After 15 March

Responses to the White-Supremacist Terrorist Attacks

Abstract

For many of us who do not encounter forms of racial and religious hatred in daily life, the white-supremacist terrorist attacks of 15 March, which killed 51 people and injured 49 others at the Al-Noor mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, were experienced as a traumatic blow seemingly from nowhere. Explaining and politically responding to the tragedy felt imperative, but collective grief, indignation, and empathy were quite rightly the most immediate feelings and responses in the weeks that followed. Here, writing from a Pākehā, non-Muslim perspective, we want to consider some of the wider explanatory and strategic questions that the Left must face in the wake of these attacks.