The Wild White Racism

& the Mass Killing in New Zealand

Dr Firoz Mahboob Kamal

The pure evil & the calamity

The Australian senator Frazer Anning has quickly discovered the cause of man slaughter of 45 people in 2 mosques in Christchurch. He blames the increasing presence of Muslims in New Zealand as the cause of such a massacre! He argues: if there was no Muslim, there wouldn’t be any killing. So the Muslims are the problem, and not the murderer. So the implied solution of the problem -according to him, is taking steps to reduce the number of the Muslims amidst the white population. He would be definitely happy if the Muslims could be fully annihilated by any means. Now, it appears that the Christchurch killer has taken the gun to achieve that. Senator Frazer may feel very happy that the steps towards solving the problem has already been started; therefore, might have celebrated the event with his ideological associates. By any standard, it is pure evil. This is indeed the true face of white racism. But Mr Frazer sits in Australian Senate. It shows how such evil people are embedded in the white majority countries.

Toxic racism never stays silent; rather expresses through hate crimes. Such crimes never stay confined with killings in mosques or stabbing on streets; rather may take robust cataclysmic forms. Colonial wars, occupational wars, World Wars, ethnic cleansing, chemical bombing and even nuclear bombings are also the classic forms of hate crimes. Such crimes have always been perpetrated in the name of national security and supremacy. So, whatever crimes the Christchurch killer has committed inside mosques, the imperialist powers like the USA, the UK, France and others have been practising for centuries in the third countries. The people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are still experiencing the same by the hands of the USA state powers. Killing more than a million of innocent men and women in occupied countries, turning many Iraqi and Syrian cities to rubbles and persecution of thousands of men and women in Abu Ghareeb, Bagram, Kandahar and Guantanamo Bay are no less brutal than what happened in Christchurch. Therefore, those who committed and supported such crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Israel and other occupied lands can have enough sadistic stuff to celebrate the Christchurch massacre.

Such episodic massacre are only the symptoms. The disease lies much deeper. Here, the disease owes to toxic ideology of wild white racism. Even President Donald Trump describes the Christchurch killing as a terrible act. But, he fails to condemn the vile ideology that feed the white racism all over the world. A thief can’t condemn thievery. The same is true for the white supremacists. Donald Trump himself embodies the same moral disease; and Islamophobia lies in the heart of it.  And as the US President, he uses the White House and its institutional infrastructure to spread the virus of Islamophobia world-wide. Since he represents the disease, he doesn’t possess the moral force to condemn it.

The surge of Nazism

Racism hates logic; it flourishes only on hatred against the others. So, for a white supremacist, the increasing number of the western people in any eastern part of the globe is not a problem; but a tiny Muslim population in New Zealand or Australia is a big problem. So, the Muslims need to be vilified and demonised to make acceptable any anti-Muslim carnage. Such a mind-set raised Ku Klux Klan (KKK) –the American version of Nazi Party in the USA, to sustain white supremacy in the USA. The disease now shows a new surge –especially after the election victory of Donald Trump. Because of such a virulent moral disease, the presence of black Africans in the midst of white Europeans could work as a factor to instigate the white supremacist to reduce the number of the black people by brutal killing. Exactly the same moral disease showed its tip in Christ Church. Even President Donald Trump called it terrible incident. But he didn’t utter a single sentence to condemn the real disease -the white supremacism that played the pivotal role in the mass murder. The reason for President Trump’s silence against the disease is understandable: he himself is the part of the problem. Moreover, he downplayed the danger presented by the group and denied the significance of this horrendous crime.  

