The Christchurch Shooting and the Normalization of Anti-Muslim Terrorism

The real forces responsible for the destruction of many Muslim-majority countries and the current chaos present in many Western countries are not generated by civilian populations or religions but instead by the global oligarchy that engineers and profits from this chaos.

by Whitney Webb

CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND — What is without question the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history took place on Friday when shooters, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant among them, opened fire at two Christchurch mosques. Four, including Tarrant, have been arrested for the heinous act, which claimed at least 49 innocent lives. Tarrant was responsible for killing more than 40 victims, among them several children, in a rampage he live-streamed on Facebook, sending chills throughout the Muslim community, particularly Muslims living in Western countries.

Tarrant’s motives and ideology, laid bare in a 74-page manifesto, show a concern over the fertility rates of non-white groups as well as the immigration of non-whites to countries like New Zealand and Australia, which he likened to an “invasion” that threatened the white majority in those countries. However, Tarrant — in his ignorance — failed to grasp that many of the Muslim immigrants he targeted had come to New Zealand after fleeing Western-backed invasions, occupations, or persecution in their home countries.

Notable among Tarrant’s views is the fact that he is a clear ethno-nationalist, promoting his view that different ethnic groups must be kept “separate, unique, undiluted in [sic] unrestrained in cultural or ethnic expression and autonomy.” Tarrant also claimed that he doesn’t necessarily hate Muslims and only targeted those Muslims {i.e., immigrants) that chose “to invade our lands, live on our soil and replace our people.”

He also stated that he chose to target Muslims because “Islamic nations, in particular, have high birth rates, regardless of race or ethnicity” and to satiate “a want for revenge against Islam for the 1,300 years of war and devastation that it has brought upon the people of the West and other peoples of the world.” His views are remarkably similar to those of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, which is unsurprising given that Tarrant named him as an inspiration for the shooting.

Though many — in the hours after the shooting — have sought to place blame and point fingers at notable demagogues like President Donald Trump or “counter-jihad” alt-right figures like Laura Loomer and Jacob Wohl, it is important to place Tarrant’s motivations in context.

A body lies on the footpath outside a mosque in central Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, March 15, 2019, following a mass shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Indeed, while Trump’s rise to political power has brought Islamophobic rhetoric into the public sphere in an undeniable way, it is a symptom of a much broader effort aimed at propagandizing the people of the United States and other Western countries to support wars in and military occupations of Muslim-majority countries. This manufactured Islamophobia, largely a product of Western governments and a compliant mass media, has sought to vilify all Muslims by maligning the religion itself as terrorism, in order to justify the plunder of their countries and deflect attention from their suffering.

It is a classic “divide and conquer” scam aimed at keeping Westerners divided from Muslims in their own countries and abroad. The horrific shooting in Christchurch is a testament to its unfortunate success and pervasiveness, as well as a potent reminder that it must be stopped. Indeed, this manufactured Islamophobia has made it so that Muslims in their home countries are in danger of dying from Western-backed wars and, if they flee to the “safer” West, they have targets on their backs painted by the very war propaganda used to justify Western military adventurism in Muslim-majority nations.

Islam, the media and “Forever Wars”: Who’s the “real” terrorist?

Since September 11th and the advent of the “War on Terror,” mass media reporting increasingly began to conflate Muslims and Muslim-majority nations with war, terrorism and violence in general. Indeed, 9 out of 10 mainstream news reports on Muslims, Islam, and Islamic organizations are related to violence and Muslims who are named on mainstream media are all-too-frequently warlords or terrorist leaders.

This near-constant association of Islam and violence has created the false perception that the religion of Islam, by its very nature, is violent and that Muslims too must then be violent and thus dangerous. This media-driven association has had very real and troubling consequences. For instance, a 2010 study by the University of Exeter found “empirical evidence to demonstrate that assailants of Muslims are invariably motivated by a negative view of Muslims they have acquired from either mainstream or extremist nationalist reports or commentaries in the media.” In other words, Islamophobic media reports are directly related to hate crimes targeting Muslims.

