Each time another human massacre is perpetrated by another white male, it’s as if it’s unprecedented so nothing changes
As usual, wherever it happens and innocent blood flows, come the sadness and extended mourning… and people trying to come to terms with man’s capacity to wreak havoc on his fellowman… woman.
There are prayer vigils for victims, along with what have become moot calls for political intervention — gun control. But in what’s regarded as civil North American, European and other societies where people of European progeny constitute a majority, the perennial conversation about (the right to bear arms…) inevitably fades into the next act of human carnage then restarts… And depending on which continent of the planet one inhabits there are brighter lights to illuminate the latest human carnage. Place and people are invariably determinants.
I’m no historian, just one among a couple or three billion inhabitants of this planet where, as things have evolved over centuries and throughout modern and contemporary histories some people (by design) have been able to, on the backs of others through nefarious means, maneuver themselves into positions of global dominance.
The result is a twenty-first century compartmentalized world of haves and have-nots, due to full-fledged wars and other human conflict, exacerbated in modern times by natural phenomena which are wreaking havoc in certain places, resulting in unprecedented movement of millions across the globe, crashing borders and washing up dead on inter (national) seashores, to the chagrin of many nationals, some of whom are resorting to mankind’s base instincts – hatred of others – to deter others who see foreign lands as safe and greener havens.
Extreme politics across the world is one aspect.
So when, on March 15, what has become known in media parlance as “a lone wolf… a terrorist” massacred those 50 Muslims practicing their faith at the two Christchurch, NZ, mosques, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it the “Latest example of rising racism and Islamophobia…”
His was one of many international leaders who expressly stood in condemning and in solidarity with New Zealand and (the families of the victims of) that mass act of blatant terrorism.
The irony is that the leader of a country that prides itself on being all that’s good and worthy in the world is yet to offer a genuine (sincere) sentiment of ‘grief sharing’ in solidarity with the people where one of his (apparent adhering) disciples did the unthinkable in one of the most unimaginable and serene places on the planet, where the victims had migrated to seek a safe haven.
Of course, that leader, who along with his deeply nationalized followers all of whom take pride in describing their country in superlatives, is yet to say I’m sorry… to the people way down under. Understandably, his ideology is grist, mental fodder, for his ideologically steeped clan.
Erdogan continues, “With this attack, hostility towards Islam, that the world has been idly watching and even encouraging for some time, has gone beyond individual harassment to reach the level of mass killing…”
“It is clear that the understanding represented by the killer that also targets our country, our people and myself, has started to take over Western societies like a cancer.”
In Our Daily Bread, one of the daily readings (Sunday March 17) reads, […] I read a story describing how in the 1970s a group of older Germans stood outside a large hotel while what appeared to be a younger man bustled about with the group’s luggage. Someone asked who the group was. “German pastors,” came the answer. “And the younger man?” “That’s Martin Niemöller—he’s eighty. But he has stayed young because he is unafraid.”
The text continues, “Niemöller wasn’t able to resist fear not because he possessed some superhuman anti-fear gene, but because of God’s grace. In fact, he had once held anti-Semitic views. But he had repented and God restored him and helped him speak and live out the truth…”
That excerpt might serve all the perpetrators of hate and hatred well, as they continue their lives in the throes of Satanic/devilish actions and deeds.
Full disclosure.
I am, by no stretch, a religious (or any ideological or other) fanatic of any kind, but I try to live a life of peacefulness directed by a mind and thinking that’s free of all negative isms… and being non-judgmental, which has served me well up to this point in my unfolding life. Most importantly I still have too much to do to entertain negative ism thoughts…
As a person of African descent… Black, there’s too much to do in [our] ongoing – seems like perpetual – struggle in combating the multiple evil forces that have historically been arrayed against us.
Which is why I have never embraced that term “[visible] minority” in reference to people; by definition it has a sense without value, of lesser value. It suggests to me that people like me – the most visible of those who have been boxed into that category of “visible minority” are without status, “tolerated” (not accepted), and therefore expendable.
As such, the institutionalized abundant social forces that wield the power, as such empower extreme anti-status quo forces (with a specific and dubious agenda) that target certain (of those so-called ‘minorities’) in recurringly perpetrating their intolerable, horrible, hateful, inhuman, heinous acts such as that other one the world was privy to last Friday, March 15 in Christchurch, New Zealand.
It’s no surprise, then, that people branded “visible minority” remain at the mercy of the anti-certain people forces. Christchurch was just another example of certain of them not just propagating, but also going to the extreme: taking things in hand in carrying out the expressed supreme [dominant] peoples’ agenda.
“With this attack, hostility towards Islam, that the world has been idly watching and even encouraging for some time, has gone beyond individual harassment to reach the level of mass killing,” the Turkish president said.
“It is clear that the understanding represented by the killer that also targets our country, our people and myself, has started to take over Western societies like a cancer.”
Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin wrote on Twitter, about what he called a “racist and fascist” attack.
“This attack shows the point which hostility to Islam and enmity to Muslims has reached.”
“We have seen many times Islamophobic discourse against Islam and Muslims turning into a perverse and murderous ideology. The world must raise its voice against such discourse and must say stop to Islamophobic fascist terrorism…”
If only Black people in this city could muster that sort of unfiltered talk in addressing our race-oriented systemic issues… we continue to endure, in spite of all the political and other talk.
We, too, are permanently in the sights of people who would, at anytime, do us harm. But if Niemöller was able to change, so can they.
Nevertheless, we, all the potential victims of others’ hateful ideology must be vigilant.
