Thoughts on Christchurch - Part 2

As a way of trying to understand what might have motivated the Christchurch shooter, I have started reading the works of Anthony D Smith who is a prominent thinker about nationalism.


Opened up the book, "Nationalism in the 20th Century" which is a pretty good book and strangely predictive in some of this thoughts regarding ethnic-nationalism. It was published in 1979, but its words ring true today.


He mentions that as communications has improved, so has the ability to raise educated or moneyed "elites" from different regions who feel like they have outgrown their provinces in which they reside.


Those provincial elites move for opportunities and start mixing in the world cities, and competing with those established people who then need to compete with these newbies. The competition and the fact that they have moved from their "tribe" means that they never feel like they belong, especially if they are non-traditional, i.e have no want of marriage or family.


Due to this disconnect, they then look for other ways to identify themselves, either through cultural norms like religion, nationalism or via appearance, like skin colour. And as secularism and equality has become more and more a part of life in the Western world, it can lead to racism and skin colour as a way of identification.


Smith mentioned that the more democratic a country is, the more weight is given to minority opinion. Which certainly does seem to be the case in Australia and New Zealand, where miniority opinions seem to hold a great deal of weight. Again, this can lead to the feeling by the majority that they are neglected or not receiving attention and can push these disaffected people into the arms of extremist movements.


And this seems like exactly what happened to Brenton Tarrant. A typical non-traditional young man with no interest in family, limited education, who was elevated to elite status by inheritance and felt he outgrew Grafton, a small town in NSW.


Decided to travel the world, again got exposed to the huge amount of diversity that exists compared to Grafton (which is a homogenous generally white town). Moved to New Zealand, a fairly diverse country in itself and found he couldn't compete economically and culturally and was isolated. Was non-religious, so instead turned to skin colour as a way of identifying and finding power, and hence took the step to anti-Islamic thinking which lead him to the horrors that occurred.


So after all that, what is the answer. How can we prevent this thinking. Well it is clear that education of the world is important to ensure people are aware of the diversity that is out there. And a focus on religion and family to build those traditional frameworks which can prevent the warped thinking. Preventing the movement of the provincial elites is difficult as generally, economies have demand for skilled workers.


Realistically, the genie is out of the bottle. All we can do is to remember to look after the majority as well as the minorities.