With an attack on a peaceful nation at the bottom of the world, white supremacists widen their violence
The father of six recalled this while standing at a length of police tape near the house of worship that is now a crime scene. He had been inside on March 15 when a white supremacist showed up with a carload of guns and a video camera on his helmet. “He was standing by the doorway shooting, and I fled to the back room,” says Alisaisy. “Children were crying, women yelling, and we could hear him keeping on shooting.”
The safety of a South Pacific island nation was not the only illusion destroyed that day. Also undone was the popular conception of international terrorism. The Christchurch attacks on two mosques that took at least 50 lives established white supremacy as a threat to Western societies nearly as formidable as terrorism carried out in the name of fundamentalist Islam—and one that, if anything, appears to draw even more oxygen from the Internet.
Long pigeonholed as “homegrown” or “domestic” terrorism, the violence of right-wing extremists emerged in remote New Zealand as a transnational threat. Here, a widely traveled and heavily armed Australian invoked white nationalism in the name of an international campaign against immigration. The magnitude of the attacks would have thrown the spotlight onto rightist extremism even if the killer had not streamed them on Facebook Live.
This story is from the April 1, 2019 edition of Time.
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This story is from the April 1, 2019 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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