This is no accident, as such biased reporting on Muslim-majority nations also began as Western-backed wars in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan sought to put these countries’ natural resources, namely their oil and mineral wealth, into the hands of American corporations. It should be no surprise then that top funders of media outlets that have routinely promoted Islamophobic narratives are also those who have profited considerably from the “War on Terror” and Western-backed regime-change wars in other countries.

This concerted effort to vilify Muslims has had the potent effect, likely by design, of reducing empathy among Westerners for the largely Muslim victims of Western military adventurism in Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, while mainstream news outlets often trumpet the imminent dangers Americans face from “radical Islamic terror,” the death toll of innocent people — most of them Muslim — that have been killed by the U.S.-led “War on Terror” is several orders of magnitude greater than the number of Americans who have died from all terror attacks over that same period.

Residents carry the body of several people killed during fights between Iraq security forces and Islamic State on the western side of Mosul, Iraq, Friday, March 24, 2017. Residents of the Iraqi city’s neighborhood known as Mosul Jidideh at the scene say that scores of residents are believed to have been killed by airstrikes that hit a cluster of homes in the area earlier this month (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

For instance, from 2001 to 2013, an estimated 3,380 Americans died from domestic and foreign terrorism, including the September 11 attacks as well as acts of domestic terrorism carried out by white nationalists and supremacists. If one excludes the September 11 death toll, the number of American deaths over that same period stands at around 400, most of them victims of mass-killers who were not Muslim.

By comparison, an estimated 8 million innocent people in Muslim-majority nations died as a result of U.S. policies and wars in the Middle East and North Africa from 2001 to 2015. Yet, the magnitude of this loss of life of these “unworthy victims” is minimized by media and government silence, and the creation of a climate of Islamophobia in the West has only served to deepen the ease with which mass murder is accepted by the aggressor countries’ populations.

Beyond the staggering disparity in the death tolls caused by terror groups and Western-backed imperialist wars is the fact that many of these very Western governments that purport to be so concerned with “radical Islamic terror” have often created and funded the most notorious terror groups of all. Indeed, the U.S. government helped to create Al Qaeda and continues to protect its Syrian branch — Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — in Syria’s Idlib province to this day. In addition, the CIA was just recently revealed to be helping the Islamic State regroup in Syrian refugee camps. Furthermore, the U.S. has long turned a blind eye to the funding of terror groups by allied states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The role of Western money, arms and policy in the creation and maintenance of radical Wahhabi terrorist groups is often entirely ignored by Western media portrayals of Muslim-majority nations, thereby creating a false image that such violence is endemic to these nations when, in fact, it is often imported state-sponsored terror.

These nuances of the situation are rarely heard in the narratives parroted out on mainstream media and those who regularly consume mainstream news sources are more likely than not to support those narratives. For that reason, it is easy to see how someone like Donald Trump — who is said to watch television for eight hours every day, much of it Fox News — has espoused the views that he has. Thanks to the manufacturing of Islamophobia of mainstream media, racist policies like the so-called “Muslim ban” have found wide support, as this false narrative has conflated Islam with violence so often that many have come to believe that only by banning Islam can violence and terrorism in the U.S. be reduced.

However, the recent shooting in Christchurch, as well as the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting and other recent acts of domestic terrorism, should alert us to the fact that it is the hate manufactured by this false narrative that is itself endangering American lives while also covering up the mass murder that has been perpetrated by the U.S. and other governments around the world for decades.

Israel’s leading role in stoking ethnonationalism

While the realities of post-9/11 America, as well as the rise in visibility of white ethnonationalism during the Trump Era, have done much to normalize attacks on immigrants, the country that has done the most to normalize anti-Muslim terrorism over this same time frame has been the state of Israel.

Israel, from its founding days, has long been steeped in neocolonialist ideology that is remarkably similar to the ideological basis behind other settler states like the United States, Australia and New Zealand. This system of beliefs holds that the native inhabitants of the land — whether the Palestinians, the Sioux or the Maori — are “primitive” and incompetent and that the land would have remained “wild” and undeveloped were it not for the “fortunate” appearance of European settlers. As MintPress noted in a previous report on the subject, such narratives cast these settlers as both superior and normal while the natives become inferior and abnormal, thus obfuscating the settler’s status as foreigner and conqueror.

