.
Case in point: Russian Facebook propagandists succeeded in getting Texans to turn out for competing demonstrations, one pro-Islam and the other anti-Islam, in Houston in 2016 during the presidential campaigns.
Bill Browder, who promotes adoption of the Magnitsky Act to democracies around the globe, testified to the US Senate that Putin's goal is to foment conflict and chaos in liberal democracies.
Many are commenting on Trump's role in fostering the anti-Muslim bigotry expressed by these murderers. But what shouldn't be overlooked is the impact of his assistance to Putin in publicly denying the reality of the Russian cyber war.
4
Yet another "oops" from Zuckerberg and crew.
I'll bet he's working hard to make improvements. Uh-huh.
5
All of those blaming Facebook have no clue how vast the Internet is, and how many platforms there are for streaming content and posting. Yes, Facebook should do a better job of vetting posts, but even if they did, who's going to monitor 4chan and 8chan and all of the other dreadful sites that exist to sow discord and encourage trolling and violence? If people don't want to be censored by FB, they'll simply migrate to another site. The problem is bigger than Facebook!
11
I blame video games and the desensitization of violence in them. Our culture has become numb to violence in general. It's not enough that the act itself is horrendous. Now it has to be streamed to add shock value. Guns are not the issue. It's the rampant violence fused with mental health issues. Is it life imitating art.Or art imitating life?
11
@Charles: Blaming "video games" does not explain the millions of people who play them, yet do not commit acts of violence. The problem is the proliferation of real, live guns with real, live ammunition in the hands of real, live men who are irresponsible, under-educated, essentially idle, and who consider themselves victims of unknown forces.
57
@Charles Oh come on, this tired argument again? Studies done on this issue have borne out time and time again that violent video games do not increase an individuals likelihood of doing violence.
@Allison
Under-educated? The level of education is irrelevant. College diplomas don't make individuals less prone to violence.
1
Instead of devoting 8 billion dollars to a wall, what if we took the money and hired Edward Snowden-types to identify and monitor these people? I know, privacy and rights, but they are advertising on Facebook; how private is that?
We have a national emergency of poor migrants trying to take our fruit picking jobs. But what about domestic terrorists who are heavily armed (legally) with military grade assault gear? A character like Roger Stone could easily pull the tripwire on some of these folks. After Pizzagate, it should be obvious they will do whatever talk radio tells them.
45
Because Snowden is a traitor.
1
@JR
How about spending the money to create jobs for these lost souls/domestic terrorists/mass murderers? All these guys were underemployed (the synagogue gunman, the van guy, the church killer, the Pulse shooter, Boston Marathon brothers, etc.) Having a job can keep them from plotting murder and mayhem.
A easy fix Facebook ignores is a 30 second delay on any live streaming. That would give the computers time to vet a video before allowing it to stream. 30 seconds, that is all that it would take but zuckerberg refuses to do so. He is complicit.
110
@Paulie Yes. And the delay and removal before screening (rather than a takedown after effect ) disrupts the whole real-time viral performance these terrorists are seeking. Facebook and other internet media will only do it if regulated to do so. It’s time to regulate.
7
@Paulie
Why 30 seconds? Why not 30 minutes?
I have no faith in an algorithm stopping this.
2
Folks it's time to quit Facebook, Twitter, etc... until they start responsibly policing their sites.
81
"It would be unfair to blame the internet for this."
Why not? I have known a few of the early promoters of the internet and this kind of unfettered free communication has been an article of faith in setting out the basic structure of the institution. It has been largely infused with libertarian ideas. That the internet has turned into an instrument of something more like "Lord of the Flies" was probably predictable, but would have been shouted down by the early advocates. Read the judgment of history and weep.
Obviously, something needs to be done, and quickly before this totally destructive cultural virus does even greater damage than the proliferation of hate, lies and the election of Donald Trump to the most powerful office on earth.
26
@Pete The Internet simply reflects the culture of the society or society it is based off of. All you do without the Internet is make the cockroaches do their work in dark places. Besides, the genie is out of the bottle and there's no way out - we're heading towards a more open, more interconnected world, for all the good and bad it brings. The idea that we can build permanent walls around nations or the Internet is a fantasy. Better to figure out how to use the Internet properly rather than blame the Internet.
And I say all this without having any problems with the Internet going back to the way it was before the masses got online, limited largely to .edu domains, before AOL got on there. I just don't see it happening unfortunately.
The Internet is just a tool. For every bad thing about the Internet, there are ten great things about it.
5
But it doesn't just reflect. It amplifies.
3
@RamSj
Thanks for the thoughtful response, and you are obviously know something about what you’re talking about. But I would argue that if the one bad thing means another world war, or genocides, or even race riots – is that tool worth the benefits? Is the free availability of automatic weapons, arguably a tool, worth it? In the end, and to be practical, what I am saying is that we as a society need to exercise more than laissez-faire control over the Internet.
1
I hope the sites are also taking down the accounts that are reposting the videos, not just the content. Otherwise, what are they going to do, book mark the accounts so they have to remove hate content from them on a daily basis?
17
I use the internet a ton because I love doing research and learning about stuff. I even participate in some comment boards related to hobbies, but very sparingly - I spend the time doing the hobby itself. Our family largely lives in the real world, and spends little time in the make believe internet worlds. I go to places like 4Chan and 8chan after events like this and its always shocking to see other complete imaginary worlds - people need to get off their couches and go out and engage in their communities. Physically. So turn off all that social media, use chat boards for factual stuff, and live for real.
19
So after warning the public about the minefield that is his manifesto, the article goes ahead and quotes it out of context anyway, thus accomplishing exactly what the terrorist intended in writing it.
I have read the manifesto, the vast majority of it is a glorified FAQ with the terrorist supplying often-sarcastic responses to likely questions about himself, his motives, his background, his ideology, etc. Few of his answer sections are longer than a couple sentences. The whole document looks as though it were constructed to be quoted out of context, being comprised of scores of short snippets in answer to specific questions, and he is careful to restate many of his main talking points several times in answer to each question, as though he knew people would skim over it and not read every part, so he wanted to make sure his ideas were thoroughly sewn into it and unavoidable.
