After a madman murdered 50 and seriously wounded 20 innocent people during shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, everyone is trying to understand the motivation. The shooter has been arrested, but he made sure the world would get some insight into the workings of his mind by writing and releasing a manifesto which makes clear what he hoped to achieve.
A Killer’s Revenge
Although he was a communist in his teens and later a libertarian, he currently describes himself as an “eco-fascist” who is opposed to free-trade capitalism. The meaning of this label is not well-defined, but it appears that he is a type of environmentalist who extends his concerns for ecosystems and species preservation to human populations and culture. He seems to be advocating that races of people belong in the regions in which they have traditionally evolved and lived. That is, just like polar bears belong in the Arctic, white people belong in the temperate Arctic and sub-Arctic zones.
He was first radicalized when he traveled to France and witnessed what is referred to as “the Great Replacement.” That is, he saw that native Europeans and their culture were being demographically replaced by mass immigration from tropical and subtropical regions.
Where the story takes a dark turn is when he says that whites and especially conservatives are too amicable to take the threat of extinction seriously. He believes that multiculturalism inevitably leads to a race war and therefore wants to hasten and precipitate it.
How? By murdering innocent people and deliberately identifying himself with conservatives and the right, he predicts the left will grow even more totalitarian, to the point that ordinary conservatives will feel so oppressed that they are finally willing to fight. His stated goal is thus to create a backlash against the right, in order to motivate them to take on the war for ethnic survival before it is too late. To illustrate the point, the shooter urged people to subscribe to the popular YouTuber PewDiePie in the hope of having him banned from YouTube as a hate figure, thereby angering tens of millions of his subscribers.
He explicitly imbued his actions with a message to justify his murder spree as revenge. One of the mosques he targeted has been written about in the New Zealand media as a place of Islamic radicalization. On his weapon and magazines, the gunman had written the names and places of victims of Islamic terrorism and crime. His motive of retribution demonstrates that he is a collectivist who targets innocent people purely based on their religious affiliation.
The Trap
The attacker was trying to set up a trap for the left, luring them to turn to totalitarian oppression of people on the right. Sadly, his strategy seems to be working.
After the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush soon declared that Islam was a religion of peace and that the terrorists did not represent Islam, but had perverted it. One can agree or disagree with Bush, but his words were designed to prevent the collective judgment of an entire group of people based on the actions of a few evil men. By contrast, the left and most of the mainstream media have done the exact opposite of Bush. They have adopted the logic and philosophy of the mass-murderer in that the actions of a single individual who has committed a violent act warrants collective judgment and punishment against anyone who professes even remotely similar ideas. And by that, they do not mean environmentalists, but nationalists and people who are concerned about mass immigration.
By taking that stance, the left are allowing themselves to follow the script the shooter made for them. They should resist the temptation of making collective judgments.
The Antidote
Western countries seem determined to ignore the issues their people face as a result of mass immigration, so is it really surprising when a mentally ill person decides to destructively take matters into their own hands and try to “solve” the problem themselves?
If the gunman had been born and raised in Singapore, he would probably neither have become radicalized nor a murderer. Why? For 50 years, the city-state has managed to combine immigration with a system that protects the citizens and make them feel safe and positive about foreign-born residents.
This approach has ensured that Singapore has remained a vibrant community with people from many countries and cultures. They are all united by a common factor that transcends race and ethnicity: they are all hardworking people who take care of themselves and respect the law. If all Western countries had followed the same formula, there would be less political polarization and controversy surrounding immigration. And 50 innocent people in Christchurch might still be alive.
