In the wake of the New Zealand mosque attack a narrative is emerging that perhaps seeks to minimise the causes for these acts of terror. Facebook has taken down 1.5 million copies of the video clip filmed by the white supremacist terrorist as he slaughtered his victims. The Guardian suggests it is “highlighting the enormous challenge involved in keeping violent and offensive material off social networks”. Funny, I was banned for calling someone a rat on Twitter, I’d had previous suspensions for telling someone to eat his own weiner in retaliation to racist and sexist threats and with regards to fb in particular, I closed my account when I’d had enough of the racist threats to rape me, which fb said did not violate its apparently nonexistent standards.
This didn’t happen in a vacuum, white supremacists didn’t one day decide to say and do all the things they’ve been legalled banned from doing so since 1965 with the Race Relations Act (the act banned racial discrimination in public places and made the promotion of hatred on the grounds of ‘colour, race, or ethnic or national origins’ an offence); this was a long process of normalisation, of proliferation via social media. It was a miscarriage of justice enabled by the institutionally racist police force and crown prosecution service. Freedom of speech doesn’t extend to protected groups, suspensions disproportionately affected minorities. These attitudes were confirmed in national newspapers with even ‘left wing’ columnists claiming silencing and oppression for having bigoted views.
They enabled violent hate speech by claiming it was not islamophobic or transphobic to spout their privileged propaganda. Where is the inquiry into the causes for this breakdown in humanity? Perhaps the very same white supremacists who created this crisis are still in control of the reins and are steering it towards their original objective, white supremacy, self assured in their limitless power?
Every time we see a white supremacist terrorist in the news they fit the type; worthless useless antonym of supreme kills people for kicks and white people everywhere claim a victory for white dominance. This clash of civilisations was a misnomer, there is no clash of equal strengths, they’re not crashing together like cymbals, it is a death match heavily weighted towards an historical oppressor. It should have been called the White Supremacist Superbug, its resistance to progression and social justice hypothesised as the catalyst for genocide the globe over.
These have-a-go-at-homicide nobodies would stop if one of their leaders went down for their part in the normalisation phase. Indict Mark Zuckerberg for crimes against humanity. Milo Yanofuckface should face charges not just a suspension from travel to Australia, for his comments following the massacre. Tumblr, for eg, has just taken down all its porn posts, essentially losing 1/5 of its user base yet Twitter and FB are hesitant to do the same with Nazis. It is for this reason alone silicon valley bosses have been slow to react to hatred and bigotry; white supremacy is big bucks, whether off the back of a terrorist slaughter or a good old fashioned war, these greedy pigs chose to line their own pockets over tolerance and humanity. Personally I don’t have a problem with porn but Nazis can die in a fire. I’d hazard a guess porn is a bigger money spinner than racist hate but no one wants to have sex with Nazis.
We antifascists have been begging and pleading with those in power to give this issue the attention it deserves since at least 2012 and look at where we are now. We are still being silenced, still being oppressed and the architects of this injustice (and I include the Guardian in this for their platforming of bigots such as Suzanne Moore, Grace Dent and Julie Bindel to name a few) are revising the facts so that fb deserves sympathy as opposed to our wrath. The problem is the journalists, the tech geeks, the politicians, they all went to the same schools and hit up the same coke dealer for that good Columbian shit and this status matters more to them then scores of dead Muslims. They have more in common with each other than the rest of humanity. We should be joining the dots between the main offenders and figuring out who went to school with who, and who is in possession of whose dirty secret, so that we might get a handle on this shit show once and for all.
(Happy Shamima Begum’s baby died after all, I bet)
Left at the Lights 