In Israel’s case, this ideology has promoted the idea that all Arabs are “sons of the desert” while the desert simultaneously represents a barbaric obstacle to “progress” and development. However, the state of Israel, under the lengthy tenure of current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has seen these long-standing and somewhat hidden underpinnings of the Zionist state burst out into the open.

The result has been the overt expression of ethnonationalism in such a way that Israel has become an inspiration to white nationalists in the United States, like Richard Spencer, and far-right ethno-fascist leaders like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and India’s Narendra Modi. The inspiration has been mutual, according to reports and testimonials published by Jewish newspaper The Forward.

For years, through its military occupation of Palestine, Israel’s government and military have sought to paint all Palestinians, including children, as “terrorists” or “terrorist sympathizers.” Take, for example, current Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who wrote in 2014, “This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people …”

A more recent example came from former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who asserted just last year that “no innocent people” live in the Gaza Strip and that every inhabitant in the enclave is somehow connected to Hamas, even though nearly half of Gaza’s population are children and teenagers. Such rhetoric has become par for the course and numerous examples show that Shaked and Lieberman’s views are increasingly accepted and “normal” in today’s Israel.

Yet, the clearest indication of anti-Muslim terror’s normalization in Israel is the recent rise of Otzma Yehudit, or the “Jewish Power” Party. This party, founded by devotees of radical American-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, has now merged — at Netanyahu’s urging — with the Jewish Home Party and stands to become part of Israel’s ruling coalition if Netanyahu manages to win in the country’s upcoming elections.

With a portrait of late Jewish extremist leader Rabbi Meir Kahane on the wall, left, a Jewish settler walks inside a disputed building in the West Bank town of Hebron Sunday, Nov. 16, 2008. The four-story building became a flash point for tensions when settlers moved in early last year after claiming to have purchased it from a Palestinian. The Palestinian denies the claim and Israel’s highest court ruled Sunday that the Jewish settlers have three days to evacuate the disputed building.. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

In the office of Itamar Ben Gvir, one of Otzma Yehudit’s leaders, is a framed picture of Baruch Goldstein. In an act that bears a striking similarity to the events in Christchurch, Goldstein — a long-time devotee of Kahane — entered a mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron in 1994 and opened fire, killing 29 and injuring more than 125 worshippers. After the act, Kahane’s Kach party — the predecessor of Otzma Yehudit — was labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel.

Despite official condemnation, Goldstein’s atrocious act has been the subject of praise and inspiration for subsequent extremists who, under Netanyahu’s government, have become increasingly normalized. Goldstein’s gravestone reads “He gave his life for the people of Israel, its Torah and land” and continues to be used as a site of pilgrimage and homage by the very extremists that Netanyahu is openly courting for political gain.

While the followers of Kahane are making a comeback in Israel, several notable Arab political parties have been banned from participating Israel’s upcoming elections, with some being accused of “supporting terrorism” owing to their opposition to Israel’s decades-long military occupation of Palestine. Yet, by elevating clear terror supporters among the ranks of the Jewish Power Party, it has become increasingly clear that openly supporting and advocating anti-Muslim terrorism is no bar to legitimacy and political power in today’s Israel.

No ‘clash of civilizations,’ only manipulation and exploitation of differences

The tragic and barbaric shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand is yet another horrific and glaring reminder that the “divide and conquer” war propaganda that has sought to promote the so-called “clash of civilizations” between Christianity and Islam, West and East, has not only been monstrously effective but continues to be monstrously destructive to people on both sides.

However, the media’s manufacture of Islamophobia, in seeking to Wite-out Muslim suffering and reduce Western empathy for innocent Muslim civilians, has increasingly placed targets on the back of Muslims everywhere — in the West and the East — making it increasingly difficult for practitioners of the Islamic faith to feel safe regardless of where they live.

With most Muslim-majority countries now killing fields in Western-backed wars, ruled by oppressive, Western-backed dictatorships, or under threat of Western-backed regime change, even those Muslims who have sought a safer, quieter life in the “civilized” West have now found themselves targets thanks to the very war propaganda used to justify the destruction of their home countries.