There is a very real danger in sloppily reporting the contents of that document, in stirring up outrage, it's exactly what he wanted to happen. The scale of this attack is more than just the carnage he unleashed on innocent people, it's designed to further degrade political discourse and disseminate fear and suspicion.
31
Well said, Joel !
The more publicity given to people who perpetrate these acts, the more it tells others who want their fifteen minutes of fame that this is the way to go about it. Yes, hate is an essential element, but I would guess that in a culture where fame is the ubiquitous goal, the easy ability to have the whole world focus on you through the internet is irresistible to some.
12
@Joel he literally said "he hates Trump as a leader and a politician" yet they only quote the part where he talks about how he shares Trump's "white identity"
1
Much like television was vilified by earlier generations for exposing impressionable youths to unnecessarily graphic imagery, our current generation is now being raised by the internet with even less restraints or censorship.
7
@T. Johnson
The difference is corporate filters and editorial control were in place for tv viewing since the 1940s, as well as government regulation of content but not at all for the web. And that's just over the last decade or 15 years, tops. Television is a mass medium that even in cable format is intended to be a business relationship between viewer and network. The web is not. The web is the perfect medium for crackpot propaganda and predators, violent lunatics, con artists, disgruntled males, porn, sex trafficking of children, dark web selling of private consumer data, and on and on.
1
The more publicity given to people who perpetrate these acts, the more it tells others who want their fifteen minutes of fame that this is the way to go about it. Yes, hate is an essential element, but I would guess that in a culture where fame is the ubiquitous goal, the easy ability to have the whole world focus on you through the internet is irresistible to some.
Those commenting who simply say the world would be a better place without guns are essentially in the same category as those politicians who send prayers after each mass shooting. Neither has anything useful to say about what one can actually do in the real world to minimize the slaughter.
As to those who seem to think this is Trump's doing: the only relevant similarity between Trump and these early reports of the perpetrator(s) is that both want public notoriety. The best thing to do with both is to deny them fulfillment of their narcissistic compulsion. To repeat, the more publicity given to these people, the more it tells others who want their fifteen minutes of fame that this is the way to go about it.
In addition, it plays into Trump's hand to give him "credit" for this. For Trump, it is all about him. The one thing he cannot deal with is being ignored. In any case, it is patronizing to others to act as if America is either the world's savior or the cause of most of the world's misery.
6
@Steve Fankuchen
I have not read the killer's "manifesto", but my tentative understanding from what I have read in the news is that he is a Christian and that he carried out this act not simply as a white guy against non-whites but as a Christian against non-Christians. Nonetheless, every report and comment I have viewed refers to him as a white, not as a Christian or even a white Christian. This just feeds into the stereotype that only others, not Christians, are terrorists.
This is especially pernicious in America given the rhetoric spewing from the White House and its enablers in Congress and the media.
One can't help but note this massacre in the name of white Christianity occurred in the city of Christchurch.
1
With prime ministers and presidents now leading countries and urging citizens to engage with the extreme right wing culture (Victor Orban in Hungary and Donald Trump in America), and even in other countries that lean heavily toward the authoritarian and the violent (Vladimir Putin in Russia), the attack in Christchurch is merely the natural result of a pro-white movement that’s now worldwide.
Orban might be seen as a remote figure in America, but in America, how is it possible to ignore the racist rantings of Trump against Mexicans, blacks, Muslims, Asians and Jews (yes, Jews, in spite of his son-in-law and his friendship with Bibi) without interpreting his worrisome remarks as being anything but vague and oddly off-kilter?
The American president’s template for accommodating and accepting racist views didn’t begin with “very fine people—on both sides” after Charlottesville. These fringe groups, like coyotes scavenging, found red meat in his initial back-and-forth hemming and hawing until he threw off the mask and declared himself. He is an ignorant man in just about every respect but he’s certainly aware of his magnetic appeal to extreme groups whose DNA feeds off hate and will, naturally, search out victims upon which to prey; my reference to “coyotes” above, then, is not out of place and not inspired by mean-spiritedness.
What we witnessed in New Zealand, I fear, was the building avalanche begun by Dylann Roof, a home-grown soldier drunk with the heady wine of hate.
46
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18 Can we please leave the false analogies to wild creatures out of this. Coyotes have no choice about what they are and have no moral or ethical sense to guide them.
Blame the Internet rather than the terrorists who promote and commit the crimes.
Deflect understanding that the acceptance of hateful language by politicians up to and including the president of the US facilitates the cancerous growth of hate by murderous bigots.
There, feel better?
4
No one is blaming the internet. We are just pointing it out it is a facilitator, an accelerant.
15
Spez of Reddit and Jack of Twitter are alt-right celebrities. They shelter and propagate - sometimes personally - every strain of white supremacist discourse. They have been asked over and over to deplatform Nazis and they have declined to do so. Jack and Spez have specifically applauded various online hate movements as interesting additions to the conversation. The evidence that these platforms are run by alt-right leadership is overwhelming in its totality.
16
Upon hearing the news, the first impulse of the US President was to tweet a link to an anti-muslim site. The internet is not the only problem here.
112
The right wing infectiously promotes division by race, religion, economic class, political and social beliefs. These groups cloak themselves in the righteousness of God. Their hinghed self rightgiousness absolves them of feelings of guilt. Accountability is "liberalism." They are clear in their goals - without shame -to stamp out the lives of the "other." Superiority! We saw it this week in the newly released budget.
12
It was bad enough when sick people did these things to get their name in the local paper, but now instant world wide recognition on YouTube? It’s worse than Facebook and getting worser everyday, app by app. But hey, tech billionaires makes life better for all, right?
35
@John Doe cant really blame the internet or companies for monsters, can we?