Since Donald Trump is the President of the most powerful state on earth, his words and policies matter. The killer of Christchurch considers President Trump as a hero of the white cause. The former leader of KKK also announced his supports for him. The reason is understandable; they are partners in the same crime. The massacre in Christchurch was only a one man’s job confined in two mosques. But, President Donald Trump did the same crime in an industrial scale. He engaged the US army to commit the hate crime against the Muslims in Syria and Iraq. The two mosques in Christchurch still stand on the ground; but Donald Trump razed Mosul, Raqqa, Deira Jour, Kobani, Ramadi and many other cities to the ground. He killed innocent children and women. Without extreme hatred, no one would go to that extent to commit such crimes. In fact, President Trump and the Christchurch murderer pursue the same agenda with the same intention, but only with a difference in geographical and numerical dimensions. Like the Christchurch killer, President Trump also wants to reduce the number of Muslims amidst the white population. This is why, he rejected 37,000 visa from Muslim majority countries in 2018 without any genuine reason. The only reason for the denial was their origin from the Muslim countries.

The ideology of pure evil

What could be the worst racism than such annihilating agenda against the people of a specific faith or race? Hitler had the similar views against the Jews; therefore justified the killing of millions of them. The same ideology of white supremacy led the European colonialists to commit ethnic cleansing of the Red Indians from America, the Aborigines from Australia and the Maoris from New Zealand. The Muslims are not the new target either. The European crusaders committed similar genocidal massacres about a thousand year ago. These white supremacists think that the world must be an exclusive place for the white. They think that they must possess the invading rights, the plundering rights and the ethnic cleansing rights everywhere. The Europeans executed such rights in their colonial days; the USA execute such rights currently in the Middle East, and the Israelis execute similar rights in Palestine. And in Christchurch, the white supremacist killer practised the same right against the Muslims.

Killing of 49 people in 2 mosques in New Zealand is in fact an eruption of a volcano of anti-Muslim hatred that runs much deeper in many of the non-Muslim countries. It is only a tip of a huge iceberg. The killer doesn’t represent his own madness, rather exposes the collective toxic psyche of the Islamophobic supremacists. Since such sick psychic state gets more virulence in Islamophobic tide, it wouldn’t be the first and the last carnage against the Muslims. As long as the hate-mongering leaders like President Donald Trump, the Islamophobic TV channels and newspapers continue to inject anti-Muslim venom into the public psyche, hate-crime shows little sign of recession; rather may have more horrendous hypes. Since Donald Trump stepped into the White House, the anti-Muslim hate crime shows a steep rise. The western media’s contribution to such crime is awful. A recent study shows that the New York Times publishes more negative articles against Islam and the Muslims than against cancer and cocaine. And London’s Daily Mail and Daily Sun regularly feed Islamophobia by publishes articles against Islam and the Muslims. The same newspapers overlook the war crimes of the occupation armies in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine.        

The crossroads and the only option

The western leaders are obsessed to condemn the extremists in the Muslim World. But they ignore their own home-grown extremism and terrorism. They fail to understand that what happens in the Muslim countries in the form of extremism was never there prior to the western invasion. These are indeed the reaction towards the western state-run terrorism cum colonial wars of occupation in the Muslim lands. The original venom of extremism indeed lies in the West. What could be the worst form of extremism than the white supremacist ideology that caused genocidal killing, ethnic cleansing, World Wars, war crimes and nuclear crimes?

The western countries must cure their own moral cancer. They must understand that such a disease doesn’t get cured on its own. If they fail to cure it, it can only turn worse. So the western leaders stand on crossroads. They must decide which road they want to take: path of peaceful co-existence with the fellow Muslims or the path of war and mutual annihilation. They also need to understand that all humans live in the same global village; there exists no option other than sharing the same planet. Hatred is counterproductive; it can only generate more hatred. Hence, it needs to be understood that the white supremacist ideology of President Trump and his ideological mates like the Christchurch killer can’t be a part of the cure. Who can deny the Muslims’ right? Like any people on earth, they too, need a space to fully practise their faith in any part of the globe –as was practised by their prophet. No one can snatch the right by labelling it fundamentalism. Donald Trump can flatten Muslim cities and kill millions, his ideological mate too, can slaughter Muslims in Mosques; but this way they can’t make the world safe for anyone.16.03.2019