TIME TO SMASH RACISM AND FASCISM

 

 

Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old man from Grafton ,NSW, Australia entered the Al Noor and Linwood Islamic centre Mosques in succession in Christchurch on the afternoon of 15th March 2019 in Christchurch shooting indiscriminately, killing 51 and injuring 49. He was arrested shortly afterward and was charged with 51 murders, 40 attempted murders, and engaging in a terrorist act. He initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, with the trial expected to start on 2 June 2020. But on 26 March 2020, he changed his plea to guilty on all charges. 

 

This is not only NZs biggest single mass rampage murder by a single gunman but also the world’s 2nd biggest political one.

 

This was a politically motivated racist shooting by an organised terrorist and alt right white individual assisted by others intent on motivating more people to the same ideology.

 

A 74 page “manifesto Tarrant posted online, lists various neo-fascist aims, including the creation of an atmosphere of fear among Muslims, espouses far-right and anti-immigrant ideology in the document.

 

Tarrant named his manifesto The Great Replacement, a reference to Renaud Camus's 2011 book, The Great Replacement (aka The Replacement Theory). Which is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory which states the presence of Muslims in France is a potential danger with the destruction of French  culture and civilisation. Camus and other conspiracy theorists attribute this process to intentional policies advanced by global and liberal “replacist” elites. The "Great Replacement" is included in a larger white genocide conspiracy theory that has spread in Western far-right movements since the late 20th century.

 

NZs chief media censor David Skanks says a review of the accused Christchurch shooter's manifesto has ruled it was objectionable. Mr Shanks said the aim of "hateful terrorist screeds" was to inspire others to similar violent action. "Tragically, it appears that this may have already happened. Since March the 15th we have seen horrific extremist attacks unfold in a synagogue in Poway near San Diego, in a Walmart in El Paso and even more recently in a mosque in Norway.

 

Fears of the white races extinction, and replacement theory in particular, have been cited by several accused perpetrators of mass shootings between 2018 and 2019. Analysts including Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Centre say the idea of white genocide has undoubtedly influenced American white supremacists, potentially leading to violence.

 

In 2019, research by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue showed over 24,000 social media mentions of the Great Replacement in the month before the Christchurch shootings, in comparison to just 3,431 mentions in April 2012. The use of the term spiked in April 2019 after the Christchurch mosque shootings

Patrick Crusius, the suspect in the 2019 El Paso shooting , posted an online manifesto titled The Inconvenient Truth alluding to the "great replacement" and expressing support for "the Christchurch shooter" minutes before the attack; it alluded to a "Hispanic invasion of Texas" and "simply trying to defend my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion" as justifications for the shooting.

 

While he was living in Dunedin prior to the attack a neighbour, who shared an internal wall with Tarrant in his house in Andersons Bay, described him as a "bit of a recluse" and a "loner, but a friendly loner." The neighbour also stated that Tarrant would offer to mow the lawns for his and his neighbour's landlord and help out around the property. He himself doesn’t appear evil but the ideology he follows certainly is.

 

New Zealand has been considered a safe and tolerant place with low levels of gun violence and was named the second most peaceful country in the world by Global Peace Index 2019, the year of the attacks [1]. While it’s a shock to many of us in “Peaceful” NZ, it should not be. Christchurch is a hotbed of racism because it’s the South Islands biggest white city that lacks the multicultural diversity of Auckland that challenges racist ideas.

 

The signs had been in NZ for over a year prior to the mosque shooting. The united front -Love Aotearoa Hate Racism - was formed in July 2018 for this very reason, to combat the alt right, fascists , NAZIs and other racists gaining audiences for their hate speech. Racism is fostered by speakers like Stefan Molyneux and Paulin Hanson coming to NZ and being given air to speak. By allowing Tommy Robinsons NZ supporters the space to protest without challenging them.

