[BREAKING] Livestreamed mass shooting in Christchurch Mosque, New Zealand
931 replies, posted
I haven't fully checked the 871 replies this thread has so I don't know if this has been discussed before
But am I the only one who feels that this attack has somehow felt worse than previous attacks around the world?
This is the only attack in a relatively stable country that was more-or-less fully documented (by the attacker, no less) on video, with clear connections to Internet culture. The whole thing is like an augury of the divisiveness and turmoil modern technology can enable.
Only because it's close to home and you're presumably a white atheist and so was the killer.
The attack on the concert in Paris was equally as gruesome I'm sure.
It did its job of terrorism by a few points:
Standard psychopath with hatred for X group + manifesto (meh)
Aimed at Muslims as a response for ISIS or whatever (meh)
Relatively high bodycount for a shooting (meh)
Attacked in New Zealand, an extremely low profile Anglo/English speaking country with no real history of mass shootings (key point #1)
The guy livestream everything from his own point of view and its available online (key point #2)
Bonus:
The shooter was an edgelord memer with Sub2PDP/Remove Kebab/Initial D Gas Gas Gas music, so now these are dragged into the mess
The NZ government is poorly handling the online response of sharing the video/manifesto, now turning this tragedy into a larger question of censorship, free speech, and free press
Forgetting the part that the media played in this?
If they would have plastered his face over fucking everything, maybe it would've resulted in better handling.
The past 2 days I've been unable to go to a news site without having a picture of his gun/face, or an animated gif of him shooting someone.
He did this for attention, and that's proven by what was posted before when he was documented in court. The first thing he did, as soon as he was in the court room was look for the cameras and pose for them, and the media ate it up like a bunch of addicts craving their next hit.
Terrorism only works if it invokes terror, and the media are doing 80% of his job for him. It's revolting.
I assume this is a PhD informed opinion on your part, and not just pulled out of your ass
It's incredibly well documented that solitary can lead to permanent insanity in a very short time.
Fuck, i miss clicked. I meant to reply to who he was replying to. I completely agree
You may go about your business.
I didn't forget it, but the media does this with every single tragedy from 9/11 to Sandy Hook. It's par for the course which is awful but the other factors I've mentioned make it feel worse than the other events.
Imagine if a disgruntled teenager shot up his school, and while he was doing it he streamed it with Pumped up Kicks playing from a bluetooth speaker in his backpack. Imagine the equivalent of Twitch Chat being asked if the person limping on the floor should be spared or executed. This is new age shit that people 10 years ago couldn't fathom as a possibility because up to this point people shot up a place, and offed themselves or the police did it for them.
The media is and always has been there to cover the event, collect footage from witnesses, do interviews, etc. but what this guy did was new. It was technology-aided as he was cheered on/fueled by the stream audience. That's what makes this different, not the media being scummy as normal.
Sure, I can agree with that. Up until the point you say "not the media being scummy as normal."
They are always scummy. At the very start of this thread someone posted a video of a criminal psychologist advising CNN and other huge US news networks what NOT to do to make sure this sort of stuff doesn't happen again. Literally every single point he made, has been broken by every single major news network.
I get that they are a business and all that, but do even the reporters not sit there and feel like maybe some shit is a bit too far?
Good example of this is the video I posted of Waleed from The Project in AU a few pages back. I absolutely hate his guts personally, but what he did was far and beyond what any of us could have hoped. (I'm not sure if The Project did coverage of the shooting since I don't actively watch it and only saw this clip)
But I HOPE they didn't do coverage on it, and if so that's all the better. The Project here is incredibly Liberal sided, and yet during this time, they told the PM of Australia (who is liberal) to essentially go fuck himself with his comments of sentiment when he is basically a racist.
I don't know about other places, but for a news network to completely 180 their politics is incredibly rare here, even in times like this.
I also feel they deserve credit as they focused on something more important, addressing a racist senator publicly who only 1 day after the shootings said "it was their fault they got shot", etc...
As much as I hate to say it, THIS is what news companies should be doing. Acknowledge it happened, and then focus on what you can do to actually help.
