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As the world watched the apparent decline of the ISIS-led global terrorism, it now cowers in fear of the rise of a different, yet equally deadly kind of a worldwide terror threat perpetrated by white supremacists, a group no less extremist and fanatical, as shown in the recent attacks on two Muslim mosques in New Zealand.
Forty-nine people were killed and 48 more were wounded in the dastardly attacks, one of which was streamed live on social media by a self-confessed racist and fascist as he methodically and mercilessly mowed down his victims who were in the mosque for their Friday prayers.
The gunman, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, left no doubt as to his intentions as he left behind a 74-page manifesto on social media wherein he said he was launching the attack to reduce immigration by intimidating immigrants and that he hoped to further polarize and destabilize the West, and spark a civil war in the United States that would ultimately lead to a separation of races.
After a deadly civil war and decades of civil rights campaign in the United States, the terrorist Tarrant wants to bring back the barriers that separated colored people and what he and his ilk deemed as the “superior” white people in basically the same manner his role model, US President Donald Trump, wants to put up a physical wall between people from the southern border he deemed as bearers of crime and violence and the American people (pronounce it white people).
Tarrant admitted being a Trump supporter, not as a leader but as a symbol of renewed white identity: “As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no.”
In the video, the gunman showed no mercy as he cut down anybody he saw move inside and outside the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, changed guns and magazines until he ran out, went back to his car to get more guns and ammos, and then went back to the mosque and shot again at people he had already gunned down.
In the manifesto, Tarrant said he chose the victims because he saw them as invaders who would replace the white race. He wrote that an attack in New Zealand would show that no place on earth was safe and that even a country as far away as New Zealand is subject to mass immigration.
Amid the worldwide outrage and concern about the new terror threat posed by white supremacists, Trump – Tarrant’s symbol of white identity — said he saw no such threat.
“I don’t really, I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess. If you look what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that’s the case. I don’t know enough about it yet … but it’s certainly a terrible thing,” Trump said.
Trump, who had just vetoed Congress’ resolution rejecting his national emergency declaration to build his border wall, instead warned of “crimes of all kinds coming through our southern border,” adding that “people hate the word invasion, but that’s what it is.”
Trump’s frequent use of invasion by immigrants from the south allegedly carrying diseases, crimes and violence has been tagged as one of the reasons white nationalists have re-emerged from decades of sleep and silence.
“The words and imagery coming out of the Trump administration and from Trump himself are heightening these fears,” Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
The New Zealand shootings are just the latest of similar attacks attributed to white supremacists. The growing list, according to the Center, includes includes the killing of 12 Jewish worshippers by Robert Gregory Bowers at a Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2018; the massacre of six Muslims by Alexandre Bissonnette in a Quebec City mosque in 2017; the murder of nine black Christian parishioners by Dylann Roof in a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015; and the slaughter of 77 people by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway in 2011.
Two-thirds of terrorist attacks in the US are carried out by far-right individuals and groups, according to a recent study, and research by the Southern Poverty Law Center shows that most far-right violence is linked to white supremacy.
It is no coincidence that the re-emergence of white nationalists or white supremacists came after Trump’s election in 2016. White supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke pledged support for Trump’s candidacy in 2016 and Trump refused to disavow Duke’s support. In his first year in office, Trump refused to blame white nationalists when violence erupted in a protest rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying instead that both sides, including the white supremacists, had “very fine people.”
During the campaign in 2016, Trump also ignited the hate drive against Muslims when he said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he thinks “Islams hate us.” During the interview, he deplored the “tremendous hatred” that he said partly defined the religion. In his first months in office, he called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US, claiming that majority of Muslims worldwide supported ISIS while failing to differentiate between ordinary Muslims and radical Islam extremists.
Trump’s continued tirade against Muslims, Mexicans and other immigrants as foreign invaders bringing diseases, crimes and violence is establishing a culture of hate that has started to trigger white supremacist terrorism that, if left unchecked, could bring a revival of the Nazi era and the realization of political scientist Samuel P. Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” hypothesis that people’s cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. Huntington argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures.
The New Zealand attacks should awaken the world’s leaders of the new global threat that could be more devastating than other nature of terrorism the world has known. White supremacy is a scourge that should be stopped immediately.
(valabelgas@aol.com)