Beliefs held by millions not rendered invalid by actions of a maniac

We should be careful with each other, and careful with our words. But debate and discussion should not be silenced.

An injured man at a prayer service at Hagley Park, opposite the Al Noor Mosque, in Christchurch yesterday. Picture: AAP

The Australian man who allegedly slaughtered 50 innocent people in a mosque last week is clearly many things: a terrorist, a murderer, a maniac and a disgrace not just to his country but to the human species. Since he allegedly committed his dreadful acts people have tried — understandably — to work out what ideas might have motivated him. It is a question that rightly comes up whenever somebody commits such an atrocity.

As novelist Lionel Shriver wrote after Anders Breivik’s terrorist atrocity in Norway eight years ago, there is an inherent problem in this — which is that when somebody takes up a gun and kills innocent people in cold blood they may share many ideas with many people, but the moment they take up a gun and start killing people in cold blood they become totally unlike everybody else. The actions set them apart, including from people who may share many of the views they claim to hold.

To carry out such an act takes people out of the normal run of human behaviour and puts them in a unique category.

Yet last week’s shooter, like Breivik, had some desire to explain his actions. Or so it would appear from his release of a sort of manifesto to accompany his crimes. This too — again, like Breivik — leaves a difficulty. Are we to treat the document as an honest testament intended to explain an action? Or do we perhaps see it as the ravings of a madman — ravings that his ensuing actions would appear to have proven? Or do we try to work it out as a document not intended to enlighten but perhaps in fact to mislead?

These are not specialist or academic questions in this context. Very far from it. They are questions we are all involved in. For, ever since the gunman’s actions in Christchurch, people have pinpointed particular ideological traits in his work. Specifically, they have focused on the gunman’s professed concerns about demographic change and Islamic immigration in Europe and elsewhere.

Having written at length about these issues — among many others — I am both profoundly shocked and slightly unsurprised that somebody would have performed such a barbaric act. I mentioned in my 2017 book, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, that most Europeans were welcoming of, accepting of or saddened by the undeniable demographic changes that have happened in their countries. But I mentioned there that although most people clearly would accept those changes peaceably and try to adapt to them, others might not take that peaceable approach.

When I wrote that it seemed self-evident. But in my worst nightmares I had not imagined that somebody might walk into a mosque on the other side of the planet and commit mass murder because of what they claimed to have seen while in Europe. The events in Christchurch are a nightmare scenario, and one that no one I know of has ever called for or remotely encouraged.

Perhaps it is inevitable that campaigning partisans, and others, have sought to link the Christchurch gunman to anyone and everyone who has ever expressed concern about mass migration or Islamic extremism. Much of this will be sincere — the understandable attempt in the aftermath of any atrocity to make sense of it and find people to blame. But much of it has also been deeply opportunistic. Not only in New Zealand and Australia but across the world — in Britain, Europe, the US and elsewhere — where people wishing to win ideological battles of their own have used recent days to try to take out of the public debate anybody and everybody who they can insinuate into the outrage in Christchurch.

This has many effects of its own. Not least is that it makes people have to read the manifesto of the gunman. In other words, it ­forces us to do one of the things the terrorist almost certainly wanted — for his words, thoughts and justifications to be taken seriously and for the world to read them.

It is understandable that some people might insist on avoiding such a course, arguing against doing the terrorist the honour of taking his words seriously. Yet the moment accusations get levelled not just at public figures but at views held by majorities in many populations, then what do people expect others to do? To take people’s word for it that the shooter is inspired by the ideas and people they would like to claim he is inspired by?

During the past week an amazing amount of defamatory claims have been made alleging that people ranging from a liberal American talk-show host to a Somali-born former Muslim atheist have some kind of responsibility for the shooting. Perhaps the most outrageous accusation is that because the shooter evinced some concern for mass migration and Islam then anybody who has written or spoken about any of these issues must bear some responsibility. Nobody should take this charge lightly, and I certainly do not.

But I would be exceptionally cautious about giving the shooter’s manifesto the solemn treatment as a document of truth that so many people do. It seems clear to me that from his call out to people to subscribe to the channel of the YouTube star “Pewdiepie” to his alleged attribution of inspiration to the black American conservative activist Candace Owens, the shooter has manipulated those who have consumed his claims sincerely. Mentioning both of these popular figures reads to me like a very clear attempt to take them down as collateral in his act of mass murder.

For instance, in his document the murderer claims Owens inspired him to violence but that he realised he would have to distance himself from some of her more extreme views. This is a sly and smart effort to destroy Owens’s reputation. Major newspapers have duly and unironically repeated his words and chased up members of her family in America to comment on their relative “inspiring” a massacre. People may admire Owens or not, but to level the charge of inspiring mass murder against her is outrageous. Amid the fury many people apparently lost sight of the implausibility of a white supremacist honestly being influenced by a black American woman.

But people have been dining a la carte on this despicable man’s words. The shooter was also by his own admission some extreme form of “eco-warrior”. He describes himself in his manifesto as being a follower of a type of fascism he describes as “green nationalism”. Like his profession of concern about immigration in Europe or admiration for a black American woman, this may be sincere or it may not. But one thing I have not seen at all in recent days has been a putting of this mass murder at the door of eco-warriors and green campaigners around the world.

Are there statements from the green lobby that are extreme? I would have said so. Are the endless insistences that we have only a certain number of years, months or weeks left to save the planet insistences that would radicalise some people? Doubtless yes. In recent years self-professed “green” campaigners have included the assassin of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn (in 2002). Earlier this month one of the new Democrats to arrive in the US congress is a woman who has speculated that one way to save the planet is to not have children.

Let us say that green politics was indeed one of the drivers of the Christchurch shooter. Would it make us doubt there are serious sustainability issues that need to be addressed on our planet? Would anybody think it a good idea to attack and defame any and all public or private figures who have expressed concern about the environment or the future of our planet? Would we pretend issues that were true right up to the day of the Christchurch massacre became untrue, or illegitimate, the day after? I would say not.

And quite right too. For no one person — especially not an individual who resorts to sickening violence — can be given the right to dictate what is true and what is not, what is the evidence of our eyes and what is not, what is acceptable to discuss and be concerned about and what is not.

Just as that goes for issues of the environment, so it should go for the serious and ongoing questions to do with immigration. These are discussions that have to be allowed to go on in Australia and New Zealand as well as across the continent of Europe. I suspect the Christchurch killer’s actions will cause some dampening of that debate. As it perhaps should, for we have all had a reminder of how madmen can seize ideas and claim — truthfully or otherwise — to have been inspired by them. We should be careful with each other, and careful with our words. But debate and discussion should not be silenced.

For aside from being one of the best release valves for concerns that we have, the right to think and argue freely remains among our most precious and hard-fought-for attainments. It is an attainment that no one — especially such a person — should ever be permitted to take away from us.