Brenton Tarrant & the Spectre of Baruch Goldstein

When Brenton Tarrant killed 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand,  in March 2019 he was continuing a legacy of over seventy years of atrocities in Palestine. He wasted the lives of not only 51 others but also his own. Of this he seemed to realise, not only by changing his plea to ‘guilty’ but by foregoing making any statement at his sentencing on 27 August 2020. While journalists alluded to his assumed lack of ‘remorse’ and emotion, his final action indicated the contrary.

 

As I have documented in a series of article at Arktos Journal, and elsewhere, there is nothing intrinsically Islamophobia about the Dissident Right, or the Identitarianism to which he has been associated by those cynically seeking political capital out of the tragedy, whether in the form of introducing ‘hate speech laws’ or the banning and harassment of individuals and organisations that did not have the slightest association with his actions. It is sickening to behold atheists and materialists, including transgendered Trotskyites, jump on a bandwagon with their newfound comrades in Islam, and feign a ‘united front’ against ‘hate’, while the attitude of some Muslims also reeks of such opportunism. 

 

 

If there is an intrinsic ideological and historical lineage between the Islamophobic actions of Tarrant, Norway’s Anders Breivik, et al, then there is an ideological and historical link between Liberalism and the Jacobin Terror, or the New Zealand  Labour Party and Communism, and such champions of la droite humaine and la egalite as Marquis de Sade, Robespierre, Jim Jones, and Pol Pot. Since the Labour Party has welcomed Communist veterans into their party, such as Pat Kelly, and Ken Douglas, shall we say that the Labour Party is a neo-Communist organisation? The Green Party has been close to Australian Trotskyites in the past, and has welcomed Communists such as Sue Bradford and Keith Locke into leading roles. Journalists, academics and other purveyors of flatulent commentary feel a sense of triumph when they can identify a Dissident Rightist with a rune or other such symbol of ‘evil’, so shall we therefore find meaningful associations between the Labour Party and Communism since red remains the common colour, and until recently the Labour Party conferences opened to the singing of the ‘Red Flag’? 

 

However, the Left and their allies in the media and government have been zealous in trying to make the Right synonymous with Nazism. What association does the ‘Dissident Right’ have with Nazism? For the leftarded the Right begins and ends with Hitler. However, even in Germany the National Socialist ideology drew more from English utilitarian ideology, Darwin, Malthus, Galton; the theory of the ‘general will’ and civic authoritarianism of Enlightenment Liberal philosophers such as J J Rousseau, moreso than from the ‘German Idealist ’ School of Herder, Fichte, and Goethe. It is this conflict between Nazism and the German Right that resulted in Oswald Spengler becoming persona non grata under the Third Reich, although not living long enough to see the imprisoning, exiling or killing of fellow notables of the ‘German Conservative Revolution’. The centralised state that arose owed more to Jacobinism than to the traditionalist Right. 

 

As for the Anglophone Dissident Right, the legacy is drawn from Thomas Carlyle, Edmund Burke, and many subsequent. The origins are in the Cavalier fight against Cromwell, and in the restoration of pre-capitalist organic society, including the ‘guild socialism’ of  A R Orage, and the Distributism of Hilaire Belloc and G K Chesterton. The poetry of W  B Yeats will provide a deeper understanding of the actual meaning of the Dissident Right in the Anglophone world than attempting to force a lineage from Germany 1919-1945. 

 

 

But the retardation of the Left and associated journalists and academics is too ideologically bereft to challenge the Right so the resort is necessarily to reductio ad hitlerum, a term coined by German-Jewish conservative philosopher Leo Strauss in 1953.  

 

From the Zionist journalist Marc – Jews are indigenous to Palestine – Daalder, to sociologist  Dr Paul Spoonley, and Green MP Golriz Gharaman, who consorts with Communists in her antifa zeal,  the use of ad hominem , straw men, and reductio ad hitlerum are all they have in trying to conjure a ‘white supremacist’ spectre.  So when a Tarrant emerges the elusive ‘threat from the Right’ finally seems to have justified the cries of ‘wolf’ by those such as Spoonley who have for decades attempted to make mountains from mole hills. Yet despite the best efforts of police and journalists such as in particular Patrick Gower to come up with something tangible in the way of a ‘white supremacist’ terror network, it remained a phantom.  

 

 

But where must we look to find Tarrant’s forebears? Not to the Dissident Right, whose alliances with Islam were until recently long and extensive. [1] 

 

 

In commemorating on the Nakba  (‘Catastrophe’), as the founding of Israel is called by the Palestinians,  Al Jazeeera commented: 

‘Between 1947 and 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population were made refugees beyond the borders of the state. Zionist forces had taken more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres’. [2] 

 

Even prior to the Israeli state, ‘In less than six months, from December 1947 to mid-May 1948, Zionist armed groups expelled about 440,000 Palestinians from 220 villages. Before May 15, some of the most infamous massacres had already been committed; the Baldat al-Sheikh massacre on December 31, 1947, killing up to 70 Palestinians; the Sa'sa' massacre on February 14, 1948, when 16 houses were blown up and 60 people lost their lives; and the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when about 110 Palestinian men, women and children were slaughtered… By the first half of 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians in total were forcibly expelled or fled outside of their homeland. Zionist forces had committed about 223 atrocities by 1949, including massacres, attacks such as bombings of homes, looting, the destruction of property and entire villages’. [3] 

 

Using their proxies, the Phalangist militia in Lebanon, connected with Mossad, the Israeli Defence Force oversaw the slaughter at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in 1982 of 2000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian Red Crescent estimates, or around 1700 according to veteran journalist Robert Fisk.  