2
Online extremism is the stretch of mainstream extremism. They usually are inspire from mainstream persona who passive-aggressively expresses them and advocates them on a Primetime. Without the help of Primetime TVs, they have little influence.
Extremism exists everywhere, so does racism and hatred/dislikes for "others". But the violence comes from our ignorance. I often see people commenting about "law abiding citizen" having the right to "lawfully" own weapons used in this kind of mass shootings. Yes, we are law biding, until we are not. Yes we are mentally healthy, until we are not. Until everyone in this ignorantly civilized world accept the fact that humans by nature have the tendency to be violent, this is just another day and another tragic news.
58
@Sam But the pertinent question is why Intolerance and extremism is mushrooming by the day. It’s ill 🤒 Educated people and misinterpreted Religious scriptures as well as misguidance by the so called Religious preachers. Another issue is Capitalism leading to widening the Gap between the Have’s and Have Not’s. Capitalism has failed miserably!
@Satsangi Are you suggesting that an all-powerful authoritative government is necessary and sufficient to "educate" the masses? Certainly you cannot suggest that socialism and communism have better track records that capitalism, can you? ...because that assessment in itself would be ignorant.
I find it hard to imagine this would have happened without Trump in the White House.
151
@Jens Jensen,
This native-born US citizen (who did not vote for Trump) agrees with you 100%.
32
@Kyle Reese As far as I'm concerned, Trump is responsible for the upsurge in racial, ethnic and religious violence because he's made intolerance respectable. He's given the crazies permission to act on their darkest impulses. He shares those impulses, of course. Wasn't it just a few days ago that he warned that the military, police and 'Bikers for Trump' would be willing to get "tough" on his opponents? Why on earth are we standing for this thuggery?
119
@M Wilson I'm no fan of Trump, but really? The even greater massacre committed in Norway at a social democratic summer camp occurred in 2011, during Obama's administration--should we blame him for that massacre then?
9
Evidence against white supremacy must someday go viral.
Perhaps the strongest evidence demonstrating the true impetus for the evolution of Western European "Civilization" are easily demonstrated facts which show "White" Aryans had absolutely nothing to do with the heritage of Greece and Rome. They must no longer get away with claiming to be the source of modern civilization and culture. On top of the obvious ancient historical evidence that any student of the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean cultures of the Bronze and Iron Ages should know well, there is the 19th century evidence about the spread of the industrial revolution, for which white white supremacists now claim credit: (1) Japan, which was never colonized by the West, beginning in 1868 with the Meiji Restoration quickly adopted industrial technology and was able to defeat a Western power in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 (not to mention their subsequent commercial success); and (2) the vaunted white racists aristocrats of the American south denounced and denigrated industrialization, claiming that their slave culture (shared by the Ottoman Empire) was superior.
These two incontrovertible facts (along with many others that could be mentioned) make a prima facie case for the propositions that (1) industrial techniques were not difficult to master by a totally non-white "race" (Japan did it it within a single generation), and (2) the leading representatives of white supremacy rejected industrialism as alien.
20
'or writing that the video game Fortnite “trained me to be a killer” '
To be clear, having looked at that document, he was being sarcastic. It was more of the performance and meme-ing throughout the doc.
I only mention this so that people don't, as this op-ed warns, take the sentence too seriously and start calling for action against video games.
The doc was made very well for the intent of dividing, fooling, and igniting passion. I can't re-iterate enough what this op-ed states: "it was a booby trap". Whatever you read about him or the document, please think twice before getting riled up at any one line or taking to FB/Twitter to get angry - that could be exactly the desired reaction. By all means, though, be angry at white supremacy and the murders themselves.
17
Try and not take phrases deliberately out of context Kevin, the shooter is pretty clearly being sarcastic when he says Fortnite "trained me to be a killer" The full quote is:
"Were you taught violence and extremism by video games, music, literature, cinema?
Yes, Spyro the dragon 3 taught me ethno-nationalism. Fortnite trained me to be a killer and to floss on the corpses of my enemies.
No."
5
The lede on the front page spoke of " irony-soaked discourse." I fail to see irony in a crime against humanity.
5
@Leslie, when paradigms shift they shift. The internet has shifted technology and perhaps even the definition of the humanity shaped by it. Many of our senses have regressed thanks to VR, AI and such, the soul is no doubt not far behind.
1
There is something about the disembodied nature of online communication that feels like it is nurturing this kind of insanity. I don't call it that to give a mass murderer a pass, by the way -- he clearly knew what he was doing. But the constant stream of memes and "copypasta" and whatever all else is neither coherent nor understandable by anyone outside his world -- a world that doesn't exist in a physical place, but only on the websites where its content lives and inside each mind of the people who interact in it. I've increasingly thought there is something about that kind of sensory deprivation that has a very, very strange effect on people. And consider, too, that this attack was launched not just on a particular group of people, but also on a particular traditional human activity: the act of gathering in communion and community. The denizens of 8chan, on the other hand, know they are unlikely to ever be victims of this kind of violence -- for a variety of reasons, but one of them is because they rarely, if ever, assemble physically in one place.
22
Who has exacerbated all this hatred and willingness to kill dozens of innocent people? Could it be our current administration?
63
@HP, you realize where New Zealand is, don’t you? Psssst, I also think I saw Trump dressed like a snake lurking under an apple tree.
4
But the shooter’s manifesto did say he supported Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose”.
8
@john doe,
If you claim that you saw "Trump dressed like a snake lurking under an apple tree", then I have no doubt it was him.
3
Mr Roose's analysis is very deep and to the point. The Internet is not anything passive, it is, rather, an active environment that guides haters to higher and higher levels. The notion that free speech includes hate speech has led us to where we are.
19
The problem with radicalization on the internet is not one of algorithms or a lack of censorship. It is the ideological bubbles people reside in. The censorship , muting and blocking of people with opposing views to your own.
If no one challenges your world view or you do not take in other information except ones that reinforce the ones you already have, you end up with a deeply distorted vision of what the world is actually like.
