Kia ora whānau,
I am angry. I have moved out of grief into this new place, though I certainly still feel sorrow. My spirits were lifted when I attended the Wellington vigil for Christchurch and our Muslim community, held at the Basin Reserve on Monday night. I wasn’t alone in my grief. 11,000 of us were there, ready to make change in our country, so something like this can never, ever happen again. I want action. That being said I am proud of how our leaders, and how we as a country, have dealt with the aftermath of this terrorist attack in the last week. Respecting our Muslim community. Banning semi-automatics. Individuals reporting hate speech. Let’s keep it up.
I deactivated my Facebook account due to the 17 minutes of footage live-streamed by the terrorist as they committed the mosque shootings in Christchurch. That, and the vitriol that still exists in the form of anti-Muslim Facebook posts, pages, and groups. Note, I have deactivated not deleted. This is hopefully a temporary measure until Facebook sorts their shit out. Yes, I still use Messenger and Facebook-owned properties WhatsApp and Instagram and I still post frequently on Twitter which is full of neo-Nazis.
I’m not saying everyone should do it, but for my situation, I realised this was something I could do to hold Facebook to account and to no longer give them my information, deliver them revenue through being advertised to or inadvertently boosting hate speech through its algorithms. Now New Zealand businesses are pulling their advertising from Facebook, who admittedly have more sway than me, though somehow I did get retweeted by the privacy commissioner of New Zealand.
There have been many incredible articles this week, which I am choosing to highlight over some of the poorer decisions media organisations have made, like sharing footage from the live video for starters. There are a fair few articles because I feel this attack highlights many issues which all deserve our attention. You can find these below. I decided not to run a creative piece or review this week.
- The New York Times has argued that this was a terrorist attack made by and for the Internet. It was made to go viral and the live video was a large part of that.
- Yes, the shooter was born in Australia. That doesn’t get us off the hook. We don’t have the best reputation to begin with when it comes to racism. One just needs to look at how this country was colonised and continues to actively hurt Māori. Racism is alive and well in New Zealand. Our politicians, newspaper columnists and talkback hosts spread fear of immigrants. We created a space for this to happen, for people to feel emboldened, that they should be entitled to their “free speech” AKA hate speech. And with the rise of white nationalists across New Zealand, Australia, the US, the UK, and the world, white supremacy now has a platform on our biggest information and communication tool, The Internet.
- Lamia Imam writes about the hateful rhetoric against Muslims and other migrants in New Zealand. Our MPs have said atrocious things in the name of security and migration. Yes, any attack on one of us is an attack on all of us but let’s not forget who was targeted in this attack. Some of the reactions in the early days of the attack were shocked and angry but that doesn’t make them any less valid. If you can’t be angry after 50 innocent people are gunned down in cold blood then when can you be angry?
- New Zealand cartoonists have penned some moving images this week, and Toby Morris who I have long followed since The Pencilsword has done it again with, This is Us.
- I don’t know how we let this slide for so long but I’m glad we finally came to our senses and banned semi-automatics. This is how our gun laws made this massacre possible.
- Anjum Rahman from the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand writes how nothing was done with her repeated attempts at getting government action on discrimination against the Muslim community. Muslims were under surveillance while the alt-right were free to thrive unmonitored. Susan Devoy writes how Muslims have had to deal with abuse living here because hate crimes are not recorded by the police.
- Remember to put your focus on the victims and not the terrorist. Let’s not spread their message of hate. I encourage you to sign this petition to make sure the terrorist’s trial is minimally covered by the media.
*hand in hand*
Michael
