If the dreadful attacks on Christchurch taught us anything, it is that there is a global pandemic of destructive narcissism, anti-social personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.
The first normal human response to events such as Friday’s attacks on Muslims going peacefully about their business, many shot dead while kneeling in prayer, is empathy and a deep sense of grief and sorrow.
This was callously interrupted by a wave of YouTube ersatz celebrities, self-serving internet warriors and egomaniacs dripping with conceit and intellectual vanity.
In the wake of the attacks on the Masjid Al-Noor and the Linwood Masjid in Christchurch, there has been a lot of blame apportionment that doesn’t pass muster by any sense of logic.
Presently, the attacker’s motives are not fully understood. While he prepared a 78-page manifesto and posted it online, it is an unreliable guide to his conduct without further forensic investigation of his life.
What we can conclude at this stage is the gunman was a terrorist, an ultra-nationalist, right-wing extremist. But even this obvious and self-evident truth is subject to bizarre scrutiny.
I have been writing about the risk right wing extremism poses to the community for some time. Australia has a long and unhappy history with right wing extremism from the paramilitary New Guard in the 1930s, the vicious anti-Semitism and exclusionism of the Australian League of Rights post-war, through to its bastard children fanning off into various extreme and ultra-nationalist groups like the United Patriots’ Front.
It never pays to take your eye off these people. To regard them as amusing clods who dwell on the fringes of society as well as on the extreme right of the political spectrum may hold some truth, but we should not underestimate the menace they pose to our communities.
It is not so much what they say and do in their eternal struggle for the spotlight and a whiff of legitimacy, but who is quietly listening and fervently clinging to very appalling word they utter in the background.
Rather than acknowledge and attempt to quantify the risk, we wasted our time and energy on dismal polemics about whether Nazism is from the right or the left.
We largely ignored the hate speech in our federal parliament after the 2016 double dissolution election foisted some of the worst people on the country into red chairs and gave them a platform.
It’s not just Anning’s disgraceful clawing for publicity. There have been many others. Back in March 2016, the ineligible One Nation senator, Malcolm Roberts, got to his feet and railed:
“If your Muslim Sudanese neighbour is engaging in female genital mutilation or your Syrian Muslim cafe owner is a terrorist building a bomb or maybe just the Afghan Muslims in the public housing flat next to you are molesting small children, chances are that you are afraid to speak out.”
The fact this garbage was largely allowed to go through to the keeper shows our political institutions are sick and our media too cynical to condemn. Rather, it was situation normal.
The hate speech doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If we really want to understand how events such as terrorist massacres occur but how they trigger our communities to resort to vitriol and ugliness in their wake, we need only look at the narcissists with their YouTube accounts who sit about drooling over bloody events so they can tell a world that seems to have lost its capacity for reason, what we should think.
Social media becomes a cesspit at times like this. It was the same after the Islamic State inspired Paris attacks in November 2015, the Islamist outrages in Brussels in March 2016 and the Manchester bombing in May of 2017.
Ambulances were still ferrying the wounded across Hagley Park to Christchurch Hospital when Melbourne-based YouTuber, Sydney Watson decided to pipe up on Twitter. She has 160,000 subscribers on YouTube.
“What is happening in Christchurch is SO wrong,” she tweeted. “But before I see anyone else say this is the result of “anti-immigration” sentiments – I’ll counter that this is the result of politicians making people feel unheard & marginalized. You push some people far enough, they snap.”
The massacre was less than two hours old when Watson decided she had the answer. In her twisted world, feeling “unheard and marginalised” is a precursor to shooting dead a three-year-old child and 49 others.
As night fell in Christchurch, up popped Gemma O’Doherty, an Irish ‘journalist’ and 9-11 ‘truther’, who decided she could sniff another one world order conspiracy from 19,000 kilometres away.
“Has all the hallmarks of a classic false flag operation,” she tweeted. “To incite fresh #IS attacks, create chaos and fear, allow the globalists take more control over people and remove freedoms a la 9/11. A professional job. The public are no longer fooled.”
O’Doherty went on to babble and continues to do so that calls for people not to view the shooter’s helmet cam footage of his attacks on the mosques were not due to the appalling nature of the mayhem and death he wrought, but because some fictitious One World government had descended from the grassy knoll to clean up the crime scene.
By then, the finger pointing on social media had well and truly started. Canadian ultra nationalist, Lauren Southern, was beset with angry tweets calling her complicit in the Christchurch massacre. She fired off a response early Saturday morning.
“I am utterly disgusted by those sending tweets along the lines of “Are you happy?” to right wingers. Would you send this to a Muslim that has never advocated violence on the day of an Islamic terror attack?”
