On Friday the 15th of March NZ had
it's own mass-shooting(s). I was at an event nearby which was ended early (although we didn't known why at the time) and then returned to my workplace also only a couple of blocks from the worst event.
To start with there was only shock and sadness. Not shocked or surprised that something like this happened, like many others I considered a mass shooting in NZ only a matter of time, or at the direction in the violence was aimed. Just what you would expect from the immediacy of the event.
Once I had time to process things I also began to feel how lucky I am - not to have not been involved but almost the opposite
- the shooter was a blond, white male. I am also a blond white male, but I am at no risk of suffering any sort of "reprisal" because I happen to share one of these physical characteristics with him
- I did not need to spend the next days and nights worrying that there might have been another gunman still loose out there for whom I was a target. I do not need to worry that another radicalised individual might be out there planning a repeat or variation in which I will be a target, or even that just by walking down the street I might become a target of opportunity for someone equally full of hate and just a little less stable.
- my personal risk of being a victim of gun violence or indeed any sort of violence feels no more immediate than it did last week.
There was no anger at that time. There is still no anger towards the event. I believe that exhaustion from other areas of my life simply left me no energy to be angry. But then articles like
this one:
At least five years of solid government engagement across a National-led and then a Labour-led government. We begged and pleaded, we demanded. We knocked on every door we could, we spoke at every forum we were invited to.
At a major security conference in February 2018, Aliya challenged the sector: if you can spend so much on surveilling our community, why can you not spend on preventative programmes?
and
this one:
Planned and executed with complete impunity and without any hesitation, the massacre took place because the perpetrator, like so many others before him, felt a confidence that in our societies is afforded only to white men.
He felt this confidence, and was vindicated for it. As media, politicians, and everyday discourse focused on the threat of radicalisation supposedly harbored by Muslim communities – a suggestion that would now surely be farcical if its consequences weren’t so tragic – as the SIS and the GCSB were busy scouring the facebook accounts of Māori activists and Muslim youth, this man blithely and unashamedly made his violent intentions plain and clear, and visible for all to see.
I’ll never forget the many meetings and roundtables I attended, alongside other Muslim advocates and leaders, where we argued and pleaded, pointlessly it seems, with different government agencies to turn their attention from our communities and mosques to the real threats in this country. I’ll never forget the empty reassurances, let alone the smirking faces as someone dismissively joked, in reference to the far right and white supremacists in New Zealand: ‘it’s hard to take these guys seriously.’
... stirred the coals of a different anger. About our unquestionably white-centered "security" services, who would rather browbeat environmentalists and create phantoms of Māori or Islamic violence to chase than look into genuine threats to our citizens.
I wrote then (on Facebork)
"Up until now I haven't had it in me to feel angry about this situation. Now I am angry. At the so-called security services of this country and other agencies whose job it was to recognise and act on the concerns of these communities and who absolutely failed in that duty. In doing so they have failed not only the Moslem citizens of New Zealand but *all* of us and they should be held to account commensurately.
They won't be of course. They never are :( "
~~~
There have also been a lot of (white) people crying "this isn't us, this is not our New Zealand." I'm glad to say that there has come a great pushback against that in opinion pieces from white writers I respect as well as from less-white ones sharing their experiences.
Toby Morris summed it up
in cartoon format here.
But if you have any doubt about the depth of racism and other isms in New Zealand society you only need to pause and imagine what the ... I'm going to use outcry as a moderate term for it ... would be if one of the "major" political parties were to elect or appoint as leader someone who was something other than a practicing or passes-for-lapsed Christian, or anyone clearly of other than Pākehā or Māori descent. The dogwhistles and allusions of loyalty to "somewhere else" which would permeate an election under those conditions.
Or to quote from the first article linked above:
I would ask you to picture this: what if the shooting had been a Muslim perpetrator, and it was 50 non-Muslim New Zealanders who had been shot? Would our community be receiving the same level of support that we have today?
Imagine what the media commentary would have been like. We would not have been able to leave our homes, the level of retaliatory attacks on our community would have been swift and immediate, and the police would have struggled to provide any meaningful protection.
Yet I can walk without fear.
~~~
On a final note there are of course people saying that the shooter should receive a death penalty, whether delivered formally or informally. I say that is too good for him, a martyrs end. He deserves to grow old in a place from which he can influence or harm no-one, watching New Zealand come together into a more integrated and caring nation despite of or even because of what he has done.
I believe that we do currently have the political leadership to act on the current mood and momentum for change but whether we actually mange to accomplish that better nation is left as an exercise for the reader.
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