New Zealand: the barbarism of identity politics

Mar 16, 2019 by

by Brendan O’Neill, spiked:

The obscene act of racist mass murder in New Zealand has shocked the world. The massacre of 49 human beings will always be a deeply disturbing act. But the fact that these human beings were shot to death in their place of worship feels especially horrific. Mown down in their religious sanctuary, as they cowered in corners, desperately trying to avoid being murdered, according to press descriptions of the shooter’s livestream of his heinous deed. This is an attack on Muslims, on religious freedom, and on humanity, and every decent person will want to offer their condolences and solidarity to the people of New Zealand.

As we offer our solidarity, we also want to try to understand why things like this happen. Understandably, there has been a rush to locate this barbaric act within a broader political framework. Sadly, this has given rise to a speedy and ghoulish exploitation of the atrocity to make political mileage. Already observers are pinning the blame on certain right-wing commentators, or on the Western media more broadly, claiming that criticism of Muslim immigration or of Islam generates this kind of violent hatred. Already some are calling for clampdowns on Islamophobia and for the expunging from the internet of certain hard-right voices. It will strike many of us, especially those of us who are humanists, as perverse and disturbing that people would so swiftly use a bloody act to further their own narrow agendas of social control and censorship; that they would use a massacre almost as an exclamation point to their already existing demands for the demonisation and punishment of particular opinions. It is cynical and inhuman.

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