New Zealand PM leads global Internet censorship campaign

Source

http://www.wsws.org

By Tom Peters
18 May 2019

The so-called “ Christchurch Call ” summit in Paris on Wednesday, led by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron, marked a significant escalation of the drive by governments throughout the world to censor the Internet.

Ardern and her Labour Party-led government, along with the Australian and French governments, are taking a leading role in exploiting the March 15 Christchurch terrorist attacks by Australian fascist Brenton Tarrant to justify sweeping attacks on freedom of expression. Tarrant live-streamed a video of the shootings, which killed 51 people, on Facebook.

The “summit” issued a statement signed by 17 governments, including the UK, France, Australia, India, Indonesia, Canada and Germany, along with Facebook, Twitter, Google and other tech giants. The statement agreed to “eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content” on social media platforms and other websites, and to steer people toward officially-sanctioned “positive” alternatives or “counter-narratives.” The US government did not sign, but a White House statement expressed agreement with the statement’s “overarching message.”

No one should be fooled by worthless assurances that these governments and corporate giants will protect “freedom of expression.” What constitutes “terrorist” or “extremist” material will be decided by the state agencies.

For the past two years, corporations such as Google and Facebook have collaborated with the US and other governments to severely restrict access to left-wing, socialist and anti-war websites, particularly to the WSWS. Their algorithms have been modified to reduce traffic to these sources, while promoting supposedly “authoritative” websites, i.e., the corporate media, in search results and news feeds. These measures, justified with lies about combating “fake news” and Russian and Chinese “interference,” are now being escalated under the guise of fighting “extremism.”

The New Zealand prime minister, having been glorified in the media internationally for showing “kindness” and “compassion” following the Christchurch shootings, has become one of the chief propagandists for censorship internationally.

An article by Ardern in the May 11 New York Times, with the misleading headline “How to Stop the Next Christchurch Massacre,” blamed the attack on social media and lax gun controls, while covering up its political roots. She made no mention of the fascist, anti-immigrant and white supremacist ideology that motivated the gunman, apart from a hypocritical sentence about the need to “tackle racism and discrimination.”

Far from opposing racism, Ardern’s Labour Party-led coalition government includes the racist and xenophobic New Zealand First Party, whose leader Winston Peters has made numerous anti-Muslim statements. Labour and Ardern herself have vowed to cut immigration. They have echoed NZ First’s nationalist demagogy and adopted many of its anti-immigrant policies. After the 2017 election, Ardern made Peters foreign minister and deputy prime minister, giving his right-wing nationalist party significant power in the government, despite the fact that it received just over 7 percent of the votes.

Ardern wrote that the Paris agreement “is not about undermining or limiting freedom of speech.” In her “Christchurch Call” speech, she again rejected concerns “that this action plan we are endorsing today is about curbing freedom of expression.”

Such assurances are belied by the actions of the Labour government since the Christchurch attacks. It has worked with the corporate media to suppress public discussion about the causes of the atrocity. Tarrant’s manifesto, which reveals the similarity of his anti-immigrant, nationalist views to those of NZ First, US President Donald Trump and other political parties in Australia and across Europe, has been banned. Anyone caught with the document could face a lengthy prison sentence.

Likewise, media organisations have agreed to self-censor their coverage of Tarrant’s upcoming trial, so as not to report on his fascistic statements, precisely in order to obscure the connection to the foul right-wing politics of all the establishment parties.

This unprecedented censorship is also aimed at preventing discussion about Tarrant’s sympathy for the military and police, and why the intelligence agencies and police failed to prevent the Christchurch attack, despite repeated warnings. A royal commission of inquiry, which began this week ostensibly to look into these questions, is so far being held in secret.

More sweeping and permanent censorship mechanisms are being planned. A foundation established by former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark has recommended a new regulatory body specifically to police social media. It would have the power to take websites like Facebook completely offline, as happened in Sri Lanka following the terrorist attacks in April. The Helen Clark Foundation’s report, “Anti-Social Media: Reducing the spread of harmful content on social networks,” also calls for restrictions on the ability to live-stream videos.

Already, the Australian government has seized on the Christchurch attacks to rush legislation through parliament that will impose severe fines and prison sentences on social media executives who fail to remove material that the government deems “abhorrent” and “violent.” This could include videos, photos and articles that expose police brutality, war crimes and fascistic assaults on immigrants.

Such laws have nothing to do with fighting racism, terrorism or “fake news.” They will be used against the working class and its ability to organise against war and social inequality. It is no accident that the “Christchurch Call” was hosted by Macron. His right-wing government and the French media have slandered the anti-austerity “yellow vest” protests, involving hundreds of thousands of workers, as violent and anti-Semitic, in order to justify brutal police crackdowns and the arrest of protesters.

