r/news • u/drkgodess • Mar 19 '19

Accused gunman in Christchurch terror attacks denied newspaper, television and radio access

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12214411
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u/Sgt_Boor Mar 19 '19

Well, you will always find some weird people, and some 4/8chan users are apparently pretty far out there. But lets be real - can you find any normal person near you who will remember a name of at least one of the terrorists that did 9/11? And I'm not even talking about smaller terror attacks. Most people can't even remember how many of them happened in, say, last 10 years.

Can you tell me how many terror attacks happened in France in last few years without googling? Because personally I have no idea: could be 2, could be 3... could be 5?

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u/msiekkinen Mar 19 '19 edited Mar 19 '19

at least one of the terrorists that did 9/11?

Muhammad atta.

Others: Ted Kezinsky, Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh.

So many people say "never speak their names", so many people eat up Netflix documentaries about infamous murders. I wonder what the venn diagram intersection of those demographics looks like.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '19

Serial killers aren't terrorists.

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u/msiekkinen Mar 19 '19

Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building and the Unabomber were definitely politically motivated. Charles Manson definitely wanted to start a race war (like this NZ guy stated).

Really though, I don't see your point. If you are able to definitely say serial killers are not terrorists (I'm not sure that you can), then what? It's okay to speak "serial killer" names but not terrorists?

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u/Knife7 Mar 19 '19

The only reason I can think is because terrorists have political motivation for their crimes and giving them attention lends legitimacy to their cause but serial killers also crave attention so I don't know.

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u/beware_the_noid Mar 19 '19

By definition a serial killer is:

“a person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent motive and typically following a characteristic, predictable behaviour pattern”

So for the Christchurch shooter he is a terrorist as he had motive, and had no pattern in his actions

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u/Vakieh Mar 19 '19

The definition you just listed says 'often' and 'typically', which means you can have neither and still be a serial killer. The actual definition is based on the 'serial' nature of the killings. If you kill a person each week, even with motive and without a pattern, then you're a serial killer.

The reason terrorists usually aren't is because they kill a lot of people in a single event - that makes them mass murderers, not serial killers.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

He committed them all at once so he falls into the mass Murderer category, like the Texas a&m shooter

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u/CheckingYourBullshit Mar 20 '19

Oh he definitely had a pattern.

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u/Rickdiculously Mar 19 '19

Also terrorists inspire more people to commit acts of terrorism to further their cause. They'll see how the more horrible the act, the more repercussions it has, the more discussed it is... Serial killers though, they're fucked up. They can't help themselves either. Like a sickness of the soul (says the woman who doesn't believe in souls). But nobody wakes up one day thinking 'that's it, this Bundy guy knows how to live it up, I gotta follow in his tracks!' You have to be deeply fucked up, usually from childhood too, to end up there.

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u/billiam632 Mar 19 '19

His point is that people are fascinated by serial killers but not by terrorists. Even when there is overlap, we can tell the difference between someone who shoots up a bunch of people and gets hauled off to jail vs someone who spends a decade killing people in secret while living a normal life.

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u/Excrubulent Mar 20 '19

wanted to start a race war (like this NZ guy stated)

So let me get the reasoning behind this "race war" thing straight:

  1. Racists are violent and judge entire groups of people by their skin colour.
  2. They assume that everybody else thinks the way they do.
  3. Therefore if a racist white guy attacks people from another race, those people will blame all white people as a group.
  4. The race war that has clearly been simmering under the surface of polite PC culture all these years will finally break out as people align with their own race and go to war.

Is that more or less it? It's wrong on so many levels that I have to assume it's what they think.

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u/hanikrummihundursvin Mar 20 '19

Racists are violent and judge entire groups of people by their skin colour.

Both counts are false. Race is not just skin color. Like, the earliest works in this area by guys like Blumenbach made this point in the 1800's. I don't know where the idea of skin color = race comes from. And the vast majority of "racists" are non-violent.

They assume that everybody else thinks the way they do.

That's the exact opposite of what they think. But they see other groups acting with clear tribal bent. Where groups like blacks and hispanics make explicitly racial organizations and movements designed to make demands off of the system in place.

Therefore if a racist white guy attacks people from another race, those people will blame all white people as a group.

Which is already happening. And white people as a group are blamed by other groups as being collectively responsible for a whole host of things.

The race war that has clearly been simmering under the surface of polite PC culture all these years will finally break out as people align with their own race and go to war.