It is why some college kids believe the KKK is about to lynch them when they see a swastika drawn on the wall. Or they think Nazis are everywhere, well this guy believed Muslims were everywhere invading New Zealand. I do not know the solution exactly, but I do know it is not creating more echo chambers. We need people to talk to each other.
6
@Rohland "We need people to talk to each other" No, we need people to listen to each other. And to think critically about what is being said. And to admit when they're wrong. And that just ain't gonna happen.
12
@Rohland
"It is why some college kids believe the KKK is about to lynch them when they see a swastika drawn on the wall."
gee, what should a college kid think when they see that? especially when it is likely to target a minority student.
5
I am infuriated that these killers like the Christchurch gunman and Robert Bowers used the talking points of Trump with impunity for Trump. Trump went to Pittsburgh and stood in front of the Tree of Life Synagogue without recrimination. In Australia, where the reputed gunman comes from, Leaders have used anti-immigrant Rhetoric, with similar self-righteousness. The problem of our time seems to be a resurgent fascism, a zombie fascism, that grows in Islam, within nationalists, on the right, the left, and in the highest levels of government, in the US, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and the far east.
16
@Frank Shifreen
To be fair, I think only one nut job called Fraser Anning has used this tragedy to criticize immigration, not ' leaders'.
The same man who was roundly condemned for using the term ' final solution' when referring to lowering immigration numbers in a speech to parliament.
1
Recruiting for terrorists.
Somewhere somebody who is claiming to be innocent is making a lot of money over all this traffic.
Shameful and shameless. It's time for us all to remember that as humans we have a responsibility to be stewards of our habitable and finite earth. Needless violence and blame games are not OK. They were never OK, and they are especially not OK now.
Enough with the "second amendment solutions". Trump himself promoted one yesterday. See the resemblance?
How can anyone support hatred and lies, hypocrisy and victim blaming?
13
@Susan Anderson
But we do it all the time, just look at what our government keeps doing, blaming Yemenis, Gazans, Palestinians and I can go on for a very long time.
4
@Susan Anderson ....if you recall,trump promoted
“Second amendment” solutions if Hillary won.
2
White supremacy is an ideology that POC have been warning us about for decades, and now we're seeing the result. This won't be the last attack, it will probably be dwarfed by another attack. We need to put the same energy towards White Supremacy that we put towards Islamic terrorism
27
I've tried to find it, but I can find no heart-felt condemnation of this terrorist act by Trump, followed by genuine sympathy for the victims. He can't because by doing so he'd betray his white nationalist cult.
61
On the social media murder front I think ISIS won that one. They are both basically the same.
3
@Scott D
They are indeed very similar. But in the US and most of the English-speaking world, it is the far right that is way ahead.
Don't forget Trump's incitements and Brexit. Xenophobia, exclusion, hatred, "second amendment solutions", bullying, blaming victims, the whole con job of how to be a little less than human.
Sure, murderers are murderers, and those who do it in a big hurry with fancy paramilitary machines and tactics are in a class by themselves.
But I'd say in my world, the Muslims are in our nursing homes and hospitals being caregivers, while the white nationalists and racists are front and center.
And the NRA is right in there trying to force us to solve violence by selling us machines to make it worse.
No woman is safer with a gun in her home.
Hate doesn't help anyone. Calling it Christian makes it worse (try the Gospels).
Jesus wept.
12
The internet is not a good place. But one thing I've noticed - how come we never seem to see left-wing mass murderers?
26
@Mike M
...because there aren't any.
14
@Kati
Left wing theorists from Robespierre to Lenin invented state terrorism and proudly justified mass murder. And their later descendants -- Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, FARC, Shining Path, etc. -- turned it into a sacred duty and fine art.
10
@Mike M
Or female mass murderers?
6
You don't murder several dozen people to be ironic. I consider it more likely that the terrorist (and we should call him that) is throwing smoke around his true motivation, which will not be fully known for some time. So let's avoid blaming the interwebs or video games or fast food or any other shibboleth yet. Because that is exactly what the terrorist wanted us to do.
53
@Eliza Agreed. As the article said and many people have speculated, the terrorist mentioned these video games and celebrities in order to get more attention and to stir up, as he wrote in his manifesto, a "civil war."
3
@Eliza It is worth reading his manifesto to see just exactly where this extremism is coming from. It is filled with memes and irony, but also makes Roose's point that the algorithms favor extremism.
4
An excellent, terrifying, and spot on article. Should be required reading.
I use the internet everyday to access news from newspapers and magazines around the United States, as well as loads of other information.
But let's face it, this has become the Frankenstein of the 21st century. The evil that can be spread so rapidly and secretly and of course virulently has become an albatross around the online neck.
President Trump did not inspire this horrible massacre. Yet just the other day he talked about--and there are millions who hang on his every word--about how many of his followers might get violent if he is somehow--through the 2020 election or impeachment--removed from office. And America shrugged and shook their heads and said, oh well, that's just Trump.
But what seems now like way back when, his comments about in Charlottesville, there were good people on 'both sides', these white supremacists got the message loud and clear: this President has their back.
17
@TH
Why do you say Trump did not inspire this outrageous and cruel act?
3
@TH
Your response seems more prescient than you may have intended. Frankenstein, of course, was not the monster but the brilliant, urbane (albeit deluded) scientist who created him. So you are right, because the internet is the creator here. Which I guess leaves us people looking more and more like Boris Karloff.
3
Technology is what it is, a tool. How the tool is used determines the results. The widespread use of BASIC on early computers taught many people the fundamentals of programming. Most wrote useful programs, some developed computer viruses and other malware. For proof that people are adept at playing to an audience, look no further than the current occupant of the White House. In a global culture that gives "status" to those in the spotlight, that people with dark intent will, in their own way seek the spotlight for their proverbial "fifteen minutes of fame" via maximizing the potential of the technology is only to be expected. With television (both real and fiction) and movies throwing endless streams of violence at us, is it a wonder we become numbed to it? With each outrage, a gasp of horror, then back to life as normal, for those not directly involved.