 

It’s not just from the outside but within also. Allowing white supremacist or fascist or NAZI groups on university campuses to speak under the guise of freedom of speech. Don Brash and his Hobsons pledge, Winston Peters, Bob Jones and his Maori grateful day are all talking racist ideas. 8chan image posting website allows this type of hate speech to spread through lack of moderating.

The shooter posted a manifesto and photos of his guns (named after rampage killers) online only, days before the shooting, and posted live feed of the shootings on facebook. Thou both the video and manifesto were subsequently banned in New Zealand.

We know all this as its available knowledge on Wikipedia, but whats not being talked about is how governments and the NZ Government in particular are complicit in all this.

The NZ Government slashes civil liberties and illegally spies on internet entrepreneurs, politicians, earthquake victims, state abuse victims, environmentalists, Maori and justice activists who want real change in NZ and are ultimately about challenging the government and the capitalist system at its core. Kim Dotcom, Keith Locke and communist party, Save Happy Valley and Tuhoe to name a few of many. So the NZ Government ignores the alt right/fascists/NAZIs and their more violent harmful threats to human life and freedom because the alt right/fascists are no real threat to Government and big business as the alt right/fascists don’t intend to eliminate either but to redirect and use them. Where as the “real”  or “far” left realise to fix the world’s problems, it cannot be done through capitalism and the current governments and they must both be replaced with credible alternatives. In short the government is more worried about the threat to itself from public dissent than it is about public lives.

Governments, especially NZ will continue to do so until that violence loses politicians votes.  Both National and Labour parties are complicit in creating this event by deliberately not spying on the alt right. Even when the NZ Government was warned by Alexander Gillespie in August 2016 at a gun select committee, of the alt right, including fascist, terror threat rise.

This attack is not an isolated incident, but part of the ideology of fascism that goes back to Mussolini (Italy), Hitler (Germany), Franco (Spain) and Hirohito/Emperor Showa (Japan) that gained power during the great depression when the capitalist economic system went into depression in one of its many crisis moments. While the wealthy vote right, to entrench their wealth and the poor know they are being screwed by the system regardless of who’s in government , the middle class who hadn’t been given knowledge and have not really thought about politics and who to vote for, follow whoever and whatever sounds good. Its then in the middle of a deep crisis the middle class realise that the middle of the road (centrist) political parties don’t know anything about economics and do not know how to solve the economic crises and so they look either to the far left at the real socialists or the far right to the fascists to solve that crisis.

Fascism and NAZism is simply the far rights way of curing capitalisms deep flaws. Fascism is neo liberal capitalism on steroids, run militarily. 

-Fascism is authoritarian and paternal coming out of conservative ideology and bans democratic elections. 

-Fascism believes in a class of rulers and a worker class, that have their rightful place ie like slaves or serfs in past systems. Yet Fascism believes capitalists and the workers have the same goals and that they should work together. It forces both sides of the class war to work together, punishing either for violations of this. It bans unions and worker’s rights. In Germany they reversed LGBT rights persecuting many and banned any other activities like jazz, cabarets, nightclubs etc that were considered immoral or hedonistic because they get in the way of hard work. Literature was destroyed, burning millions of books considered un-German. 

-Fascism is based on ultra-nationalism, that one country – theirs - is better than another, that one ethnicity - theirs - is better than another which leads to white supremacy and racism, all the while blaming others as scapegoats for the economic problems instead of capitalism itself. And of course if you eradicate community which is the foundation that holds society together you rely on the gun to enforce your rules so fascism is a very military run economic system by dictatorships dispensing with democracy.

-Fascism is based on some idyllic strong heroic mythical past built on strong military that can be reclaimed.

One feature of fascism – the darker flipside of its ideological celebrations of utopian national unity – was its cynical exploitation of public fears about visible and invisible enemies.

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” – Hermann Goering (as told to Gustav Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials) [2]. He was referring to democracies. The USA shows much of this being at war for most of its inception.




Fascism will rear its ugly head wherever capitalism exists and creates big crisis.


