Christchurch Terrorism and the Impact of that Video

The terrorist killings of 9/11 were shown in real time on every national news outlet. They horrified all right-thinking people. They burned into the consciousness in a way that nothing else has since and changed attitudes.

So why are we appalled by the idea that people might watch a terrorist gunman killing people in Christchurch? Why (astonishingly) has so much of the coverage of this odious action focused not on the callous act but on its live-streaming?

I know that his actions were intended as propaganda and the killer wanted maximum exposure. But the 9/11 terrorists chose their targets with prominence in mind too and with a view to getting a simple message across.

My tentative view is that the main news outlets should have shown the film of the killings. The vast majority of us would have been horrified. Of course, some would have gloried in it. But they are glorying in it anyway – accessing it in many different ways. They are not the problem, or at least not the sole problem. You and I are the problem or at least part of it. Do we always challenge casual remarks that ‘other’ Muslims? Do we always examine our own prejudices and question them? The truth is that we will forget about Christchurch soon and drift on without much change in attitude and approach.

We all know that a picture makes a message stronger. Video and film make an even bigger impact. When I think of the Holocaust, I recall the images of Belsen not the many things I have read and not the unimaginable numbers. You cannot have watched such horrors and still stay silent when you hear remarks from the ‘Hitler had a point’ brigade that were common in my youth. Educationists know the impact of video too. Ask yourself how much angst you have felt about the numerous terrorist bombings in the Shia/Shi’ite clashes – casual mentions on the news and no pictures.

If we are going to change the environment so that terrorists of whatever ilk cannot prosper, we need to be appalled and horrified by the actions of men such as Brenton Tarrant. We need that horror to fuel outrage that makes it impossible for all but a handful of outcasts to say things about letterboxes or which lump all Muslims together in one vast group that threatens ‘the Christian way of life’ or Western civilisation.

I write this shortly after returning from Berlin. Among the sites I visited was the Topography of Terror, which charts the rise of National Socialism in Germany. The part that had the greatest impact on me showed photographs of opponents of the regime in the early 1930s being publicly humiliated. Crowds watched in evident pleasure; some passed by with their heads down. Wary as I am of Godwin’s Law, I cannot help but draw parallels.

I don’t know anyone that would shoot people in a mosque and I hope that none of my friends would take any pleasure in such acts. But I do know people that would pass by an anti-Islam rally with their heads down. I even fear that I am one. Being horrified by the extreme may be what many of us need to be better and stronger and to confront these casual Islamaphobes before their prejudice becomes reinforced and unimaginable horrors become imaginable.