It may also be for "bragging rights" in the collective club of hatemongers. Each becoming a dare to do worse. Robert Bowers, allegedly 11 lives in Pittsburgh, this yet unnamed video-killer, 49. The killers in Orlando and Vegas, even more.
Even negative fame, negative attention is better than the void of none at all.
Not really questions, nor answers. Just observations. And a dull repeat of the urgent need to do something. "But what?" is the difficult question to answer, given that any answer must change the balance between freedom and restriction. With as yet unforeseen consequences to that.
3
We all have a responsibility to step away from the Internet and social media much more often, if not entirely.
The world will go on. Important news will still reach you. You'll find substance and truth in the world and the information disseminated via more thoughtfully executed, less impulsively generated media—not to mention your community and fellow citizens, who can broaden your thinking.
No one is helped when citizens of the world disappear for hours and days alone into the furthest reaches of the Internet cesspool.
And the more we turn away from Facebook and their kind—who are complicit in this as long a their business models and profit/power ambitions remain the same—the less they will cloud and obstruct our progress toward a more civilized world.
Break up the tech giants.
And do whatever it takes reclaim your mind and soul.
162
@Shel for god's sake, these kinds of people do not swell on facebook for their extremist content. I turned 20 yesterday, and I can assure you that these kinds of people lurk in 4chan, 8chan and other non-mainstream message boards to discuss what they really think. He just chose Facebook as a medium to stream because of the reach it would generate.
The problem lies in these anonymous chans, but I doubt there'll be any legal basis to hold them accountable in most american courts
12
I agree with your advice about stepping away from social media. There is so much polarizing, hateful, and extreme content on places like Twitter and Reddit. In my life and at work, I mostly deal with genial and courteous people, fortunately. But online, it's like a whole another dimension of humanity, one that we could do without being steeped in. One might say that civility offline is more of a facade, but there's some worth in at least making the effort to be civil. Social media on the other hand seems to encourage people to exhibit their worse impulses.
14
When Trump keeps falsely claiming that Muslims are mixing into the caravans coming northward to the USA border, he simply fuels the vision that Muslims must be stopped, if not eliminated.
The internet spreads his misinformation at real-time.
26
unfair to blame the internet? the internet is fueling the fires of so much these days - specifically all the right-wing nut jobs that seem to take whatever they read as truth even if it is not. of course the evil-doers are to blame solely for their actions, but look further to those that push - or in this case, the network that pushes, and we will see that the internet is very much to blame. there will continue to be internet fueled intolerant people with guns who do bad things; solve that sentence.
9
@The house dog
It's all about the profits. The hands-off self-righteousness stinks to high heaven.
3
@The house dog
Well Facebook, Twitter and Google certainly have a lot to answer for. There ought not be unfettered posting of videos.
1
The more publicity given to people who perpetrate these acts, the more it tells others who want their fifteen minutes of fame that this is the way to go about it. Yes, hate is an essential element, but I would guess that in a culture where fame is the ubiquitous goal, the easy ability to have the whole world focus on you through the internet is irresistible to some.
Those commenting who simply say the world would be a better place without guns are essentially in the same category as those politicians who send prayers after each mass shooting. Neither has anything useful to say about what one can actually do in the real world to minimize the slaughter.
As to those who seem to think this is Trump's doing: the only relevant similarity between Trump and these early reports of the perpetrator(s) is that both want public notoriety. The best thing to do with both is to deny them fulfillment of their narcissistic compulsion. To repeat, the more publicity given to these people, the more it tells others who want their fifteen minutes of fame that this is the way to go about it.
In addition, it plays into Trump's hand to give him "credit" for this. For Trump, it is all about him. The one thing he cannot deal with is being ignored. In any case, it is patronizing to others to act as if America is either the world's savior or the cause of most of the world's misery.
4
Toxic online streaming of heinous, horrific crimes is actually not a crime in itself in the UK and, I doubt, New Zealand. No matter the crimes themselves will surely yield punishment enough, the tech giants are profiting out of death of innocents and evil. Parliament here is looking at sanctions for distributing online harms through these channels, but yet again the technology is outpacing us. Millions of minutes are being uploaded live in real time and this gunman was able to stream anything, live, and not have moderation, or some kind of buffer. What will be next? Child abuse? Incest? It is unacceptable that a feature to provide “entertainment” on Facebook gets contorted into broadcasting mass murder. There are things the human being is capable of that we do not wish to have digitised and shared with others.
The tech companies can and must, do more to stop evil political extremism online especially all this sharing of videos and pictures and posts. I was shocked to see this will go down in history as the world’s first broadcast televised massacre. We have sadly become victims of crass populism and sensationalism as we accept the lowest common denominator in social media, as we sink further into a moral morass of sharing our every emotion online, tangible hate and a lack of robust digital leadership as we deal with a crumbling post-ISIS world.
We can, and must, do better. The world we live in is fast becoming intolerable. Please tell me when, and where, I can get off.
10
I am an old guy, 73, and have never played a video game. I watched the live video shot by the shooter for the Internet. It looks just like video games I have seen on television and computers. For the shooters and millions of young men killing is just a game. They have no sensitivity, empathy, or any notion of difference in reality and digital media. You mix the lack of care and hate for anyone who looks, talks, or prays a different god, make a time bomb ready to off at anytime.
Not all invocations are beneficial to mankind.
9
This attack on the mosques probably was not meant against Muslims. They are just a hot button for grabbing attention such as also attacking Jews or any other group under a microscope.
This killer was a showboat for history.
Those who bring up stuff like the Bowling Green Massacre or 'last night in Sweden' to lend 'substance' to their talking points, will avoid at all costs to take their share of the responsibility for actual tragedies incited by trumplandish white supremacist thought, propaganda, and policies: e.g. Utoya, Charleston, Quebec, Charlottesville, Parkland, Pittsburgh, the death of a 7-year old Guatemalan girl and an 8-year old boy in custody, the pipe-bombs, and now the Christchurch Massacre. Refusal to own up is strong with the Make Atrocity Glee Ascendant crowd.