While the murderer Tarrant had stated that he hoped his horrific crime would help stoke “civil war” in Western countries, this tragedy should and must serve as a wake up call for people everywhere that the real forces responsible for the destruction of many Muslim-majority countries and the current chaos present in many Western countries are not generated by civilian populations or religions but instead by the global oligarchy that engineers and profits from this chaos. These oligarchs loot from the people of the West just as they do from the people of the East and it is time to recognize that they are the real threats to a more peaceful world — not regular people praying, whether it be in a church, a synagogue or a mosque.

Top Photo | Ambulance staff take a man from outside a mosque in central Christchurch, New Zealand, March 15, 2019. Multiple people were killed in mass shootings at two mosques full of worshippers attending Friday prayers on what the prime minister called “one of New Zealand’s darkest days,” as authorities detained four people and defused explosive devices in what appeared to be a carefully planned terrorist attack. Mark Baker | AP

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

In a related event, the Australian Senator Fraser Anning got his healthy dose of a fresh egg from a teen when he started blaming the Muslims for being just natural terrorists.

Fraser Anning condemned the shootings but said there was an apparent link between violence and Muslim immigration. He went on to claim that Muslims “usually are the perpetrators” of violence and that Islam is tantamount to fascism.

His statement caused a furore on social media; Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called it “disgusting” and noted that such views “have no place in Australia, let alone the Australian Parliament”.

Activists have already kicked off an online petition, seeking to remove Anning from office. It has garnered close to 350,000 signatures as of the time of this update.

13 thoughts on “The Christchurch Shooting and the Normalization of Anti-Muslim Terrorism”

  1. If the people who were killed were truly escaping the persecution from the islamic countries they came from than they would or should assimilate into the new country and abandon islam which if one examines the koran is just as bad as the talmud. They have no intention of joining the society they dwell in but always want to conquer it and make everyone submit to their religion. It is a horrible thing what these men did, but looking at it from their point of view, they were defending their nation from an invasion. Only those who know history and have a clear mind un biased by propaganda from the globalists can see this.

    1. With due respect, i do not know if you are American or somewhere in the West who actually ignore what is happening. May I ask who invaded countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan… This countries are prosperous before the war except Afghanistan. It was the West led by the Americans who invaded these countries and kill thousands of people, are these invaders muslims . Lets go back to history, Is it muslims who kills millions of Jews. Who started World 1, 2, is it muslims?. Even rats will fight for their lives if needed. Lets open our eyes and read more not only western
      media who supported killings of innocent people…

      1. Yes, moooslims killed millions of jews, all throughout history. They impaled babies in front of their mothers because they wouldnt convert. Dont think everyone is stupid and dont know the barbaric, criminal history of islam.

      2. First off thank you very much for your respectful reply to my comment, and I do agree with what you stated as I am an American and see what they the muslims are doing here as well as all over the world and have been totally against my own government for doing the will of the fake nation of Israel since1969 when I became aware of what was happening everywhere and started my education of ancient history and religions. My comment was with the topic at hand and that is what I stand by, so thanx again.

  2. “It’s the Jews, Stupid.” –Steele. I would add: “And civilization their host.” The Jews’ mantra: DIVIDE, plunder, destroy, rule.

    If one is focused on the Muslims, they are slavemaster to their own slavery.

    Not hate. Just unacceptable.

    “Ignorance is Strength.” I’m weak.

  3. Of course, New Zealand’s the dead are fake! Absolutely everything related to this “terrorist massacre” is a lie (the same as previous similar “mass terrorist acts” in the West). Yesterday 40 dead & 20 wounded, today 50 & 50. I think afterwards they flashed a few dozen more of them, eh? Did anybody seen just one corpse, wounded, bloody footprints, breakage, convex walls, heart… anything? No nothing! What about “4 suspects caught, 1 of which is a woman”?… They show only something bluish (blurred) (!), as in the Hague tribunal. “Witnesses” is, as always, the secret service men, as during the demolition of the 911 towers. And other people always “see” what they hear. Or the puck “hears” what they see. Since he hates me writing in more detail (and everything will be known anyway), that’s enough for today:

    “New Zealand authorities have reminded citizens that they face up to 10 years in prison for “knowingly” possessing a copy of the New Zealand mosque shooting video – and up to 14 years in prison for sharing it. Corporations (such as web hosts) face an additional $200,000 ($137,000US) fine under the same law.”

