Trick wrote:could this shooting be more out of islamophobia than racism in the form of white supremacy ?. as i understand there have been a presence of east asians in NZ for quite some time, and of course the maori.
It's interesting that you say that. Malcolm X gave up his "white devil" rhetoric after he met blond, blue-eyed Muslims. In fact, there's no Saudi or Arab "race," they're Caucasians. Hitler's Nazis had no problem with Muslims, but there's a whole Aryan mythology. But, Americans don't see Muslims as white people; nor do Americans consider "white" the same thing as "Caucasian." (See "Singh v US"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... ingh_Thind). Or, take a Google image search for "Tamil people."
The "white supremacy" you mean is a matter of economic and political power and maintaining them. "Race" can be used to create and define a necessary threat that can unite people who had been at war or had escaped the results of wars in their homelands. "Race," not being born here, determined whether one was American or not. But, it comes down to how one looks. If Obama had favored his mother, he'd be White.
So the NZ shooter, who was Australian, acted because he saw immigrant "others" as a threat to his "White homeland." Btw, Google that phrase. But, yeah, there were Maori people on those islands for thousands of years. Ok, demographics change. That's just what this shooter and other "nationalists" are trying to prevent. Except, for guys like this, that means wherever in the world they are, and we see what they are willing to do.
Anyway, in NZ, they're calling him a terrorist. I mean, he obviously was; but, the problem with using that term is that it implies using the same methods to deter and prevent it that we suggest for other terrorists. I.e., increased surveillance, water-boarding, preemptive drone strikes --without the need to report civilian casualties, economic sanctions, freezing bank accounts, etc, because these groups pose a terrorist threat at least as great as any other. However, that would mean saying that the ideology is wrong. Hey, Reagan said so; Bush said so.
"A man is rich when he has time and freewill. How he chooses to invest both will determine the return on his investment."