NZ terrorist attack

[Caomhaoin]

By the way, what is the 'alt right', in your opinion? Yer man Milo is more of anti feminist than anything else. Hardly a 'hate crime'. He's a homosexual who enjoys the darker races.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I'm sure people have been antagonized by the BBC or CNN into random acts of violence, I'm not sure any have taken inspiration from their spin to go out and murderously target specific groups though. Spin dumbs people down, sure. But you don't need a huge machine to brainwash people, so the real danger can, and does, lurk at every level. In this case, it came straight from the underground, but an underground fed by the more mainstream "alt-right" (I call alt-right basically the entire right-wing movement which bangs on about their freedom of speech; this seems to be the most characteristically "alt" twist of the new right).

[Eoin McLove]

I'm an advocate of free speech 100% but it's a pity that so many people seem only to want to use it to be sensational,  like Milo whatever- his- name-is. Imagine basing your entire persona on being an 'agent provocateur', particularly people who actually possess some intelligence.  It seems to me to be a massive,  banal waste of energy that could be directed to more positive ends. 

[hellfire]

I'm sure people have been antagonized by the BBC or CNN into random acts of violence, I'm not sure any have taken inspiration from their spin to go out and murderously target specific groups though. Spin dumbs people down, sure. But you don't need a huge machine to brainwash people, so the real danger can, and does, lurk at every level. In this case, it came straight from the underground, but an underground fed by the more mainstream "alt-right" (I call alt-right basically the entire right-wing movement which bangs on about their freedom of speech; this seems to be the most characteristically "alt" twist of the new right).

Interesting take.  It's ok to publicly disseminate lies as long as nobody is directly killed.  The growth of the alt-right is largely a result of a failure in both centerist politics and media. People disappear into alternative echo chambers . There is a massive disconnect between what people know to be true and what is reported. It leaves them more receptive to shit talkers who add that grain of truth into their agenda. Also, people claiming to want an end to the alt-right do more to stoke it than anything else. Calling people insulting names is not going to get them to take your side. Suppressing ideas (even terrible ones) just forces them underground. Debating them properly and showing them up is far more effective.

Nut bags like this lad should not be allowed to impinge on the free and legitimate speech of others.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I didn't indicate that disseminating lies is okay. It just struck me as an odd time to pipe up about the left/liberal spin machine when the right/alt-right spin machine was doing so much worse. Would seem to reveal more about subjective sensibilities than any kind of attempt at objective understanding of the overall picture. Also, in terms of consequent action in the world, it seemed a fitting reminder that number of viewers does not translate directly to number of actors, though Kev seemed certain the BBC/CNN were a bigger danger. It's a bit more circuitous and complex than that, no?

[hellfire]

CNN,BBC and RTE were exactly the types of outlets I was talking about.  A lot of talk about what to ban in the wake of this. Tying this into conservative mainstream opinion is irresponsible at best. Suppressing opinions is bad and leads to echo chambers. No excuse for this fucker though. A thousand people could watch the same stuff as him but it takes a special kind of dickhead to interpret this as the logical conclusion.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Yeah, no, I'm against all forms of banning, no platforming, etc. I don't think Milo should have had his visa revoked for Australia, for example.

[Pedrito]

So I'm just riffing here and open to being called up on stuff..

The Milo thing is another points scoring exercise. Why bring so much attention to this guy? Why not leave him out of the conversation, rather than lashing out in this way and focussing all the attention on him. We're in a strange place at the moment. 130 people were killed in Bataclan and nobody went out on the streets of Paris looking to lynch the perceived enemy. Maybe there was hate speech by the usual thugs, but on a grand scale, there were no mosque burnings or anything of that type..an eye for an eye scenario. Now, I'm not sure what that says about society, have we been cowed into just accepting that these things are likely to happen or is it that people are actually very educated and reasoned and willing to believe that it's a rotten few that perpetrate this stuff? Maybe the majority believe that it is in fact just a few assholes perpetrating these atrocities and we will win out in the end?

All that despite the fact that you can be sure that within certain sections of the French Muslim community there is a certain, unspoken support for these types, in the same way that the IRA had that 'they're bastards but we can understand them' thing going on in the 80's.

Even today, there has been an attack in Holland. Europe clearly has an issue, especially when these types of incidents are now being relegated to page 2 and 3.