As with Islamic extremist violence the roots are the residues, in the foundational texts our religions declared sacred, of primitive thought embracing violent vengeance, a poison pipeline that doesn't get reflected, recanted, apologized for, let alone rooted out. Instead it keeps reverberating sanctified throughout the religious echo chambers straight to the far out, dark corners. We see church leadership, GOP leadership, and media rantermuck emblaze and embolden the fires of hatred and sanctimonious, Mike-Pence-level bigotry.
As with Boeing's planes falling out of the sky forced by faux lines in its software programming, we need to remove the wrong, fatal programming.
Alas nobody will ground the biggest, most ruthless hate mosque of all, FoxNews, nor its internet offshoots fostered by Facebook etc., until they got reprogrammed. As a result many more active shooters will fall out of that hate sky.
Very stupid. Very sad.
6
Today is another day the media fails to call out white male terrorism, facilitated and encouraged even by lax gun laws.
31
@Eric
Depending on where one lives on the planet, the one feature not a bug for wanton violence is: male. Matters not the race. Half the population on Earth, certainly in the U.S., lives in constant fear to varying degrees of males. Ditto, most other countries. That is terrorism. It can broaden to be religious and/or ethnic.
However, it's been proved in nearly all mass murderers and serial killers of every race that the one core hate is for females; those men then branch out from there to target additional hated groups.
4
@Maggie Shhhh, we're not supposed to name the problem - the problem that shadows the lives of all women on earth to a greater or lesser degree.
Talking about male violence, the monstrous elephant in the room... well we can't have that. Because it upsets men, you know.
2
Instead of removing the footage, everyone should be made to watch it. It should be shown on broadcast TV. Instead of words about another mass shooting, which will be forgotten in three days, force people—especially those on the right—to SEE the result of their “guns for everyone” and “hate the immigrants” rhetoric. Maybe enough people will finally be sickened by what they see to DEMAND concrete action to change.
90
@Scott D That wont work, in fact it is proven to have the opposite effect. When the media explicitly shows details of horrific events, it leads to people imitating it. It's most commonly seen in notable names committing suicide, in fact laws actually exist to stop news sites giving too many details as it results in increased suicide.
Unfortunately, when such events are shown so publicly, it leads to copy cats and people that can see the "legacy" they will leave behind. If this guys image and name were never shown, he would fade away as the years go on, but when he becomes a household name people ill idolize him and attempt to either do the same, or one up his efforts.
59
@Scott D
I think hiding from it only helps those who perpetuate the extremism behind it.
2
@Scott D I'm afraid that would be exactly what the killer would want. In the end, those who are horrified by the events will be even more horrified and those who are thrilled will be even more thrilled. To me, I don't need to be more horrified, and I'm terrified of those who are more thrilled.
17
Human beings seem hardwired to becoming fixated on car crashes. In a media saturated environment, the way to "win" in the battle for eyeballs (the currency of this environment) inevitably, is to create the largest and loudest car crash. Normal crashes are too pedestrian.
How many have the mental discipline not to slow down and gape at the spectacle at the side of the road? How many readers have already sought the footage of this massacre?
This is the world the Internet created and to which too many weak-minded find themselves drawn. It will only get worse as the worst today become trite tomorrow.
13
"I think Islam hates us." - Donald J. Trump Sept. 2017.
In word and deed, the leader of the free world has denigrated, and condemned Muslim peoples for the benefit of "us". His words and actions implicitly justify today's and other "acts of war" against those people who "hate us". Since 11/2016 the incident of hate crimes in America has skyrocketed.
America, Muslim America, Jewish America, Black America you have as your leader an unhinged megalomaniac who will to appeal to the worst of human fears for personal gain. You need to act now and remove him from power, or there will be more and more Charlottesville, more Pittsburghs, more??
We can no longer afford to look away. An enemy of freedom occupies the White House.
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@Osborn
so tragic and so true....
Thanks Osborn for expressing it so clearly...
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@Osborn
"Since 11/2016 the incident of hate crimes in America has skyrocketed."
The reporting parameters have expanded on the reporting of these crimes along with an additional 1000 agencies reporting now. What are the conviction rates? How many jail/prison sentences have been meted out? What is the breakdown in ethnicities by percentage of perpetrator/victim? This issue requires a multi-variable approach instead of a knee jerk reaction.
To simply make the statement that hate crimes have increased does nothing to forward the conversation or give our society a clear picture that we have a problem or even if the problem exists. Shallow piecemeal logic and coming to conclusions with incomplete data will not serve us in the long run.
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@ArthurinCali
The ADL and several other groups, including law enforcement agencies have been tracking hate crimes for years. Just google hate crimes in US. You'll find the data you seek.
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We can fix this.
Every time a terrorist uses social media to amplify the impact of their actions, people point the finger at Facebook, Instagram, 4chan, and shout, "You made it worse!"
That triggers a round of pontificating by 'media' types who point out that billions of messages are posted an hour; it's too many for human editors to monitor; what algorithm would you trust to censor free speech?.. etc.
But we can fix this, without censorship or even increased monitoring. All we need to do is build a 5- or 10-minute lag into social media platforms. Doing so would not meaningfully decrease human communication. Imagine you're proud of the cake you just baked and you post a photo online. Would anyone be hurt if the photo didn't get seen for five minutes? Would you be hurt if when someone commented, "Looks delish!" that you didn't see it for another five minutes?
Even a one-minute lag in reposts would have dramatically lessened the viral propagation of this crime, and greatly improved the companies involved's ability to prevent the perpetrator from achieving the fame that may well have been his primary goal.
As for the rest of us, who aren't crazy? The quality of our communication (and in some small way, our lives) would actually be enhanced if original posters could go back and edit their posts during a short lag.
It's entirely possible that the Christchurch psychopath wouldn't have done it at all if he had known it would not be live-streamed.