President trump shows signs of fascism with this cynical exploitation of people’s fears, with his campaign slogan (copied from Reagan and Clinton) of “make America great again” , promoting building a wall, blaming Mexicans for the economy, starting a trade war with China and the world effectively saying free trade doesn’t work and china  produces cheaper goods than USA so China is the problem. Like previous presidents he continued military footprint overseas. Continues militarising the police force with weapons, maintaining internment/concentration camps. While still continuing interfering in other peoples countries for Americas own ends, Iran, Venezuela etc . Trump has been endorsed by white supremist groups and failed to denounce their murder of a counter protestor in Charlottesville (even called out by his party)

Trumps stupidly and arrogantly in typical Trumpism attempted to ban the antifa movement as if it was a actual group. Antifa stands for anti-fascist.

Is Donald Trump a Fascist? | Robert Reich

Is President Trump Fascist? | NYT Opinion

Trump hasn’t yet displayed all the signs of fascism especially around eliminating democracy as he prefers smaller government.

 Thou he’s been called by many as simply a right wing populist in which rhetoric often consists of being for the working man with anti-elitist sentiments, opposition to the perceived establishment, and speaking to the "common people". Trump shares these commonalities with Marie Le Penn in Germany and UKIP party in UK, which incidentally forced Brexit onto UK and was supported by people dissatisfied with the economy wrapped up as anti-immigration. Trumps 2016 election was assisted by the alt right and he in turn boosted the alt right movement in USA. Both of these are signs of the failure of centrist political parties in those countries to address economic issues.

He definitely shares more of the similarities with the alt right which shares all the blame game of fascism but not its all of its military aims so far.

The alt-right, an abreviation of alternative right is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States, although it has since established a presence in various other countries. The alt-right came to prominence when Richard Spencer coined the term “Alternative Right” as the name for an online publication that debuted in 2010.  People who identify with the alt right regard mainstream or traditional (right wing) conservatives as weak and impotent, largely because they do not sufficiently support racism and anti-Semitism. [3] Just the same as Hitler considered his Weimar Republic Government that lost WWI as weak, motivating him to take control of it and develop into fascism.

The term is ill-defined, having been used in different ways by various self-described "alt-rightists", media commentators, and academics. Groups which have been identified as alt-right also espouse white supremacism, white separatism, severe immigration restrictions,racism, xenophobia,  antisemitism, and Islamophobia. [4] Many rejecting democracy and multiculturalism.

In Europe the alt right and fascists are on the rise everywhere in parliamentary elections as the 2008 GFC continues while governments do little to solve it.

These racist nationalistic ideas are not natural to humans, they have no factual or scientific base but they come from somewhere. Imperialism, colonisation and slave owning have been around for thousands of years since the Egyptians without racism. The feudal order got its authority from God but once the feudal order was toppled from 1700’s onwards and Europe started having semi democratic governments, the ability to colonise and rape and plunder at will needed more consent. This was gained by giving the humans of the countries being enslaved and plundered by Europe an inferior or non-human identity. Along with telling them their Gods were invalid/inferior and our white gods are better. And so racism was born.

The new emerging capitalist economies and industrialisation unleashed from the yoke of monarchies went hand in hand with that imperialism and colonisation. Since WWII there are no real imperialist countries/nations in the traditional sense anymore. Capitalists have taken over that imperialist role and just like sexism, racism is used to divide the workforce so it won’t challenge capitalism, including the banking system, together in unity.

USA has become the biggest and worst state empire. They bomb and invade other countries and financially cripple and usurp other countries democratic governments putting in place USA puppet governments but they don’t stay. USA may leave its army there for some time but eventually withdraws relying on its puppet government it installed to foster and protect USA economic interests. Murdering and causing deaths of millions in the process for USA dominance and profits for their corporations. Unfortunately for the world, part of this process included invading and interfering in middle-east countries and politics. This had 2 effects; the push back from Arabs including attacking USA personnel and army bases and the twin towers on home soil, bombing and secondly the increase in domestic terrorism and by 2016 just 3 middle east countries accounted for 2/3 of the world’s terrorism. 3 Countries USA had unlawfully invaded and interfered in – Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. These 3 countries are now no 1,2 & 5 of the worlds least peaceful countries in the world in the 2019 Global Peace Index. These countries civil populations fled the violence producing mass immigration into USA and Europe. These cumulative effects were then used by USA as an excuse to start a war of Terrorism on the world which was in effect a self-fulfilling prophecy causing what is now termed Islamophobia.