So what is the answer? I have no fucking clue, and I'm not sure anyone does. The left/right American discourse has spread out to all.aspects of life on a global scale. Milo talking about Feminists and SJWs suddenly makes him a spokesperson on Muslim.immigration in NZ. Trump's Wall extends to include refugees coming into Europe from Syria and the likes, Brexit voters etc. The total lack of nuance or segregation of ideas is disastrous really and attracts gimps like this guy from NZ, but I would lay a lot of blame at the door of the mainstream media and the likes of these Australian politicians(ambulance chasers) for propogating much of the division. (The alt right commentators are not without their gobshites too, let's not forget that).

What business is itof ours what the US president wants to do across the ocean? Does it have anything to do with Ireland or affect us in any way? Absolutely not. And yet he is plastered all.over pur media to a degree we have never seen before. He seems to be the cause of everything from the glass ceiling to Brexit.

My worry is that there is no end in sight, that, certainly in the online world, things have gotten completely out of control. The internet is in its infancy and yet it is creating shockwaves across the world as can be seen from above examples. The only consolation I take is that on a day to day level.I bump into people from all walks of life and as long as I avoid talking about politics or religion, most are sound out. Again, just riffing here, so a slight pinch of salt required..just womdering how people would read thjngs.

[hellfire]

I work in IT and view the internet slightly differently to most. At its core it is just computers connected to each other. The IRA May have used telephones for example but the phones were not the problem. They would have used pigeons if there were no phones. The same with the internet. It is a communication medium and nothing more. It is not a separate entity and has no sentience. The people using it are the problem, not the devices relaying the message.

The calls for censoring websites and individuals is as obscene as it is absurd. Shooters like this are a tiny subset of people with conservative opinions, a statistical anomaly. There was no call to ban Korans after any of the ISIS attacks even though ISIS are a small subset of Muslims. I refuse to have state intervention in what I am allowed to watch and read because some weak minded git will go to the extreme with it. I can just imagine the massive erections in news rooms around the world when an actual  neo-nazi terrorist attacked. Realistically there hasn't been such an attack since 2011. Banning stuff all over the place will not end well.

It's no better than that video nasties shite in the 80s and 90s.

[Pedrito]

I would agree. We can't let the bad apples dictate proceedings.

[Pedrito]

A balanced take on things between Joe Rogan and Ben Anderson here. I think they sum up how certainly i feel about NZ and how many of the people I know do too. The idea of this troll killing is mental, and it feeds into a kind of Joker like personality which, if allowed to, the media will have a field day on. I'm with Hellfire on this though, a horrible tragedy, but it's certainly not in any way a trend and hopefully it won't become one.

https://youtu.be/ZmGQFcvUkAI

[Eoin McLove]

How deranged. It's one thing that the killer seems to lack any sense of remorse and is treating his killing spree as a massive joke, but what's more frightening is the support he has. Trolling culture is foreign to me. I only come across the milder forms of it on the NWN forum,  and on the old MI forum,  and most of that is mildly amusing and ultimately harmless,  but the fact that there are entire sections of the internet where those skills are practiced and developed into and art form is bizarre to me. Seeing it spill over into real life events in such an horrific way is just another level of nuttiness that I can't comprehend.  Maybe there's an element of denial to it,  or rather a kind of detachment from events that the killer is using to compartmentalize his actions and emotions.  I don't know much about psychology so I'm probably wrong,  but how do you make sense of such inhuman behaviour.

[Eoin McLove]

Websites like rotten.com must have a part to play here as well.  Watching beheadings, murders etc as entertainment never made sense to me but it seems to be a popular pursuit.  It must be difficult for generations growing up with the omnipresence of the internet, instant access to all sorts of real life violence and aggressive forms of porn throughout their formative years to not become either completely desensitized or psychologically damaged in other ways.

[hellfire]

rotten.com shut down years ago. I will take the internets side on most things lol. If your kid is watching decapitations and extreme pornography then you are failing as a parent. There is a multiverse of parental control software to control and log what they are viewing online. A five minute Google search is obviously too much time for some people to invest in their kids. The U.K. now has porn laws coming in to effect to accommodate this unique brand of laziness. Aye, he's one sick and cold bastard. Troll culture as you call it has been around for centuries, it used to be known as bullying or being a dickhead. Appending the word cyber to these activities makes it seem as though the internet itself is an actor in these problems. It's still one person being shitty to another, just with faster and more efficient communication devices.

[Eoin McLove]

I typed a massive reply and accidentally deleted it.  Fuck technology!