Screencaps from C-SPAN, Matthew Andrews, ABC News and ABC News
By Situation Theatre 25/3/2019
For two decades, Western governments and media outlets have taught their citizens it’s okay to demonise, imprison, torture, bomb, injure, and kill Muslims who want nothing more than to live a life safe from violence.Yet for the Australian political and media classes who counter overwhelming evidence for their own culpability with pernicious propaganda, blame for the Christchurch terror attacks lies not with their own dark arts but solely with the darkest corners of the World Wide Web.
When the Christchurch terrorist was 10 years old, John Howard refused entry to the MV Tampa, a Norwegian freighter carrying 433 rescued refugees, ordering special forces to board the ship. He lied about parents throwing their children overboard in a plot to get to Australia. He said “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come,” and set up a system of offshore concentration camps for asylum seekers hailing from Muslim nations.
When he was the same age, George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan, a country made up of 99.7% Muslims. 17 years later, the war in Afghanistan continues. By October 2018, this war had killed 38, 480 civilians.
Still aged 10, Bush began hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan, where 97% of people are Muslim. At least 23,372 civilians have died there as a result.
When the Christchurch killer was 11, the most powerful state in the world opened Guantanamo Bay, a beacon of torture, rendition and indefinite detention of Muslims without charge or trial. Since then, at least 779 men have been locked up there. Seven have been convicted of a crime.
When he was 12, George W. Bush invaded Iraq, a country of 70% Muslims. US prisoners were physically and sexually abused, tortured, raped, and murdered. Images were broadcast to the world. The war lasted nine years and killed at least 204, 575 civilians.
When he was 15, the US backed an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, which is 99% Sunni Muslim. An estimated 650,000 people have died violent deaths since then.
In the same year, Islamic party Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election triggering an oppressive and violent Israeli response which has lasted to this day. Israel restricts the flow of goods and people in and out of Gaza. 70% of Gaza’s workforce are either unemployed or without pay and 80% of residents live in poverty. 7000-9000 artillery shells killed 80 Palestinians in six months. Israel declared Gaza “hostile territory” preventing electricity, fuel and other supplies entering Gaza. They arrested Hamas officials in the West Bank, including two cabinet members. Half of the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza crossed into Egypt for food and supplies.
When he was 17, Israel killed more than 100 Palestinians in less than a week and then 54 Palestinians in 24 hours. They launched “Operation “Hot Winter”, leading to the deaths of 112 more. Following a six-month ceasefire, Israel invaded Gaza, killing about 1400 Palestinians. 13 Israelis died in the conflict.
When the Grafton-born terrorist was 20, the United States, along with its NATO allies, dropped 7,700 bombs and missiles on Libya, a country which is 97% Muslim. Since then the US has executed 550 drone strikes on that nation. According to Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, Libya has since collapsed into “anarchy, fractured military rule, sectarian conflict, and violent extremism”. An estimated 250,000 Libyans have died as a result.
At a similar time, the CIA began channelling thousands of tonnes of weapons and thousands of foreign fighters into Syria, applying a similar model of regime change as that used in Libya. Hillary Clinton undermined Kofi Annan’s UN supported peace plan, leading to an escalating civil war. President Obama later launched the United States’ heaviest bombing campaign since Vietnam in the region, dropping more than 100,000 bombs and missiles on Syria and Iraq. This caused “total destruction” of the country and an estimated 1.5 million deaths. Syria is 87% Muslim.
When the Christchurch terrorist was 21, an Israeli air strike on Gaza killed 102 civilians, including 13 women and 30 children.
When the NSW-raised terrorist was 22, Kevin Rudd re-introduced offshore prison camps for mostly Muslim refugees fleeing middle-east violence, whose root causes lie in Western imperialism. Since then, the Coalition government has pursued at least 120 actions which dehumanise, denigrate, imprison, torture and kill these refugees.