New Zealand’s ruling class has also been shaken by protests and strikes over the past year, including by teachers and healthcare workers. The corporatist trade union bureaucracy has expressed hostility and nervousness over workers organising independently and sharing information on social media.

The contempt for freedom of speech shared by all the governments that signed the “Christchurch Call” is most starkly revealed in their support for the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning. They face lengthy imprisonment or even the death penalty for exposing US-led war crimes and other government-corporate abuses. The New Zealand parliament last year refused to even discuss a petition presented by Assange’s supporters calling for Ardern to offer him asylum.

As the crisis of capitalism deepens, with escalating social inequality, trade war and US threats of war against Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, China and Russia, the ruling elites are returning to the methods of the 1930s and 1940s. Governments are whipping up racism and xenophobia to divide workers, while desperately seeking to censor information, in order to prevent the emergence of a mass anti-war and anti-capitalist movement.

The author also recommends:

Australian fascist group tried to recruit Christchurch terrorist

[8 May 2019]

The Christchurch terror attack and the promotion of fascism by the ruling elite

[8 May 2019]

‘NZ shooter mind-controlled by 9/11 false flag op’

The New Zealand gunman has been mind-controlled by the 9/11 false flag operation designed by Israel, a political analyst says.

Source: PressTV-‘NZ shooter mind-controlled by 9/11 false flag op’

http://www.presstv.com

Mar 16, 2019

Go here for video:

http://PressTV.com/Default/Embed/591158

The gunman, who killed 49 people and wounded more than 40 during Friday prayers at two New Zealand mosques, has been mind-controlled by the 9/11 attacks false flag operation designed by Israel, a political analyst says.

The incident was the country’s worst ever mass shooting, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern condemned as terrorism.

The Australian gunman behind the massacre, identified as Brenton Tarrant, broadcast live footage on Facebook of the attack on one mosque in the city of Christchurch, mirroring the carnage played out in video games, after publishing a “manifesto” in which he denounced immigrants, calling them “invaders”.

PressTV-49 killed in ‘terrorist’ attack on mosques in New Zealand

At least one gunman has killed 49 people and wounded more than 20 during Friday prayers at two New Zealand mosques.

In his manifesto, Tarrant said he saw US President Donald Trump as “symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”

“I think it is interesting that this gunman is lionizing Trump at the same moment that Trump himself is surrounded by the Zionist neo-conservative wing of power in the West that actually created this entire clash of civilizations with their false flag mind-controlled operation of September 11, 2001 that was designed to inculcate inter-generational Islamophobia ,” Kevin Barrett, an author, journalist and radio host with a Ph.D. in Islamic and Arabic Studies, told Press TV on Friday.

“This gunman probably is one of the many many millions of people who have been mind-controlled by the September 11 false flag operation and subsequent false flag operations to hate Islam and this, of course, has led to a genocide of Muslims around the world.”

“This relatively small number of Muslims falling victim to this seemingly crazy terrorist are really part of the same group of 32 million Muslims who have fallen to the Zionist 9/11 triggered anti-Islam genocide,” he opined.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on Trump to condemn the shootings as a white supremacist terrorist attack.

CAIR National Executive Director Nihad said Trump needs to assure Muslims that they are protected and that he will not tolerate violence against their community.

Eight Thoughts On The Christchurch Attack

Source: Eight Thoughts On The Christchurch Attack – Caitlin Johnstone – Medium

medium.com

With permission from

Caitlin Johnstone

Mar 15,2019

Three people are currently in custody in New Zealand for terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch. As of this writing, 49 people are dead and 48 people are being treated for gunshot wounds. Explosives were found in two vehicles but none were detonated. It was the worst attack of its kind in New Zealand’s history.

One of the three individuals, a 28 year-old Australian man, live-streamed himself shooting mosque attendees and published a white nationalist manifesto explaining his motives. I don’t feel like linking to either of these things, the former because sharing it would be gross and the latter because the manifesto contains calls for further acts of terrorism and suggestions as to how they might be carried out, as well as instructions on how best to circulate white nationalist propaganda. It’s currently unclear to what extent the other two individuals were involved.

