The Dangers of Values: Brenton Tarrant, Fraser Anning and the Christchurch Shootings
The argument that the Christchurch shooter, suspect Brenton Tarrant, or the views of Australia’s Senator Fraser Anning, seemingly holding a lone torch, are somehow not representative of the broader whole, be it Australia or New Zealand, is a self-deflecting exercise. They are the uncomfortable mirrors of ruin, actual and perceived. They are the voices of people who can either be marginalised and confined or addressed.
Tarrant’s views sizzle with clenching anxiety, shot through the desire to recover what has been lost and what has been taken. It is deprivation, and it is not so much nostalgia as castration and insufficiency. How to overcome that? The response is spectacular violence, one that seeks to “show the invaders that our lands will never be their lands, our homelands are our own and that, as long as white man still lives, they will NEVER conquer our lands and they will never replace our people.”
Australian Senator Fraser Anning, with the bodies still warm, decided to wade into the debate. “Does anyone still dispute the link between Muslim immigration and violence?” he posed on Twitter. He had no time for the “clichéd nonsense” that the Christchurch killings were the result of poor gun laws or those “holding nationalist views”. “The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.”
Marginalisation, coupled with severe muzzling, is the preferred formula to such individuals. A petition to remove Anning from parliament, for instance, has reached 750,000, a move that will do wonders to martyr him and make way for crude shrines. “We call on the Australian government to expel this man who blames victims for their own violent deaths, and uses references to genocide to further his hateful agenda.”
Repeatedly, remarks have been made across the politically smug spectrum that neither the shooter, nor the reactionary senator, represent the “values” of Australasia. Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, Penny Wong, has dismissed Tarrant’s views as alien and incompatible. “He is not who we are.” Ditto Anning, deemed a freak. “I say to the people of New Zealand, I say to all people, Mr Anning does not represent Australia, he does not represent our values, he does not represent who we are.”
This is self-denying, camouflaging guff; individuals like Tarrant and Anning are, in of themselves, representative of a particular strain of thinking of alienation, morbid fear of extinction, a terror of being subsumed. Call it bruised White ego, the governing classes left out in the cold. Call it a sense of drowning and asphyxiation and falling into social and political irrelevance. They are the ones whose views suggest a loss of control, and, fundamentally, a loss of power. Consider Anning’s remarks on March 12: “I can see what happened in the UK where 429 Muslims are in political office now and hold massive influence over law making including introducing Sharia law.” Those of Wong’s persuasion would do well to consider that many Australians of a certain ilk and background are, however delusional, terrified about the incompatibilities of Islam and the Anglo-Australian legal system.
In August last year, Anning made the claim before his Senate colleagues in his maiden speech that Australia needed to finally redress the issue of immigration. He reflects on the era of Sir Robert Menzies, one where change was slow and wealth abundant; he then looks the country now, and sees welfare seekers everywhere. (A touch shabby on the actual success of Australia’s immigration program, is Anning). “In the days of Menzies, immigrants arriving here were not allowed to apply for welfare and that attracted the right sort of hard-working people this country needed.”
Such a program, one that had been taken out of the hands of the Australian people, needed a “final solution”. Whether Anning’s choice of words was intentionally vulgar, or simply ignorant and convenient, is impossible to know. But few listened or consulted the full text of that speech, which has a number of surprises. Anning mentions, for instance, the methods of the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, the inspiration behind an “insidious revolution”. Understand Gramsci, and you will understand the dangers posed by cultural Marxism. Anning misses the boat by a good stretch on why individuals concur with their institutions (people can be seduced not to revolt), but his views nonetheless draw the customary lines in the sand in the culture debates.
His words got their predictable reaction, fodder for his brand label. As a minor politician, publicity is pure oxygen. In the kingdom of clippings and short takes, his message was simplified and amplified. It is also worth noting that Katter’s Australia Party, to which he initially belonged, endorsed his claims about immigration only to have a dramatic change of heart.
Playing the values game is a dangerous one. What, exactly, are “Australian values”, inchoate and slippery as they are? We see those two words repeated with machine automated promptings. Australian values were not reflected in the killings; they were not reflected in the extremist sentiments of the suspect shooter or the senator with a loose tongue. But Australian values have just as easily been ones of expropriation, dispossession and racial fear, a product of British colonial mentality, frontier conflict against the Indigenous population, and the deputy sheriff essentials so keenly embraced by this extension of the US imperium. How pleasant it is to assume that something else is at play, that Anning and Tarrant are the exceptional monsters in the playground.