I’d be happy to agree with her except for one thing. A quick flip through her twitter account showed she had done exactly the same thing albeit in another scenario.
On 24 March 2016, and in the wake of the Islamist terror attacks in Brussels, she tweeted, “I confronted a Muslim woman yesterday (in Canada). Asked her to explain Brussels. She said, ‘Nothing to do with me.’ A mealy-mouthed reply.”
These are just examples but all three have large social media followings. They are not peddling ideas or opinions, they are self-promoting for some grim lunge at fame. If shunned, they and others like them would wither into anonymity where frankly, they belong.
While most of us struggled to comprehend what had happened and why, we were being trolled by narcissists and look-at-me wannabes, pushing opinions that were driven by a desperate grab for publicity.
They can have their forums and their free speech. The rest of us need to develop the capacity to turn our backs on them.
This article was first published on 21 March 2019.
I love James Jeffrey as he is a smart and funny f&#ker, but I got the distinct impression that the other day he was taking the piss out my man Abbott. For starters Tone’s doesn’t need anybody’s help and Jesus wept, almond milk,! The big fella eats raw onions for breakfast and never sheds a tear. Not happy, James.
Signed,
Concerned reader.
Will May reach May or even April for that matter, Mr. Insider as we see Brexit turn into a very nasty piece of work indeed, capable of bringing down more British PM’s.
My Donald told Theresa how to handle it all but noooooooo she ignored him, at her peril.
Still, it is good to live in interesting times. Thanks for coming Theresa.
http://tinyurl.com/y4aenx2s
Re the NSW Opposition Labor Leader (for now) Michael Daley’s future, he has been reported as having declared he will – “get back on the horse and keep riding”.
That may well be so, but it sure wont be a Winx.
wraith – all else aside, he spells it ‘Aly’
On the NSW elections
“One down one to go”
Ghastly, ghastly and ghastly as we see, Mr. Insider a NSW election win likely for Mark Latham in Upper House for One Nation.
Good grief has this no talent “rat” no pride at all as he continues to collect a huge Federal Parliamentary Pension that would choke a horse.
Shame, Mark Latham, shame!
https://tinyurl.com/y6hyg28v
JtI -you follow this stuff, if the Mueller report is out, how does Trump fare?
I know just as much as you. There are no further indictments. No more criminal charges coming from Mueller’s investigations. Federally, that’s it at this stage. The AG, William Barr will make some of the report public, how much is not yet known but we will know within a day or so. Mueller will almost certainly be subpoenaed by the House to give evidence on his investigation and findings. The A-G in NY is pursuing a dozen or so matters most of which involve the Trump family.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/us/trump-investigations-new-york.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Looks like Trumpy’s in the clear……..for now. His lawyers still have a lot to do according to the ABC.
I see you found your tissues and your way back pretty quick mack. No apparent collusion but plenty of corruption, you see that as in the clear? your views are as foggy as your memory. Way back when in th early days of this blog I asked you some question and it was clear we Never worked together. As for you trying to blame me. Weak effort as usual mtk.
You must be a bit of a thickie. Can’t even comprehend dates & times. Sad cafe.
All “duck soup” Milton and you have to hand it to Mueller he sure knows how to drive a “Gravy Train”.
Onward and upward for Donald and on to victory in 2020! Cheers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjUvfZj-Fm0
new stadiums for NSW…yay
8.13pm NSW time Saturday night and Antony Green is calling the Berejiklian Coalition Government in NSW as returned, Mr. Insider.
The count he said is very slow though but he can’t see any surprises.
It was so slow. The new i-vote system appears to have had some bugs. By 11.00 last night only 50 per cent of the vote counted. Gladys has won although may still fall short of a majority but she will only need the support of one on the cross to get her legislation through. If you’re going to have a minority govt, that is the type you want. Well done to her. Daley had a shocking last week and paid the price. I think the voters of NSW also looked at the Foley business and Labor’s dark history in recent times and thought, nup. The Nats have a problem and the SFF lads are coming for them. That won’t matter so much in a federal election but a few independents here and there including Mr Oakeshott and the Nats are looking at some further punishment.
Lib vote down on the North Shore, may be something but maybe nothing.
Off to see what Ms Steggell has to say up at Forestville on the 5th May, six hundred volunteers signed up for the campaign so far which says something about the discontent in this neck of the woods, volunteered for polling day
Hope that Abbott can be rolled but it’s a big ask
Her biggest weakness, other than having no polocies apart from a few airy fairy ones on border protrction and climate change, is her campaign director who is Labor to the boot heels
Mueller Report drops……..crickets chirping thus far
Denial is not a river in Egypt.