Meanwhile all these news companies around the world are doing their 24/7 coverage and breakdowns of the fucking livestream of him shooting people, it's disgusting.
Relink of video.
https://twitter.com/theprojecttv/status/1106471346303754240
Solitary confinement is a form of torture and should basically never be used. Just months of it fucks people up forever.
Yyyup, I know
Solitary is inhuman, but it's also the only reliable way to contain some people. That's why the US has ADX Florence, where we put our spies and terrorists.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/03/18/morrison-waleed-aly-muslim/
To everyone who was previously asking about the current state of AU's political system. Here you go.
2 days has passed, and our PM is already back to his old ways.
Funniest part about this is it just further validates what they said on the show about Morrison constantly flipping and not saying anything substantial and being a complete racist.
I asked where you draw the line because we already have restrictions on speech from the government. You can be punished by law for divulging trade and state secrets, or certain court proceedings. You can be sued for defamation depending on what you say about someone. You might be arrested as a public nuisance for shouting in a residential area. Advertising gets restrictions even though it's arguably speech. Obscenity, intellectual property, and direct incitements of violence as well. And, of course, shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.
Why, then, should we not do away with government, being that it is the ultimate "system for enforcing control over free speech" and a very normalized one at that? Should we go for anarchy? Seeing as you still want the government to be there to enforce some measure of control, probably not. Should we do away with the power government has over all those areas I mentioned? If not, then your position would be well accepting of censorship, but arbitrarily draw a line wherein the slippery slope begins.
The other day, someone seemed to suggest restricting protests if they "shout down" speakers, as that would be definitively restricting the speaker's free speech. To me, that's ridiculous. The loosely defined act of shouting someone down should not allow the government step in and restrict your expression in an organized demonstration. As presented, however, it'd be censorship for the purposes of upholding free speech. Your definition is clearly not the only interpretation that exists. Do you understand why there's worry that your system, for state-mandated and enforced free speech, could be abused? Not only is it not immune to the dangers you present, it is arguably even more vulnerable, mandated by law to embed itself in discussions and directly regulate them. Yes, you said the government would be merely "asking" sites to ensure free speech... through legislative power. And denying them protections if they do not comply, which for a wide variety of sites, would mean shutting down. That's not asking.
I think your idea is dangerously optimistic even by your own standards. It predicates itself on a naive understanding of human nature as uncorruptable so long as it follows your personal definitions of freedom. Furthermore, unless, as stated, the goal is eliminating government itself, stating that you're against any systems for enforcing control over free speech is hypocritical.
What is the solution? I frankly don't know, and I'm not sure who does. Call this a cop out, but I can't call my opinion fully formed. I've tried listening to various points of views. I live in a country with a history of censorship, and a continent with even worse examples of it than Brazil's own history, of which I've heard direct accounts coming from family members. I worry about slippery slopes, and how difficult it can be to deal with groups driven underground.
At the same time, I don't see everything as a slippery slope. There's a clear benefit to denying extremists an easily accessible place of recruitment. You may think the worries supersede that benefit, and/or you might not consider/see that benefit at all, as people's ability to be discerning is more than enough to deny extremism a place in public discourse. You certainly seem to believe the former, and though I can't say just how partial you are to the latter, you clearly presented it as a solution when the populace is educated, and has access to proper physical and mental care.
I'd argue that populace would still have the emotionally vulnerable, the financially unstable, the politically driven, the easily manipulated, the bigoted, or the outright sociopathic, and other groups vulnerable to radical ideas, or willing to push them. Education and mental care certainly lessen some of these issues, but they are only one, imperfect way to deal with radicalization.
If you acknowledge this imperfection, but think we should run with it, of course I agree. If you think it's the only thing we can run with, as anything else risks the pitfalls of widespread censorship, I disagree, I sure as hell would ban T_D, and think the place where you draw the line is more arbitrary than you realize, even though the fact I share some of your concerns means I don't feel as certain as I would like to. But if you think free speech is not just a barrier against censorship, but an outright solution, that freer speech means better speech, that competition of ideas is the one true ensurer that public discourse never falls prey to radicalization, and that the lack of sufficient education and healthcare are the only things preventing a "marketplace of ideas" from functioning with competition as an isolated factor, then I would be very, very comfortable in calling it anti-scientific trash predicated on idealistic naivete.
