Centre-right must rise against this repellent ideology

The appalling slaughter of the innocents in Christchurch demonstrates the growing power and reach of a repellent, extreme, right-wing and racist ideology.

Not many people support this ideology, but those who do have a wildly disproportionate tendency to extreme violence.

This is a particular challenge to centre-right political parties in the West, which have no truck with these groups and no moral responsibility for them. But just as the centre-left has a particular responsibility to reject in principle and in practice extremists of the far-left, so the centre-right must make sure its supporters have no confusion that racist, extreme Right, hate-filled and potentially violent ideological campaigners should get no comfort from them. They are as bitter enemies of the centre-right as anyone could be.

There is nothing wrong or racist in discussing immigration levels and advocating an increase or a decrease. That is a million miles from demonising innocent individuals or resorting to violence.

But just as social democratic parties had to reject utterly the idea that there were “no enemies on the Left” so the centre-right must understand that “no enemies on the Right” is equally toxic. Just because an extremist agrees with one point of your program does not absolve you of the responsibility of opposing their extremism.

The gunman in Christchurch in his revolting manifesto describes himself as a fascist and white supremacist. He has done us a favour by making his hateful ideology clear. There can be no definitional quibbles, no suggestion that this is not really of the Right.

Scott Morrison, as this country’s leader and the leader of the centre-right, has been exemplary in his response, as has Bill Shorten. No one can doubt the goodwill of either man, or their utter rejection of extremism.

I would suggest one small tweak to Morrison’s rhetoric on terrorism. It is wrong, because it is inaccurate, to refer to “Islamic terrorism” for this gives the impression that terrorism is associated with the entire religious tradition.

Some commentators use the term jihadism or jihadist terrorism. This is too abstruse to convey meaning to a general audience. The most accurate term is “Islamist” terrorism. Islamism is a political ideology based on a particular interpretation of Islam and even Islamism need not be violent. Islamist terrorism accurately conveys the meaning of the ideology of Islamism taken to a violent extreme.

I make this point because one lesson of Christchurch is the need we all have to speak of each other with civility, especially when we are categorising people by broad groups, such as religion or race.

The growth of a racist, right-wing ideology arises out of the swampland of conspiracy theory that pervades the far-right as it does the far-left and the extremes of Islamist and jihadist supporters of terrorism, and which flowers in abundance on the net.

Strategic analyst Peter Jennings makes the powerful point that the Christchurch murders will be a great recruitment tool for Islamist terrorists. The two extremes will feed off each other as they have done throughout history.

There is an urgent need now to bring the internet under the rule of law just as new laws were needed to bring radio and then television fully under the rule of law.

It is also the case that even peaceful Western nations such as New Zealand and Australia should take a much tougher line in outlawing virtually all firearms except for single-action guns needed by some farmers. Only the police should carry deadly weapons. Australia’s enforcement has slipped in recent years.

Most of all, we need to find a way out of the atomised conspiracy swamplands that dominate the net, in which otherwise sane people are led to ignore reality and create instead elaborate and integrated, and mad, myths in which malign evil actors are implementing secret policies aimed at them.

The type of people who hate Muslims in this context typically also hate Jews, and most often hate Asians. Just five minutes ago, their forebears in the white supremacist movements of the past hated Catholics as well.

WB Yeats famously wrote: “The best lack all conviction … the centre cannot hold.”

The centre needs to reassert itself, the centre must rise.