The poisoned well of anxiety and resentment is a deep and broad one, common to Islamic State and the right-wing fundamentalism that supplies their counter. They are, as journalist Stan Grant noted on ABC News quoting from Mark Lilla, the shipwrecked minds; they catastrophise the world, see it as calamitous. They nourish each other, supplying the nutrient of hate. To not understand the fundamental unity of these seemingly opposite positions, and seeking ways to remove that polarity, will be to mask the condition. Talk about values, to that end, is pernicious.
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17 comments
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Alcibiades -
Jack Cade -
Patagonian -
MöbiusEcko -
Brad Golding -
New England Cocky -
Andrew J Smith -
Jack Cade -
Zathras -
Phil. -
paul walter -
Kronomex -
wam -
Wat Tyler -
wam -
Alcibiades
Return to home pageAnti-Islam hysteria gets free reign on TalkBack radio, here in Australia. The fact that most callers spruiking this sentiment are AltRight ‘stooges’ does not concern the radio networks at all. Many seem to think that Sarah Hanson-Young is in charge of our refugee intake.(I hope she has 24-hour bodyguard protection)
Tarrant looks like the typical Anabolic Steroid gym junkie, it screws up your mind after years of abuse.
Has Julie Bishop mafe a comment? Apparently Tarrants’ father died of asbestos-related disease from working at James Hardie.
There is currently a Change.org petition calling for ‘Fraser Anning for PM’ ~8,500 signatures. 🙁
The Change.org petition calling for Fraser Anning removal from parliament is ~823,000 signatures and the largest petition on Change.org ever (& climbing)
Yet this is respectfully, succumbing to being ‘managed’ into a comforting, though pointless diversion & entirely missing the real issues, IMV.
The last two decades of permissiveness to right wing extremists, in all regards, by major & minor parties, did not occur by accident, did not occur in a vacuum, and was not only to garner extremist votes.
Profit. Dollars. 100’s upon 100’s of billions of dollars, towards the perversion of ‘National Security’, to better protect you ?!
ALL terrorist targets are ‘soft defenceless’ targets. Always unprotected …
Fark me. Protect you from manufactured Fear ? BS
Aggressive War aims. The right wing extremists Politically & especially the corporate media ‘Narrative’ served a primary goal, hatred & intolerance for the ‘Other’ as a foundation requirement to further those geo-strategic aims for over two decades.
The global ‘War on Terra’.
Anning is a nothing, a nobody, and is being used as a diversion. His name and that of the terrorist should be wholly ignored, otherwise we feed the tumour yet accomplish little.
What should be called out LOUD is those who led us to this deliberately, yet from yesterday, now express ‘Love & Tolerance’, and desperately pile onto to the irrelevant Anning so as to distract & divert. Look over there !
With the exception of Waleed Aly & a small number of others, the MSM continues to be wholly complicit re right wing extremists, and suffering from conscious wilful amnesia.
Hate kills. Incitement leads to Hate. Intolerance leads to incitement. Permissiveness leads to intolerance.
And those who have for almost two decades wilfully incited hate & all forms of fear-mongering & intolerance, are just as guilty as the terrorist who pulled the trigger.
I am anti all religions, but think everyone should be free to worship whatever they wish. Just leave me alone. I have read the Q’ran, and the bible, and find some attractive ideas in each. But neither was written by their heroes.
The most shocking thing about the Christchurch atrocity was that New Zealand does little harm to anybody, and the Muslims there seem well-integrated and accepted.
But words are now losing their power: we resort to swear words because ‘appalling’ and ‘shocking’ and ‘devastated’ are now freely applied to inadequate sporting teams or results.
I have never fired a gun; never owned one, never will. And why people – anybody – need automatic or semi-automatic weapons is beyond my comprehension. Do you need semi-automatic guns to hunt and kill a deer, or a rabbit? And how thrilling is it to shoot an unsuspecting animal from 700 metres? How courageous is that?
The inadequate creature that shot and killed mere babies is beyond the reach of ordinary justice. Reluctant as I am to endorse the death penalty, some people are truly beyond redemption and unfit to live.
And yet the vilest murderest seem entitled to appeal against whatever sentence they get. In fact。the lawyers who encourage appeals should be given a spell in in gaol when a sentence is upheld.
Autocorrect, by the way, objects to the correct spelling of ‘gaol’.
The thuggish behaviour of Anning supporters after he was egged by a young boy is instructive. As four grown men pin him down and one of them applies a choke-hold, one of them can be heard telling the kid that he is a ‘weak f#cking human being”. Another can be heard saying “we’re all diggers here”, and a third “You can’t assault Fraser Anning”. The irony of their comments and actions completely escapes them. When media representatives ask for the choke hold to be released, they are booted out of the premises.