That whole "free market of ideas" concept that's being pushed lately just reeks of dishonesty. Now that people are starting to see the constant chants of "free speech" by right-wingers as the flimsy justification of pushing their propaganda that it is, they're simply moving to a new term like a corporation shedding old, tainted branding - Comcast into Xfinity, anyone? It's a textbook case of pure spin is what it is. Incorporating terminology such as "free market" to make other right-wingers salivate and hop aboard, and implying some sort of open exchange of ideas so that they can shout down any dissent with "you're just trying to suppress enlightened discourse and intellectual progress!" It'd be a brilliant bit of fact-twisting if it weren't so blatantly transparent.
The fact is, any actual discourse is impossible with these people. They don't want to exchange ideas, they want liberals to come meet them on their home turf so that they can pull a coordinated dogpile on them, drive them out in humiliation, and then file the incident away as an example to use next time they want to push the "feels before reals libtard" image or to dismiss that particular person's credibility should they ever meet again. They treat this whole thing like a game and it's one they've practiced for years now. Laying traps, formulating new strategies, gathering intel on their "opponents", all to pound anyone who threatens their agenda into submission. We've already seen examples in this very thread with excepts of that handbook about how to co-opt memes to ease young internet users into neo-Nazi ranks. They've got their chicanery down to a science.
On a separate note, following up on the discussion of Kiwifarms and "lolcows" a few pages back, I'm reminded of how the creator of TempleOS committed suicide several months ago because those bastards had been harassing him for ages and eventually goaded him into killing himself once they got bored of him. Not to say the man was without faults - he had severe schizophrenia, which lead to extreme paranoia and racist outbursts on his part - but he was still someone with real talent and the potential to offer something genuinely worthwhile to the world, especially if he had gotten the mental help he needed. Instead, those damn locusts got to him first and sent him into a downward spiral with their abuse - egging on his delusions and meddling in his personal life, all of it exacerbating his mental instability - all for some cheap and nasty entertainment. Then they just tossed them away like garbage and left him with a broken life. He'd done nothing to deserve it, aside from having flaws and vulnerabilities they could exploit.
That news has stuck with me, constantly reminding me of what those freaks are willing to rob from the world to get their kicks, no matter how unique or precious it is, or what potential may be lost. It harkens back to that old "rules of 4chan the internet" meme, one of the rules being "the more pure and innocent something is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it". It seems an entire generation has grown up taking that to heart, set out to ruin whatever they can simply because they can, safe in their bedrooms behind an anonymous internet connection, steeped in sardonic nihilism. And now, this Christchurch incident. An example of the logical endpoint when someone delves as far as they can into that misanthropy: going out and killing random innocents for yet more kicks and "internet lulz".
Let no one tell you this is not a genuine threat.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/111381874/christchurch-attacks-how-police-and-citizens-responded
"1.47pm: The first armed officers arrived at Al Noor mosque on Deans Avenue at 1.47pm, six minutes after the 111 call."
seeming more and more like the attack was a success, what he wanted to happen is happening.
They arrived literally a minute too late. A minute could have seen nine people saved.
What a travesty.
Just want to point out that it was never proven as a suicide. Some people thought it could be, but most of what I've seen seemed to be that he was possibly unaware. With his mental issues, it's not farfetched to believe he was just unaware of the train coming. If you can prove me wrong with something I haven't seen, I'll eat my words, but I don't think it's wise to just say it was if nobody even knows all the facts surrounding his death.
no, im not defending kiwifarms, they're shit
https://riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2019/03/18/st-louis-store-asks-whether-new-zealand-mosque-shooting-was-tragic-or-fucking-great
The Facebook poll, which appears to have been deleted between Saturday evening and Sunday, drew thousands of votes and hundreds of comments. According to a screenshot, fifteen percent of respondents
viewed the killing of 49 innocent people as a cause for celebration.
I really hope all these people are being put on a fuckin watch list.
