New Zealand’s chief censor has banned a document shared by the man allegedly responsible for killing 50 people in two Christchurch mosques.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 people so far have opted to hand in their weapons following a ban on assault rifles and military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs).
David Shanks, the chief censor, officially classed the so-called manifesto as “objectionable” and told anyone in possession of it to destroy it.
“There is an important distinction to be made between ‘hate speech,’ which may be rejected by many right-thinking people, but which is legal to express, and this type of publication, which is deliberately constructed to inspire further murder and terrorism,” Shanks said in making his decision.…
Shanks told members of the public to delete any copies of the document, along with posts or links to it.…
Ardern on Monday announced a ban on firearms that extends to related parts used to convert guns into MSSAs, and all high-capacity magazines.
There are several threads here, the most noticeable being a government calling for a document’s eradication. bell¿ngcat had a link to The Great Replacement via a Twitter post, but as of this morning the link is gone, displaying only a .jpg of the tweet instead. In the past days much of the media coverage of the New Zealand mosque shootings which I’ve seen has involved criticism of web services for not rigorously censoring Brenton Tarrant’s video. There’s been absolutely no case made as to the effect of watching the video. The video, and now the document, are simply disappeared from the world on the say-so of the New Zealand government. Possession of a document, or even providing a link pointing people to the location of the document in someone else’s possession, is to the state thought-crime — not „right-thinking“. No sort of considered process seems to have taken place, simply rule by diktat.
The Guardian’s article weaves paragraphs about the censorship of the Great Replacement document in with paragraphs about New Zealand banning semi-automatic rifles. The message is clearly communicated that in possessing this document one is in possession of an item as dangerous as a rifle. Brenton Tarrant (he who shall not be named?) wrote a rambling tract that’s largely whitespace. The Great Replacement isn’t so much a polemic as a collection of half-sheet leaflets. It’s difficult to see what is thought to be dangerous here.
What is communicated to me is that New Zealand is reacting to the mosque shootings with fear, the state is immediately responding by calling for the removal of citizen freedoms, like the freedom to speak and to hear what others have said, and this state response is being met with acquiescence on the part of media corporations and the general public. This is not a robust state of democracy.