Back in August 2017, I had a blog entitled White Supremacists Movements Should Be Outlawed in North America, after the march of white supremacists in city of Charlottesville, Virginia. At that time I argued that such movements have no place in today’s multicultural societies in the U.S. or Canada. Just as governments target extreme Islamic groups like Al Quaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Western governments should also jointly target white supremacists movements. Failure to do so could result in more attacks on Mosques, black churches and synagogues in the U.S. and Canada.
Today, these groups are increasingly using social media to spread their hateful messages and to recruit new members through radicalization and anti-immigration slogans. One newspaper article called this trend “the weaponization of the internet’s culture of trolling.” Unfortunately, as in the case of the horrendous attacks on the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, live coverage of the shootings occurred on Facebook. This despite the fact that social media companies have said they would quickly take down content involving the mass shootings, which are posted online as the attack unfolded. The company is again being scrutinized over its handling of privacy, extremism and political content, but to no avail so far.
Enough is enough. Since coming into office, President Trump has reduced the federal government’s oversight of the surveillance of national white supremacists in the U.S. Instead, even after the lateness atrocity in New Zealand, the President is simply placing the blame on an individual or lone wolf. On the other hand, Trump does not hesitate to blindly blame Moslems as an ethnic group for supporting radical attacks and violence against Western targets.
Today, we see the emergence of radical right-wing white extremism across borders, especially through social media. Although attempts are being made to deal with radicalization among individuals within our communities, there appears to be no point in debating the issues with such violent groups as a whole. They are dangerously well armed and relentless in the pursuit of implementing their doctrines against peaceful and non-violent members of our society. It’s all fine and dandy to express our belief that love can overcome hate, but recent events have demonstrated once again that forceful and proactive counterterrorism is the only way to proceed when dealing with domestic terrorism. Governments need to act now, not later when more atrocities occur and dozens of innocent men, women and children become victims as a result of inaction on our part.
FROLITICKS 