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You can't censor your way out of this problem. That will only aggravate it. Asking Facebook to be the cultural gatekeeper on what is "okay" to talk about online is not the solution.
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@Dan
Private companies are not subject to the first amendment: They are free to censor anything they want.
That said, I don't see how a delay changes anything. There is still too much content for humans to scan, adding a time delay just means a lag between when posted and when everyone can view it.
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@Mark Gardiner
Thank you for suggesting a sensible solution instead of the usual complaints or hopeless suggestions (“Ban Facebook!”) that typically accompany these discussions.
We should pressure Facebook, Twitter, etc to implement this. If they don’t, get the government to pass legislation to mandate it. If Congress won’t do it, there’s a good chance the California legislature (where almost all these companies are headquartered) will.
I can see no downside to this, with one exception: During local emergencies (like the California wildfires), the delay should be lifted in that local area as that’s the one time where instantaneous posting can be of benefit.
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I've seen the video, and I have a deeper understanding of the 8chan /pol/ internet subculture than most.
People seem to think that this is just a problem with any kind of radical political belief, and one the right wing seems to suffer from a lot of. This is sheer denial. Violence isn't a problem right wing nationalists are dealing with. Violence is literally a feature of their ideology. Flaunting violent rhetoric in the same manner as a WWF ringmaster in a pro wrestling match is what helped slide Trump to victory in 2016. It's this same power the GOP constantly attempts to tap into for election victories while being as slippery, flaky and as distant from it's consequences as possible (a winning strategy they've taken to more and more since Trump's victory).
In the video you see a little girl shot twice, and as she lays on the ground crying "Help me! Help me!" He shoots her two more times in the head. You can't wash that image from your head, but I refuse to conveniently hide from it. The dead boys in the mosque, the murdered girl, the slaughtered elderly. This type of political violence is unique to right wing fanatics and Jihadist terrorists (whom Jihadists are just religious right wing fanatics). I can't imagine a liberal slaughtering unarmed civilians, children and elderly in the name of medicare for all or higher wages. Even the most extreme socialist is likely to target a politician. This kind of violence is uniquely right wing.
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@Matthew
You're so right...
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@Matthew Socialism taken to the extreme becomes communism. Look no further than the Mao’s great leap forward, Tiananmen Square, or the gulags of Joseph Stalin to see the violence that ideology can inspire.
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@Matthew Absolutely. What mass slaughter has been perpetrated in the past generation that *wasn't* by a right-wingnut, a religious fanatic, or some hysterical white nationalist?
It's not socialists and minorities and LGBT you need to fear when you go to church or get on an airplane.
I haven't seen the video of the little girl; your description is horrible enough. But I agree with another commenter that we should all be required to witness this ugliness harboring among us.
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(Anti)social media platforms aren't responsible for terrorist acts. The killers themselves are. But they are accelerants. They're the gasoline that turns the phenomenon of mass murder from a social fire into an out of control conflagration.
I think it's well past time for Facebook et al. to get back, or be put back, in the gas can where they belong.
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Thanks for this useful, thoughtful piece.
5
I read an archive of the 8chan thread where he announced, and the following replies were some of the most sickening text I've ever beheld in my life.
These are the same people who will tell you that the most extreme, disturbing things they say are for the "lulz," and that the people taking them seriously just don't get it, which is part of the joke. All I saw in there was celebration though, and respect for the action. Well, with the exception of people who were upset about it because it a) threatened the planning of a more collaborative effort to the same end, b) it threatened the 8chan message board, and c) he posted the link on "kikebook," where they did not want to visit. I believe there was literally one post out of at least 100 that appeared to earnestly condemn the violence.
Look, some people will be mad at me for saying this, and obviously this killing is not related to the direct influence of PewDiePie (though I'm sure it doesn't help that he keeps on making stepping in piles that look and smell an awful lot like bigotry or at very least insensitivity to it), but he needs to stop living in denial, recognize/admit to himself who much of his audience is, and to concrete, active steps to distancing himself from the things they do and encouraging rational fans of his to do the same. He's happy sending them to attack the internet on his own behalf when an article appears that he doesn't like. Maybe now he can grow up and try to do something positive with that sway.
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@DataCrusader
Who has raised those sons to be so degenerate, particularly when they form dog packs online?
3
Interesting read - strongly disagree with the sentiment of the final paragraphs. Especially the notion that „an invisible hand [would] steer you from gaming videos to neo-Nazism.“
This just sounds like a modern-day version of 90s gaming hysteria.
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This is not an example of right-wing extremism as it’s an extremist reaction to radical Islam. He says himself that he’s not a conservative or religious. Think up a new label for this and don’t fall into the trap of laziness (like the blue checks on Twitter) and tie this back to Trump. Maybe use the title: Radical Nationalist
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I lay all of this at the feet of our budding authoritarian, Mr. Trump. What was the first thing he did after this massacre? He tweets out Breitbart! Is that not a signal to all the White Nationalist haters all around the world? Autocrats rising everywhere....because of Trump. Calling the press, 'the enemy of the people'. Talking about, as Mr. Maduro has done, his 'biker gangs'.
I have just about reached a breaking point. I've never despised anyone the way I despise 'our' very own Dear Leader.
These Republicans who enable Trump are the true 'enemies of the people'. They need to be ousted. All of them. Every. Single. One.
I want my country back!
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@sophia Replace "Republicans" with "Muslims," and "Trump" with "Sharia Law", and the last lines you write follow exactly the passions and emotions of the murderer of the mosques. What does one do with "enemies" after all--and does "ousting" them only done through non-violence? And what of the Republicans in our communities, in our families--do you plan on "ousting" them too, "Every. Single. One."?
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@Tom Williford
I'm pretty sure Sophia meant the ones now holding political office.
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Sorry all is lost. Emigration is the only answer for those few wise and brave enough to leave the most violent evil country on earth.
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The suspect called President Trump “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose....”
