The untold saga around the Christchurch terror attack

There is an emerging consensus that the Christchurch terror attack was not limited to merely New Zealand’s biggest southernmost city, but rather a far bigger global event with global consequences.

Indeed, over a period of time, it will be seen, especially after the initial and rightful initial emotional outpouring settles a bit, how dramatically New Zealand has emerged on the map of global terrorism.

Right now the focus is surely and rightly on the immediate response of dealing with grave losses to our communities and uniting a grieving nation.

Undoubtedly, the efforts led by the current political leadership so far have largely been successful in attracting intense domestic support and global adulation.

The mainstream media coverage has also been primarily focused on these issues related to Christchurch terror attack.

However, there are a few areas around Christchurch terror attack that has received insignificant attention.

Firstly, the attack despite appearing to be directed against the Muslim community in fact is equally malicious toward the entire migrant community – especially people of colour. For the ethnic migrant communities, including Kiwi-Indian community a piercing question, though currently under the carpet, yet easily palpable is what does this attack means to them?

The Kiwi-Indian community has borne a significant brunt of the attack by losing 11 precious lives and leaving three more gravely injured with one facing the possibility of being permanently disabled. Among those of Indian-descent people who lost their lives, five were Indian nationals; three were Fiji-Indians and three New Zealand citizens who have settled in the country about two decades ago.

This is a significant loss to the community, and put aptly by the High Commissioner of India to New Zealand Sanjiv Kohli in words who said, “The attacks were a tragedy of huge proportions which had left a lot of countries suffering, with families of Indian victims shoulder to shoulder with them.”

In the twisted ideology of white supremacists, the targets are against “foreign invaders” – who are primarily people of colour, with differing beliefs, faiths and worldviews, including Indians – which is of our utmost concern.

The killer – who is mostly believed to be a white supremacist – has clearly mentioned “Indian invaders” in his “manifesto”. Denouncing immigrants, the manifesto has dubbed them as "invaders", and talks about an invasion from India, along with China and Turkey.

Once the dust settles in, and we collectively regain our ability to see and analyse things objectively, more answers will be sought about the perceived sense of safety and security of the broader ethnic communities, including the Kiwi-Indian community.

Substantiating the point being made here is the loud cry made by the instigator of Christchurch terror attack of “subscribing to “PewDewPie channel on YouTube.”

Surprisingly New Zealand mainstream media has completely missed such a vital fact around Christchurch terror attack that can throw much light into the twisted white supremacist ideology.

For the uninitiated, since October 2018, much of the YouTube community, and the internet at large has been engrossed in the battle for YouTube supremacy, as an independent creator, Felix 'PewDiePie' Kjellberg went up against an Indian Bollywood channel T-Series.

The Indian-based channel has been mostly uploading music videos whereas PewDiePie – refers to a 29-year-old Swedish YouTuber who is primarily known for his relatively innocuous meme and video game commentary videos.

In the last few months, the battle between two channels in the internet world had attracted significant attention of the internet world with leadership in subscription base fluctuating between both of them.

At the time of writing, T-Series has 90,649,931 subscribers on YouTube, whereas PewDiePie has 90,457,675 subscribers. There is about a 12,300 subscriber gap between the two channels, and it’s still growing, with T-Series putting more distance between itself and PewDiePie every minute.

This seemingly innocuous internet fight had a marked symbolism of white supremacist ideology targeted so ludicrously against an Indian-based channel.

The fact that the instigator of Christchurch terror attack had so vividly called for subscribing PewDewPie channel only exposes the underbelly of white supremacist ideology so blatantly targeted against everything Indian.

From a Kiwi-Indian perspective, this is an alarming concern, and it’s omission from New Zealand’s mainstream media coverage on the Christchurch terror attack, is a stark reminder of the fact that a lot has to be done over and beyond the current phase of kindness and compassion to fully integrate ethnic population in this country.