I am sharing a selection of blog posts from Fellow Kiwis, who are more capable than I at expressing what most of us feel.
Yesterday, white supremacists walked into the Masjid al Noor mosque and the Linwood Masjid with assault rifles in their hands and hatred in their hearts and Christchurch, a city still recovering from the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes, will not be the same. Around 3:00pm yesterday, I was sitting at my desk on the University of […]
via Reflections on the Christchurch Attack — Adventures with Pete
Another Spectrum 
17 Mar, 2019 at 12:30 am
I commented over on this link, but I meant to post it here.
I just had a thought that here in the US, we are driven towards hate of the “other” primarily by Fox News, republican ideology that purposely divides us and right wing religious extremism. Those three have a huge influence here and appears be growing.
But yet, do you have a Fox News equivalent? And your country does not appear to suffer from fundamentalist hate filled religion like the US. You don’t have the kind of religion that says “god made trump president”, so where do these ideas come from in your country? I am just trying to understand how it could happen there.
I also realize this hate is growing worldwide and that hate has always driven people and politics. It seems hate can kick the emotions into a higher gear than love. It gives some people a passion they cannot find in love. This is the root of the problem, I think. Love is an uphill battle, while hate runs down the hill, slowly at first, but then with unstoppable vengeance. This is very dangerous and sad.
17 Mar, 2019 at 2:09 pm
No, we don’t have a local equivalent of Fox News, but our several of our subscription TV services include Fox News as one of the channels. I think all the major US News networks are available here along with BBC World, Aljazerra and several others. I don’t subscribe to any TV service, so am restricted to free to air services and the only 24 hour English language news service available is Aljazeera. There’s also a Chinese language new service, but that’s not much use to non-Chinese speaking people.
We have people here who are just as extreme as anywhere else, but as a percentage of the population they are much smaller. As a nation we favour harmony and compromise over “being right”, so there’s less polarization than in many other places.
Christians are the largest faith group, but all branches of Christianity combined make up around 40% of the population. Most are either cultural Christians (those who might identify with denomination, but without embracing the theology) or are liberal/progressive in outlook. Fundamentalism has a very small hold here.
If you listen to our politicians and other public figures talking about the tragedy, you will here no mention religion or religious beliefs other than in the context of the victims being followers of a specific faith and their right to practice it freely and without fear.
We now the the atrocity was carried out by one person, but how he became radicalised is not yet known. He’s lived in NZ intermittently over the last few years, but appears to have spent a lot of time travelling around the world.
Certainly trumps comments about America being invaded by foreigners hence the need for the wall adds legitimacy to such extreme racist views