Imagine (though you needn't because it's true), our president is an inspiration for a bloodbath.
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@Elliot Silberberg I quote from his manifesto:
Q: "Were/are you a supporter of Donald Trump?"
A: "As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. "
"As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no."
He is not your average internet white nationalist. He knows how society in this networked age works, and how pervasive the divide created by his would his click-worthy statements would be.
He specifically states that he used guns instead of bombs because it would inflame tensions in the US over 2A. And he hoped to see the Balkanisation of the US. This man is an evil "genius". I saw the shooting clip. His hands were rock-steady. He has no emotion, he is a monster of the networked society.
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Maybe THQ Nordic will make a game based on the shooting?
They are all over 8chan after all.
1
Re the "irony-soaked discourse of modern extremism": Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre wrote decades ago about the license Nazis gave themselves (and themselves alone) to play and joke and hate in socially unacceptable ways. Our president likewise gives himself--but not others--the freedom to promote violence and hatred in a "joking" way. How many times have his mouthpieces told us, "why can't you take a joke?" He fooled us once, or we rolled the dice once--if we elect him again the joke will be on us. (Hat tips to @ heerjeet, sulliview, jamellebouie, ebruenig, drew harwell for commentaries on the NZ horror and the role of FB, youtube et al)
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Used to be that a so-called "cultural elite" controlled the media in this country: generally well-educated, somewhat left of center, white, with a decidedly Judeo-Christian world-view... now the means of media production is in the hands of the masses. Content can be controlled by virtually anyone. It's anarchic, terrifying and, in this instance, so disgusting and soul killing as to make one yearn for some cultural elite again to police content. But what would that elite look like now? What would be their politics, race, religion and social agenda? Who would oversee their potential abuses?
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First, to the families of the victims in New Zealand, I pray for you. Second to New Zealand, how did the gun and its bullets that killed the Christchurch victims get into the country?
To the Times and this article's author, please answer if you might what specifically internet specialists know about this article's statement
"Their recommendation algorithms often steer users toward edgier content, a loop that results in more time spent on the app, and more advertising revenue for the company. "
Algorithms signify that there is an actual software program which digests the content on such sites as mentioned in the article, and comes up with a result.
If these hate-speech sites are seeking actual hate words, hate phrases, hate "internet memes/sites/personalities" in their software programming, specifically, then I think and continue to push for an INTERNET COURT.
I don't know why we don't have own yet. The world needs to come to an agreement on this matter. It is long overdue. People are defrauded via the internet from out of country persons, and there is no legal recourse other than to sue in the country of origin (really, if it is a small amount of money).
A World Wide Internet Court could be composed of individuals, prosecutors and civil law attorneys who could complain against internet users/internet companies/ prosecute, and or litigate internet offenses.
That's the only way. Moderators kick people off sites. The people kicked off find another site.
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@RR
Ad Re guns in NZ. Their rules regarding longguns and semi automatics have been virtually non existent thanks to the NZ gun lobby’s successful efforts to quash changes to the Law in 2005. All one needs is a gun licence to purchase such items legally. The shooter had obtained his guns legally.
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@RR. Your idea of a World Wide Internet Court needs to get wider attention. We certainly can’t trust Facebook teal to “regulate” themselves.
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Mr. Roose's fluency with these issues is appreciated and he is correct that the confluence of these phenomena will only continue to fester with effects that are difficult to appreciate right now.
9
Calling this extremism is very misleading. There is no large left-wing counterpart extremism to this extremism of the right; the actions of most left-wing extremists look benign by comparison, and there are much fewer of the really radical ones such as the Unibomber.
Calling it something like the uberright would be much more honest but would violate the popular idea that extremism is balanced between right and left and the opposite is the moderation of the center. This idea is popular because it allows the mainstream media to put Bernie and AOC on the extremist side along with David Duke and whoever did this foul deed, thereby protecting the powers that be, both their dominance and their spats, from intrusion by outside forces.
The NYT is one of the powers that be, so it pushes the extremist meme by applying the same word to this massacre and some of Bernie's ideas that upset its advertisers.
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I do agree with you that it is a false comparison. I would offer that a consequence of the extreme right is violence on a mass scale. The extreme left is censorship on a mass scale.
One is much more immediately devastating, and rightfully so.
However, history shows a much dangerous trend to the other opposite as well.
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@sdavidc9
Do Americans have to make everything about themselves and their experiences? I would like to remind you of left-wing extremists / terrorists such as the RAF in Germany, FARC in Colombia or the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) that are / have been responsible for thousands of lives lost through attacks on civilian targets. Just because something does not exist – at least not as violent extremism (the US left has other wise of terrorising people like MediaMatters) – this does not mean it is not a phenomenon on a global scale. Leftwing extremism is as real as the right-wing extremism and it's all garbage.
Kind regards.
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@Sean You are absolutely right in your characterization of Leftist violence but let us note that you had to go back decades to find these examples. If we were living in the 1970's and if Jimmy Carter had motivated the Red Army Faction then you would have an analogy. But were not and he didn't. Maybe if Eldridge Cleaver had been elected president we could draw this comparison but instead he was imprisoned and, after release went on to run for office as a ....Republican.
10
Brilliant article one a desperately dark topic. The internet has become the sports equivalent of visualization. Practice it in a virtual world of hate & violence with the air of fun until virtuality edges toward reality as it becomes all-encompassing. Maybe now we will begin to realize that therw is a price to pay for having fun with virtual hate & violence.
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For years I presented with a colleague on cyberbullying: how to recognize it and prevent it. We always said it was bullying on steroids, or with a much longer reach. This idea of everything online, including extremism, being magnified by...being online is a scary place in which we now find ourselves. How to proceed? I’m so frightened for this world.
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@LARS, we don’t have to become slaves of our devices. Just like people take sabbath they can do device fasting, start weekly once a day to twice a week to everyday for few hours. Kids can go back to reading real books instead of playing video games or texting their friends Snapchat Instagram and what not...
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