Hinch has defended Anning’s right to ‘react instinctively’. Well, maybe in regard to the first hit, but not the second, and he had to be restrained from landing more hits on the kid.
I’m gobsmacked, really gobsmacked.
Have come off facebook where right-wingers are arguing that the killing of Muslims in NZ is a conspiratorial false flag. They avow that Tarrant had dealings with Shia Muslims in Pakistan, got weapons way to easily and the police took far too long to get to the scene.
There’s nothing like seeing right-wingers dummy spit when they lose or put up all sorts of utter nonsense when it’s their own that commit atrocities or felonies. According to the right-wingers I know, it’s only Labor and Unions who are ever criminal and corrupts.
Sadly, where I live, many people couldn’t give a toss about a number of Muslims being killed. They have been brainwashed by Rupert Murdoch’s zionist controlled and owned media into accepting that all Muslims are terrorists and the sooner they disappear, the better. They see no value in Islamic culture and are totally ignorant of how much we owe to that very same heritage Just as many here are brainwashed, similarly, many Muslims have been brainwashed by the same zionist media that they should destroy Christian culture. They are so ignorant that they don’t even know that Jesus is also a Prophet of Islam!
So many people prefer to keep their heads buried in the sand and fail to see who is behind all this and the wars in the Middle East in the quest for a greater zionist empire.
These people who fear us being “taken over” by Islam, also fail to acknowledge that that is exactly what we did to the indigenous population of Australia when we stole their land and committed a Holocaust against them, and neither do they care.
We live in a self-obsessed and self-indulgent greedy and materialistic society, massively in debt for junk we don’t need, with no spiritual direction other than the gods of various sporting arenas. We are sliding toward economic disaster and the people are still “hiring deck chairs on the Titanic as the waves lap against the deck,” oblivious to what is coming!
Speak up even if your voice shakes.
Agree with article and comments.
Fairfax today highlighted Anning, reactions or emotions of the community and laying blame on internet based radicalism.
But circled the wagons, i.e. not a whiff of the past decades of dog whistling of Australian MPs, media and society.
Brad Golding.
Although I endorse what you say, you should realise that resistance to Islam, and Muslim resistance to ‘the infidel’ is not new. Charles De Gaulle wrote in 1960 or thereabouts exactly the sort of stuff Islamophobes write today. What we are reluctant to acknowledge is that the West’s invasion of the Middle East and the theft of its resources – together with the virtual
destruction of Iraq, Libya, etc, is directly responsible for what is happening today. Plus, Trumps intention to move onto Venezuela MAY be supported by the RW governments in South Anerica, but you can be absolutely certain that millions of Chileans, Colombians, Bolivians, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Panamanians et al have not forgotten what Western-style freedom and Democracy actually means.
Beware of twats bearing heel spurs.
MöbiusEcko
I’m not shocked at all by the conspiratorial right-wingers.
They’ve been taking tactical lessons from the US “Tea Party”, right up to Pizzagate and beyond and are now ruled by MAGA Red Hats and evangelical nutcases who worship Trump as some sort of Messiah.
A favourite rumour was that Michelle Obama was really a transexual man, that Obama was really a gay Muslim and that they murdered Joan Rivers when she leaked the story in the form of a joke.
Then there’s Hillary – an actual witch who placed a demonic curse on the White House and not only sexually molests but also murders and eats children, as a member of a vast sinister global cabal of leftists.
You can’t reason with sick minds like these. Not only are they allowed to drive cars but may also own guns and can vote.
They never feel more threatened than when their twisted and distorted world view is challenged by external forces so they lash out.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/ is a fun place to visit of you want to keep up with the “real news”.
Brad Golding.
Agree with all that. I could care less how many people sign petitions to get rid of Anning, where I live and at my local, the people give a flying fornication about how many Muslims get killed in these attacks. A cursory look through FACEBOOK tells you all you need to know which way the wind blows and it’s a wind that not only blows no good but, will soon be a hurricane.
Most of the gibbering idiots discussing this tragedy are totally oblivious to the fact, this hatred has been ginned up by our own politicians. Look to the UK, the opportunist Tommy toe rag Robinson, he is being treated like a latter day Winston fk Churchill. His dumb followers think he is an intellectual an expert on the Muslim faith. I expect him to get off a plane carrying a piece of paper shouting peace in our time.