It is our NZ Government that cozy’s up to USA and protects the capitalist system and its ruling class that created the economic situation such as the vast wealth inequality, housing crisis, poverty, crime, ecology destruction which is always unstable and going into crisis mode  that has in the past and will in the future sow the seeds for the rise of fascism that came from the great depression when the next coming one hits . Governments and economists haven’t properly recovered from the 2008 GFC, in fact things are worse, the debt level is higher and economy just as unstable.

We will never erase fascist terrorism or the risk of it from our lives while capitalism exists and the world governments miss-educate us and don’t give us either the skills or knowledge for us to tell what is wrong with capitalism and what to replace it with. For example the NZ Labour party has completely failed to educate people on what democratic socialism is and the socialist alternative to capitalism . Yet it was created by socialist and unions and is supposed to represent workers . Despite also educating on Democratic socialism being its 5th of 5 goals and NZ Labour party has been in offfice 6 times.

How Capitalism Becomes Fascism - Economic Update with Richard Wolff

What "Fascism is capitalism in decay" means

Lastly Aotearoa is a landmass that was colonised by the colonial government of UK and the NZ Government. It did this through racism and war. The NZ Government has not paid fair reparations back to Maori for its theft of their land, culture and murders, ergo the NZ Government is still racist by nature as it treats Maori different than other victims of crime and unlawful acts. In the process this still existing racism and white privilege creates a lower socio economic class of Maori and provides the rich capitalists with cheap labour . This filters through to the protectors of the system, the police force and justice (courts and prisons), by the amount of many more times a Maori is likely to be charged , tried and convicted of the same crime as a white man.

It’s time to stop being soft on these racists and their ideas that kill. Racism, ultra-nationalism and fascism/ NAZIsm needs to be challenged and stopped from getting any air. The NZ Government will not take effective positive action. The NZ Labour Government has used the corporate media to divert the news and the serious questions that need asking and discussions that need to be had, from taking place.  As predicted the NZ Government has brought in more restrictive gun legislation, more draconian freedom reducing legislation, to further spy on the real left in NZ to prevent critique of NZ Government and its support for capitalism. Compounding their shock doctrine by placing permanently armed squads on the streets that now perform routine work including traffic stops. All the while crying and wearing hijabs and mumbling niceties about how terrible the shooting was and NZ isn’t like that, accept it is !

The only way to beat racism and fascism is for workers of all nationalities and ethnicities to unite and take action together. We need to shut down hate speech, racist speech and the alt right and fascist groups from operating and anybody supporting them. Groups like National Front, Right Wing Resistance, Western Guard, groups on universities masquerading as clubs like Auckland University European Students.

Only building a mass united workers movement that is a credible alternative to capitalism ,  can stop the real violence and terrorism of the alt right and the fascists in the long run.

While I have used the word fascist mostly , of which we think Hitler was the biggest or most well known and Hitler is considered fascist hes technically a NAZI which was the name of his political party . While Hitler has most elements of fascism it has some big differences. Hitlers fascism was based on extreme racism towards Jews (which the others were not or were not initially like Mussolini ) and eastward expansion to aid his self sufficiency capitalism.


Links to better descriptions of fascism and NAZIsm and the difference.

The 10 tactics of fascism | Jason Stanley | Big Think


Heres 2 biased anti-socialist podcasters but they offer some nuanced  knowledge on the subject.

FASCISM: An In-Depth Explanation by Ryan chapman

Comparing the ideologies of Hitler, Mussolini and Mosley by TIK history

 

malcolm-daniel

24 Mar 2019

Updated 29 May 2020


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