    source: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-16/nz-threatens-10-years-prison-possessing-mosque-shooting-video-web-hosts-warned

    Watch the full clip “terrorism”. Dead ends, dolls, all clean and tidy – http://www.153news.net

    1. Ii AGREE 200%!!! That whole scenario was FAKE as the FAKE JEWS are…And I had the damdest trying to follow it when it happened…MUCH THANKS FOR THOSE LINKS TOO!!! They completely Expose this even as the other Faked evens that happened HERE in the SHITTY old USA.
      AND, Of Course, the FIRST thing that’s repeated AFTER these kinds of events are “Supposed” Gun Laws having to be CHANGED!…Ya Know, Like its the Guns are running wild in the streets Killing people?!
      Just more Government anit-gun BS!

  4. Turkish intelligence authorities have now debunked the allegations that Mr Tarrant was the author of the so-called ‘manifesto’. This information draws serious concern over the feckless MSM narrative given to the issue so far, especially the hate-filled allegations of ‘white supremacy’.

    Indeed Mr Tarrant’s current description as “poorly educated” bluntly contradicts the manifesto’s inclusion of words like “disenfranchise”, a word that would not be used by someone alleged of such low intelligence and base instincts.

    Ms Webb’s claims that he “failed to grasp that many of the Muslim immigrants … had come to New Zealand after fleeing Western backed invasions, occupations, or persecutions in their home countries” are also highly questionable when many of the worshippers allegedly killed were Pakistani, or from other unconnected countries.

    “Western backed” forces were not directly involved in the current wave of middle east wars and conflicts. ISIS, ISIL and Islamic State, the Arab Spring and the Muslim Brotherhood are. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among others, come to mind as the most obvious backers, Ms Webb’s piece does not apportion blame for these wars to any Muslim ethno nationalities.

    Of course US policies, and for that matter so-called Western countries, have been heavily influenced and controlled by one middle eastern nation in particular – Israel. AIPAC and its tentacles have effectively controlled US foreign policy for many years now. Ergo, middle east wars [among other things] are at Israel’s behest.

    Perhaps Ms Webb [and this website] should consider writing about and exposing the 50 million Christians the Bolsheviks murdered during the 20th century before anyone else [wrongly] accuses the victims of this horrific mass genocide for the crimes of Christchurch, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention 911. Michael Moore stridently points the finger at the house of Saud for 911, yet the ‘dancing Israelis’ are a palimpsest imprimatur on this ‘massacre’.

    Or better still, perhaps the truth behind Hillary Clinton’s clandestine Benghazi operations should now be fully exposed [among other things] so white European Christians can see how select groups within the global power elite have attempted to use their MSM to blame white European ethno nationhood for these [war] crimes against all humanity.

    Unashamedly, because some so-called Muslims in both Australia and New Zealand actively support ISIS, ISIL and Islamic State, and in some instances returned to the middle east to fight in questionable wars, some white Christian Europeans Australians, understandably, see this as a rebuke of their tolerance and generosity and as genuine threat to their existential security.

  5. This was a false flag and I am tired of you half-truthers lying about it. Watch the video at 153news.net. Your site just lost all credibility with people who actually give a SH*T about the truth.

    1. AMEN!!! To That Sister…BUT I believe something more “Sinister” was involved with that scenario, and CLUE is, Why the BIG fuss about posting it…so much so Huge fines and Prison times for posting it???
      It appears that SOMETHING ELSE was supposed to happen Other than What we saw on those videos…SOMETHING WENT WRONG…and now the New Zeland Government wants to BURY it…II WONDER WHAT & WHY???

      1. Perhaps the fakery will be exposed then and the world will come to see ‘them’ for who they truly are.

  6. Thank you Jayne Says for showing me 153news.net ! I found it as a great source for logic and common sense approach to all this madness, and makes me wonder how much the Jesuits play in the disarming of the world to bring in the NWO, aside from the Jews whom I think may be getting their marching orders from the two Popes. I could be wrong, but my father was a Jesuit soldier and would not tell me what he did! and none of my family still alive have any idea either.

Leave a Reply