The world has gone nuts. Robinson like Hanson here, is relieving their followers of their hard earnt cash. Laughing all the way to the bank. There is going to be pay back for New Zealand and with it, if it happens before the next election and possibly in an Australian city or, another Bali, any chance the left has of changing the direction of the political discourse away from the insanity of the extreme right. A good percentage of the people who are going to vote with this latest tragedy hanging over us, are not going to be supporting Bill Shortens party. When the financial crash comes and it’s coming soon, New Zealand will be small fry. The hoi polloi out there mortgaged up to their bollocks when the foreclosures start in earnest, are going to blow a fuse.
Zathras, all that happened was that this week gun massacre happened in En Zed, not somewhere in the USA. Right-wing politicians and megaphones have far more to answer for than even the trigger men.
What a big non-surprise from Hanson –
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-18/hanson-anning-censure-vote-hinch-faruqi-christchurch-attack/10910708
“”A censure is… not going to prove anything,” she told Sunrise.”
Although in a way she’s right, it will have little effect if the thug senator can just ignore it and continue on his merry way until he’s removed at the next election. Still, at least it does register that he’s not welcome.
Il Duttonuci’s comments at the bottom of the article left me somewhat more than ever convinced that he’s setting himself up for another run at the leadership.
Then there’s –
“”I’m hardly going to take morals lectures from the extreme left who frankly are just as bad in this circumstances as people like Fraser Anning,” Mr Dutton said. “They should equally be condemned.””
This from an object that is everything he says (and far worse) in those two comments makes you want to vomit in disgust and revulsion.
I am a simpleton in almost all sense of the word but know that the truth is what one believes and my truth and yours are equally valid.
From my observation, religion is by men for men and indoctrination is the method of control of women and children. Women are not part of religion but defer to men by indoctrination and become the instrument of indoctrinate.
Islam is not a religion that fits ‘worship whatever they wish.’ because it is a method of social control in daily life like christianity used to be and still is in some quarters where women are not valued and do not value themselves above the neck.
The freedom of religion protect these social/cultural practices from being challenged.
The hijab is a cultural garment now given religious significance. The niqab and burqa culturally saudi and pakistani culture are in most christian minds religious garments.
Society trains men and women to kill, then leaves the debriefing to the individual most cope many don’t and are time bombs waiting for a trigger. There are thousand of time bombs.
Did you see anning’s boys??? They are in the institutions of law and defence including canberra???
Some people just have the urge to kill. In order to assuage that lust, they join the armed forces or, failing that, seek a group in society that they can exercise their perversions on.
All humans are animals and kill from fear or pleasure.
When I stomped on a snail my dad said ‘why?’
My family do not kill insects, spiders, mice or any animal in the house but catch and release
My dad and I shot many rabbits because we got 2/6d a pair and if we gut shot one it was our sunday roast.
Many years later I saw a roo dazed in the spotlight and I shot it. When I asked myself why, I have never fired a rifle since but I have been told to f#ck off when I ask why to friends who, out bush, have shot at little birds with the rifle they keep in their utes and 4 wheel for ‘protection’ against pigs..
Every fisher kills and in some cases cruelly mutilates before throwing the fish back, As a sideline fishing commentators always call all good fish ‘HE’ when big barramundi for example are ‘SHE’.
@Jack Cade
Indeed, there is no real justification for non-professional use of any semi-auto longarms for hunting, never has been. Any weapon that can be readily converted to semi-auto should be banned. Pistol grips, foregrips, folding stocks & bayonet lugs, etc re regulations/law are all irrelevancies. It is how the weapon functions/is designed, ease of use, rate of fire & ‘potential’ ammo capacity that matters.
The terrorist also lethally used one or more 7 round pump action shotguns.
A skilled rifleman can fire 40+, an expert up to 50 even 60 rounds per minute with a simple well designed/manufactured bolt action rifle circa WWI, using far more lethal ammunition. An adhoc handyman can modify to, even construct, high capacity magazines quite simply.
Capital punishment is State sanctioned murder, IMV. Statistically approximately 1 in 25 sentenced/executed are subsequently discovered to be innocent. Too late.
If even a single innocent is falsely executed, that is one too many, surely.
Lock ’em up, revoke all priviledges … a Life sentence should be exactly that, no possibility of parole … for the term of their natural lives. Then subsequently, errors, mistakes & injustices can, where proven, be somewhat rectified.
@Patagonian
Anning did not respond ‘instinctively’. He bodily turned, very briefly paused & assessed, then immediately threw two punches. Whilst saying words to the effect,”You little f__king bugger”. Nothing ‘instinctive’ about it.
Hinch is a loudmouth self-serving ever self-promoting media arch-opportunist, always has been, IMHO. He should follow his doctors advice and stop poisoning the ‘life gift’ of his donated liver. He chose to shake Annings hand after his ‘Final Solution’ speech.