I’m not used to these things happening in my neck of the woods and I’m still a bit frazzled about it, but I’ve got a few thoughts on the matter that I may as well spit out even if they’re sloppy. Here they are in no particular order:

1 — The most common point of discussion I’m seeing online about all this is the designation of the “terrorist” label. Whenever an attack like this is perpetrated by a Muslim I see right wingers screaming at every media outlet that doesn’t label them a terrorist, and whenever a white person does it I see those on the left screaming at every media outlet that doesn’t label them a terrorist. And I totally get it; it’s unfair to see white people labeled “gunman” and “shooter” when a Muslim would not receive the same treatment from certain outlets.

But it is also important to remember that the threat of domestic terrorism is used by the empire to justify taking away civil rights on the pretense of protecting the citizenry. Demanding the expanded use of that term is ultimately demanding more surveillance, torture, arbitrary detention, and the erosion of legal and constitutional protections for everyone. It’s important to be aware of the potential propagandistic leverage in the language and causes we advocate.

2 — There is definitely a correlation between war propaganda and mass murder. I can’t cite any studies for that claim because nobody’s doing them, but there is no way that being told mass murder is acceptable day in and day out by highly adept manipulators doesn’t make a civilian more prone to committing acts of mass murder. Australians always get sucked into the western empire’s wars, and thus receive the same kinds of war propaganda through our mass media. There’s only so far you can twist a mind into accepting the unacceptable before it breaks.

3 — Relatedly, Islamophobia has been exponentially inflamed by the mass media since 9/11 to justify the empire’s need to keep slaughtering human beings who happen to be walking around on top of oil and geostrategic locations. In his manifesto the attacker explicitly stated that he chose Muslims as the group of immigrants to target with his racist vendetta because “They are the most despised group of invaders in the West, attacking them receives the greatest level of support.” The reason Muslims are so despised is because the flames of Islamophobia have been fanned by propagandists who need us not to care about the cold-blooded murder of a million Iraqis.

4 — The Christchurch attack was evil and horrific. And, also, it was no more evil or horrific than the violence routinely inflicted upon Muslims in the Middle East by the US war machine.

5 — The manifesto was really dumb, with the final three-quarters containing nothing but sermonizing on the need to start killing brown-skinned people to ignite a western racial and ideological war which will balkanize into separate ethnostates. The guy babbled on and on about the need to protect “European” nations (which for him included majority-white nations like Australia and the USA) and “European” heritage, without ever touching on the fact that Europeans were all constantly killing each other until a few decades ago. They all hated each other, and in many cases still do, because nothing unites them besides the relative absence of melanin on their skin. They’re a bunch of completely different nations with completely different cultures.

6 — The following three beliefs about “white culture” are stupid: (1) that it exists, (2) that it is under attack, and (3) that it is worth saving. There is no such thing as “white culture”; the absence of melanin is not a culture. There is Irish culture, Italian culture, Spanish culture, German culture, but there is no “white culture”. I feel no special kinship with anyone who shares my skin pigmentation in the way that two Black Americans or Aboriginal tribesmen might, and neither does any other white person who hasn’t gone out of their way to make a moronic, artificial construct out of “white identity”. Two ancestors of American slaves have a shared collective history and experience unifying them, two Australian Aboriginals have tribal culture and tradition, but two white people have nothing beyond “Yeah we both need to put on sun screen at the beach or we’ll get cancer.”

White culture isn’t a thing, and if it was it wouldn’t be anywhere remotely close to being under attack, and even if it were it wouldn’t be worth saving anyway. White people have succeeded in murdering, raping, pillaging and bulldozing their way across the planet, and now our entire species sits on the brink of extinction thanks to the “advancements” of white society. We’ve got nothing to be proud of and it would be fine if we faded softly into obscurity.

7 — The manifesto gripes about miscegenation (interracial reproduction) and dwindling birth rates constantly, which shows you why white supremacists are also reliably awful misogynists. The reason birth rates are down in the west is because that’s what happens when you give women money, education and legal equality. When women get those things, we tend to take full ownership of our reproductive systems, and guess what? We don’t feel like having ten kids anymore. High birth rates are the result of desperate, powerless, under-educated women being forced to pound out children at a high rate by men who regard them as property in a hyperpatriarchal society that doesn’t care how draining having a lot of kids is for a mother, and that’s what white supremacists want to see western women reduced to. The fact that they also want to stop us from having sex with brown-skinned men is just another symptom of this slaveowner mentality.

8 — One of the things which gives me hope for humanity is how when horrible things happen, most of us rally around and start helping each other. There’ve been some really beautiful stories about what (white) passers-by did to help the shooting victims, and watching the outpouring of love for New Zealand and the Muslim community from all around the world has been making me cry all day. Humans are so fucking gorgeous. I really hope we stick around.

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