In face of racist terror, we are all Muslims today

Worshippers pray for victims and families of the Christchurch shootings during an evening vigil at the Lakemba Mosque on Friday. Picture: AP

Today we are all Muslims.

Every civilised human being weeps with those worshippers, gathered in community, innocently at prayer, observing the ­reassuring rituals, hearing the ­reassuring words, gunned down in their sacred spaces. And weeps too with their families and friends.

This is an act of pure evil. It is the worst atrocity in New Zealand’s history.

There is only one human feeling here — solidarity with the victims and their families.

Today all these Muslims — the victims and their families — are our brothers and our sisters. They were innocent New Zealand citizens and residents — closer to Australia than any other nation — and hatred against them is as ­irrational and foul as any hatred.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was right to describe this as an act of extremist, right-wing terrorism.

Bill Shorten was equally right to condemn the killings as ­terrorism.

Should it turn out that the perpetrator had some psychological disturbances, this does not mean that it is not an act of terrorism.

Many of the perpetrators of all kinds of terrorism have mental disturbances, but violence and murder in a political cause are terrorism.

Like almost all right-wing terrorism, it was motivated by filthy racism and racial hatred.

Indeed, the gunman himself describes the killings as acts of terrorism and racism.

Let there be no doubt — racism remains an abiding evil in many societies, even in peaceful, decent, friendly New Zealand.

How can there be this much ­hatred in people?

Much is yet to come out, but we know the gunman posted disturbing, extremist material online days before the killings.

Here is one of the central challenges of our time and our civilisation — we must bring the internet under the rule of law. This is not an infringement of free speech. Rather the law has to apply online, to social media and all other digital platforms, just as it applies in the non-digital world.

Will we civilise the discourse on the net, or will the net in time barbarise us?

People must be just as accountable for their words and threats online as if they said them in a ­public street, published them in a newspaper, broadcast them on TV.

It is clear too that the internet can be a tool of radicalisation in ­almost any ideological direction.

A few other elements of the net contribute to the rise of extremism. Many parts of the net are wildly abusive, paranoid, full of resentment. They fuel the wretched world view of this gunman. You get attention on the net by being more extreme, more emotional, more foul-mouthed, than the next fellow.

Everyone involved in politics and online activism should reflect on the dangers of exaggerated rhetoric, exaggerated grievance, exaggerated resentment.

Similarly, the widespread view that citizens cannot effect change through normal politics reinforces the temptation to extremism.

It is now correct to describe a semi-coherent ideology of right-wing and racist political extremism in the West. It is less organised than some other forms of extremism, but it is deadly.

No one is responsible for the views or the actions of extremists except the extremists themselves.

But Western society has taken a terrible wrong turn by going down the road of identity politics.

If the organising principle of politics and even social organisation is identity, that leads to ­appalling, unnecessary and ­gravely dangerous division.

It was the achievement of liberalism throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to progressively banish race, and indeed other elements of identity, from the civic sphere.

Decent social democrats, conservatives, liberals and others do not see race when they interact with other human beings.

Race is the least interesting piece of information you can have about any individual — it doesn’t tell you anything about whether they will be helpful or harmful, funny or dull, sympathetic or the reverse, good or bad.

Yet throughout the West we are in the process of re-emphasising race as the central consideration in our politics.

In the United States, minority identity politics has produced a backlash of white identity politics. Everyone wants to be a victim. Everyone craves the psychological reassurance of racial group identity and phony solidarity.

But these are all questions for the future.

Today we stand with our New Zealand friends and condemn this vicious, right-wing terrorism.