Like all Wired Shut, this is under-edited, under-researched and under thought out, but it is my attempt at an honest, but hopefully engaging opinion, I am writing stream of consciousness:
Am I a hypocrite for feeling so genuinely sad about the Christchurch shootings? - People get hurt, murdered and mistreated daily globally in extravagant number.
Why then did I genuinely shed a tear in the name of people I will never meet at the other end of a country I love and loathe in equal measure?
Is it just proximity? Am I just another hypocrite that is to be lamented online by other hypocrites all feeling the overwhelming need to weigh in on something that has such significant bearing on the lives of key others around us that we should all just have kept our mouths shut and let their voices be heard?
Is my NZ born and bred tall poppy soul just so at odds with my ever flexing god complexing that the pair are squeezing this internal discussion outward, while simultaneously disallowing me to form a coherent prose of any kind beyond a string of rhetorical noise?
Maybe if I am writing I should at least try to make a point…
I do and I don't understand what happened in Christchurch on the 15th. The muddle of Tarrant’s diatribe about the whys and logics of what he did are so self referential like all modern internet dialogue. To the point that there is no way to read them without a sense of humour axing key ideas as the rote talking points of darkly humorous subcultures like 4chan, or in his case the white nationalist depths of 8. But we all know that those subcultures are inherently the discussion havens of the fat neck-bearded and powerless of us, huddled in “mom’s” basement, greasy hands scuttling across LED lit mechanical keys, pouring nonsense to the like minded. AND those “internet savvy” among us all know that they have a key self referentiality about them. That is to say all those involved are aware that they are the scum of the earth. All greentexts or otherwise read as highlight reels of people sarcastically retelling their inabilities to be coherent and effective in the real world, and none of it is without self referentiality. Nutjobs circle jerking about who is the least stunted in their never committing pursuit towards normality, whilst simultaneously hating on the normies who they hate for just being normal. How then to we analyse such a dialogue and say see, this is it here, this is where he became a radical. Or this here, this is the type of thing we need to stop. Arguably some of this dialogue has become so stratified with meta language and autistic group think, that all contributors and lurkers can all be entitled to an entirely different view to the severity or humour level of what is being discussed. But frankly that is 4chan, 8chan is a slightly different beast…
If Reddit is your go to cultural news network, 4chan is the boots on the ground newswire ticker sending the raw informational bytes of meme’ry and whatnot into the ether to be normalised and made more palatable before they find their way into the mainstream, homogenized and friendly. When you scroll through your reddit feed while you’re on the toilet, 8chan is the shit you flush when you stand up to leave.
8chan eschews the humour and self referential, for the “I told you so’s” of what can only be a bored, underemployed, disenfranchised, powerless brand of right-wing white-nationalist nonsense. None of it reads with the same esoteric cheeky wink that I’ve come to love so much about 4chan’s meta narrative. While saying that I am entirely willing to believe that the meta is so vast that i am just entirely uninitiated enough to fail to understand it.
When your general discussion topics are inherently anarchistic, valuing protection of self, dismantling of states, and general fear of collectivist ideas, one would tend to presume your politics lean toward the aforementioned anarchy. However 8chan is fascistic through and through. Much like proponents of intersectionality, they seek the creation of stratified states with limitations on rights based on a chosen hierarchy. However they differ from intersectionality to a polar extent in terms of who should be at the top of said hierarchy. 8channers seek a white ethno state and they have key beliefs that pretty accurately align with those of the Neo-Nazi. That is: the white man is king, all others are lesser evolved beings who deserve to be under his boot. They also take special effort to find ways to blame the jewish community for damn near every negative event possible, to comically ironic effect. White Australian attacks a mosque full of peaceful worshipping Muslim refugees. Two comments in to anger at the massive support the go fund me for the christchurch muslim community. Yada yada, race war needed, and cue passionate anger and guns being taken away, as though the average NZer was a texan fearing a democrat gaining the white house. The word “cuck” is liberally applied to almost all comments. Less than a third of the way through, and the thread has become almost entirely about how the 6 million dollars crowdsourced and donated is numerological proof of a jewish conspiracy, a semitic guiding hand causing the tragedy rather than the white nationalism incited and perpetrated by this very messageboard.
Suffice to say it is an open forum for what appear to be white males who self describe as marginalised. As far as rules go, the most strict policies outlined on the site are its adamant adherence to not being a place of child pornography, something it has been proven to facilitate but not host. As well as its how to spot snooping authorities, disinformation, spies and suppressors of the truth. Another example of the profound irony on display here. Is the cleaning up of such a cesspool of vibrantly racist nonsense a means to prevent future attacks, no. They would just go elsewhere, 8chan is a symptom, not the cause.
But enough has been said about the content, users and ideology. What needs to be discussed is that these people see themselves as freedom fighters, as a last bastion of hope for a people who will not stand up for themselves proudly and openly on the world stage. These people see themselves as our champions, standing tall in the firing line to fight for freedoms we have become too “cucked” to demand. Which while I disagree with I understand.
There was a time of colonialism in the past, where my pale skinned european ancestors walked arrogantly over the world subjugating or destroying all cultures they came across and forcibly “civilising” the world in their image. All shapes of culture and commerce we have now are inherently marred by that process. The process of breaking down outdated structures that incorrectly cite freedom where none exists are and have been growing as proximity teaches people that differences in skin colour do not reference differences in ability, capability or dignity. However doing so at social, governmental and economic levels means painting in broad strokes. Those strokes are by rights going to leave some people behind.
Change like all things happens like a pendulum swing, we should not be looking for the large and obvious motions, but for the happy medium point where the pendulum will one day come to rest. But there are also the extremes, however it is my perspective that all of the current extremes we have be they left or right wing are all inherently fascist. And as the squeaky wheel gets the grease, the extremes have come to dictate discourse. They yell back and forth at one another, while the moderate masses sit back and ignore their posturing. But if the middle raised its voice would it not just become a new polarity in the melee?
But the extremes are totally fine with putting their necks out for the nonsense they believe in. So too are they totally fine with walking into a place of worship and gunning down 50 innocent civilians and injuring many more. These people were not extremist islamists, they were just people, and fucking New Zealanders for that matter.
I think that is the hardest part to tackle internally, these were New Zealanders, this attack happened in New Zealand. School shootings in America, bombings in europe and the middle east, Russia and China disappearing political dissidents, African coups. Endless wars. So much strife and pain happens in the world daily, but in my mind NZ was an oasis, by way of simple distance we were not a player, we are not big enough to offend, we are not strong enough to fear. I guess in that sense Tarrant was right, this has been a sensation of a loss of innocence for me, and perhaps for other New Zealanders too. I am heartened to see all the stories of heroism and altruism becoming the forefront of this story, not the tragedy. I am happy to see talk of the removal of automatic weapons from NZ, frankly I was not even aware they were legal until now. Call me a liberal cuck if you need to, but I think at this point unless I was thrust into a life or death situation, I think holding a gun would just make me feel kind of sick. They have always scared me, but seeing such a real and visceral example of their life changing power, I just do not want them in my life.
I don’t have answers, I don’t have adequate words of sympathy, I don’t have a solution, and maybe I should just have kept my mouth shut. Sad that the first attempt to actually make use of this site couldn’t be under better circumstances.
-Logan