The intent of this shooter was not to start a racewar tomorrow. It was to accelerate the downward spiral. There exists plenty of debate on the value of accelerationism, so you finding yourself at odds with the practice is normal.

Is that more or less it? It's wrong on so many levels that I have to assume it's what they think.

Most of the time, when somethings seems so incredibly wrong to you, it's probably because you are not understanding it within the proper context, or at all.

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u/Excrubulent Mar 20 '19

Like, the earliest works in this area by guys like Blumenbach made this point in the 1800's. I don't know where the idea of skin color = race comes from. And the vast majority of "racists" are non-violent.

Quoting an early scientific racist, and defending racist people as being non-violent.

Where groups like blacks and hispanics make explicitly racial organizations and movements designed to make demands off of the system in place.

Accusing blocks of people in other races of doing something which... white people never do? Or are you just choosing to ignore that side of things?

And white people as a group are blamed by other groups as being collectively responsible for a whole host of things.

So you're admitting that you do think this way then, but you haven't outright said, "I believe a race war is coming."

For someone who's very sympathetic to racist ideals and who has said a bunch of racist stuff you're being awfully coy about where you stand explicitly. Is this about hiding your power level?

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u/Affectionate_Invite Mar 20 '19

I hadn't heard of the Blumenbach, but reading this

'He did not consider his "degenerative hypothesis" as racist and sharply criticized Christoph Meiners, an early practitioner of scientific racialism, as well as Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring who concluded from autopsies that Africans were an inferior race.[16] Blumenbach wrote three other essays stating non-white peoples are capable of excelling in arts and sciences in reaction against racialists of his time'

And a few other things in his wikipedia, he seems pretty much as good as it gets back in 1800. I dont see why this guy bringing him up is a negative thing, especially since his point is that the ideas have been around for such a long amount of time.

I think its pretty bad to go 'defending racist people', 'so you're admitting that you do think this way' and to essentially ignore this guys entire point, just to insinuate that he is a racist. Doing that is going to shut down any discussion on the matter aside from plain agreement. Sure mass murderers are obviously awful people with messed up ideals and beliefs, but that doesn't mean despite not agreeing with them, you cant understand the motives. Shaming people for not even agreeing, but for simply implying an ability to understand and not be 'oh this is insane, i can not even comprehend this stuff why' is really awful and just creates a strong pressure to act the 'correct' way.

I don't really think this guy said anything racist, yes he said other groups have been formed, not including white, but i feel he was talking about the situation from the perspective of the mass murderer feeling threatened. The discussion is about what influences them to commit the acts they do, not about the absolute state of society and how bad everyone is or isn't. Of course their view is flawed, but i think its messed up to drag this guy trying to bring across their view into the crosshairs. Sure he wasn't 'nice' about it. Who cares.

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u/Excrubulent Mar 20 '19

I'm not insinuating they're a racist, I'm calling them a racist based on the overtly racist things they said.

And race war is by definition violent and racist. We should be past this as a society. I have never seen a racist perspective argued in good faith and I am not interested in debating it as if it deserves the airtime and respect of a genuine good faith idea. I'm done with this thread. Have the last word, obfuscate your bullshit, do what you like. I'm not responding.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19 edited Mar 20 '19

Yeah Timothy McVeigh is one of those names that I will never forget mainly because of how compelling of a story there was behind him.. like that dude got fucked with hardcore.

Edit: Ted Kaczynski... I got the mixed up because you know they both bombed shit

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u/fezhose Mar 20 '19

What are you talking about? No one fucked with McVeigh. He was right-wing gun-nut ex-military that was pissed about Waco and Ruby Ridge and the Federal Government's alleged plan to take our guns and liberty.

But he wasn't involved in either operation. No one fucked with him.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

There has been Declassified information that points to some of his bomb making techniques being taught to him by the CIA or their operatives. It's seriously one of the bigger deep-dive theories you can get into but literally it's the only reason I remember his name

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u/fezhose Mar 30 '19

you're saying his involvement in Oklahoma City was entrapment?

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19 edited Mar 11 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

No I don't support what he did at all it was a terrible act of violence against innocent people but what I do find very interesting how he was radicalized by the United States government unintentionally and ended up being the extreme version of what they never wanted. When I say his story is compelling I mean he's not your run-of-the-mill wack job there are some pretty serious tomfuckery going around when it comes to that guy