“White supremacy doesn't know any border, religion, or colour. Australia's system is propped up and enabled by politicians and media shock jocks that have made a political career out of Islamophobia and inciting hatred and white supremacist views.” Sara Saleh #auspol #TheDrum pic.twitter.com/td2f7IjzF4
— ABC The Drum (@ABCthedrum) March 18, 2019
When he was 23, Israeli troops again invaded the Gaza Strip, killing at least 1483 civilians.
When he was 24, the Obama administration provided intelligence and tens of billions of dollars to a Saudi-Emirati led bombing and blockade of Yemen, a nation that is 98% Muslim. The resulting war has killed at least 56,000 people and now 22 million people need humanitarian aid.
By this age, up to an estimated 4 million Muslims had been killed as a result of the global war on terror.
When he was 25, a man who campaigned on the “Muslim problem”, a “Muslim ban”, closing Mosques, a “war with Muslims”, surveillance and warrant-less searches of Muslims, a Muslim registry, the sickness of Muslims, who claimed to see thousands of Muslims cheering 9/11 and said “Islam hates us”, holds globally televised rallies around the United States in his campaign for President. The counties where his rallies are held saw a 226% rise in reported hate crimes. Later that year, he was elected President of the United States.
In the same year, News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt wrote that “Islam is a warlike religion that licenses our destruction” and predicted anti-Muslim vigilantes would “defend themselves” by taking up arms. His thoughts on that course of action? “Who could blame them?”
When he was 26, the US President implemented a travel ban on Muslims travelling from six Muslim-majority countries. Two days after the death of a young woman protesting against a huge white supremacist rally in Charlottsville, Virginia, Trump said “I think there is blame on both sides”. About the neo-nazis he said “You had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
During this year, Rupert Murdoch published 2,891 anti-Islam articles.
Around the time of the Christchurch killer’s 27th birthday, 168 Palestinians were killed and thousands were injured in protests at the Israel-Gaza border. Intermittent electricity and periodic undrinkable water, untreated sewage, hospitals relying on gas-powered generators, medicine and treatment shortages plague Gaza, and the Israeli army still controls its land and maritime borders. The UN says Gaza will be uninhabitable by 2020, others say it is already.
You can watch this full episode of The Drum here.
At the same time, a woman who has called Islam “a disease”, said Australia was being “swamped by Muslims”, advocated a Muslim ban, said Islam was “not compatible” with Australia, called for a Royal Commission into Islam, claimed “good” Muslims and “bad” Muslims were hard to distinguish, and said that terrorism is caused by Muslim immigration, continued to receive a weekly platform to advertise her views to half a million Australians on national morning television.
Still aged 27, Sky News broadcast an interview with neo-nazi Blair Cottrell in which he said it is necessary to “protect the people of this country against foreign ideologies”. The Christchurch terrorist followed the United Patriots Front on Facebook and referred to Cottrell as “Emperor”.
Meanwhile, Andrew Bolt published a column in one of Australia’s major newspapers headlined “The Foreign Invasion”. He wrote that a “tidal wave of immigrants” was sweeping away our national identity” and “we should resist this colonising of Australia while there is still an ‘us’ who can”.
In the same year. the white supremacist terrorist heard his political leaders debate a motion that “It’s okay to be white”. He also heard one of them call for a return to the White Australia policy and argue that a national vote on a Muslim ban would be the “final solution” to the issue of immigration.
When the Christchurch terrorist was 28, he walked into two Christchurch mosques and slaughtered 50 Muslims in their place of worship. He killed 3-year-old Mucad Ibrahim, who went to the Al Noor Mosque with his father and older brother Abdi. He killed 4-year-old Abdullahi Dirie, whose family of Somalian refugees fled to New Zealand in the mid-1990s. He killed 42-year-old Hussne Ara Parvin, who was shot when she tried to save her wheelchair-bound husband Farid Uddin.
As you can see, it’s mainly the Internet which has Muslim blood on its hands.