 

 

Of closer kinship to Tarrant than any Dissident Rightist or Identitarian is Dr Baruch Goldstein. A native of  Brooklyn, New York, he was an adherent of the extremist ideology of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League  and the Kach Party in Israel. Goldstein migrated to Israel in 1983. As a physician he refused to treat Arabs, believing it offended Jewish religious law. [4] On 25 February 1994, the day of the religious festival of Purim, commemorating the slaughter of 75,000 Persians according to the Book of Esther, Goldstein entered the Cave of the Patriarchs, in the Old City of Hebron, serving as a Mosque, where he killed 29 worshippers and wounded at least 125. 

In a scene reminiscent of Christchurch, Mosque guard Mohammad Suleiman Abu Saleh said he thought that Goldstein was trying to kill as many as possible, and described ‘bodies and blood everywhere’. Overpowered and beaten to death by the survivors , Goldstein was  buried opposite the Meir Kahane Memorial Park in Kiryat Arba, a settlement adjacent to Hebron, his gravesite becoming a shrine to his admirers. The grave’s plaque read:  ‘To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah, and the nation of Israel’. At Goldstein's funeral, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin declared that even one million Arabs are ‘not worth a Jewish fingernail’. On the anniversary, at Purim, his admirers jeeringly sing to their Palestinian neighbours: ‘Dr. Goldstein, there is none other like you in the world. Dr. Goldstein, we all love you ... He aimed at terrorists' heads, squeezed the trigger hard, and shot bullets, and shot, and shot’. 

 

Like Breivik and Goldstein, Tarrant has his admirers among ultra-Zionists. The Times of Israel reported at the time of the Tarrant attack of Arab objections to the complimentary comments being made on social media by Tarrant’s Zionist fans:

‘“The heirs of the murderer Baruch Goldstein are celebrating another murder of worshipers,” Mossawa wrote on its Facebook page, referring to a Jewish extremist who shot to death 29 Palestinians in 1994 praying at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron’. [5] 

 

 

The leftards and their allies in state, media, and academia were eager to find a ‘white supremacist’ terror network in New Zealand that must have surely assisted Tarrant. They were jubilantly able to trot out several young fools identified as ‘racists’ who had commended Tarrant on social media. Here was the proof that there is a worldwide neo-nazi terror underground whose tentacles had reached New Zealand. 

Elsewhere others were coming up with different theories. No less than the head of the Zionist Organization of America regarded Tarrant as a ‘left-wing terrorist’, the JTA reporting:

‘The head of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, told a congressional committee that the New Zealand mosque shooter was a “left-wing” terrorist, basing his assessment on the killer’s discursive 74-page manifesto. Klein testified on Tuesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on “Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism.” “The New Zealand mosque murderer was actually a left-wing self-described ‘eco-Fascist’ who also published a manifesto praising Communist China as ‘the nation with the closest political and social values to my own,’” he said’. [6] 

 

At a ‘peace-and-love-rally’ in Auckland following the Tarrant shootings, organised by Trotskyite eminence Joe Carolan and a queer-communist axis called ‘Love Aotearoa Hate Racism’, a Muslim upstart ruined the vibe by declaring that Tarrant had been backed by Mossad and Zionist business houses. Ahmed Bhamji, chairman of Masjid E Umar in Mount Roskill, the biggest Mosque in New Zealand, stated to the large crowd:

‘I really want to say one thing today. Do you think this guy was alone? I want to ask you — where did he get the funding from? … He has been here [for] two years, in New Zealand. Tell me, what has he been doing here for two years? Where was he working? Where was he getting the money from? I will not mince words. I stand here and I say I have a very very strong suspicion that there is some group behind him and I am not afraid to say I feel Mossad is behind this.’ [7] 

 

Bhamji’s statement was condemned by the Human Rights Commission and by the NZ Jewish Council. Would he have been prosecuted under a ‘hate speech law’ had this already been enacted? It is something for Muslim critics of Israel to ponder next time they advocate such a law. Do they think that a dark complexion is going to exempt them from prosecution when it comes to critiquing Zionism? 

Joe Carolan rejected Bhamji’s Mossad and Zionist comments, but stated that, ‘the war between Israel and the Palestinians had “come home” because six of the victims of the Christchurch shooting were of Palestinian origin’. [8]

 

 

Ironically, the ‘mainstream news media’ was blamed by the Israel Institute of NZ for stirring up ‘anti-Semitism’ by mentioning that Tarrant had visited Israel for 9 days in 2016, and later for quoting Bhamji’s statement on Tarrant and Mossad. IINZ also criticised comrade Carolan for not condemning Bhamji’s comments. [9] 

 

So here we have the same media that have been avid in seeking out ‘white supremacist’ boogeymen only to be accused by the local Zionist lobby of promoting anti-Semitism, in league with neo-Nazis on the dark web. Had there been genuine journalism in NZ the media might have in turn found that there is an influential worldwide Islamophobic network, and that it backs Islamophobes such as Geert Wilders and Tommy Robinson. However this influential network does not comprise the Dissident Right, Identitarianism, or ‘white supremacists’. The Islamophobic network is Zionist and neocon, most conspicuous of which is Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum, avidly opposed to the Dissident Right. [10] 

 

[1] K R Bolton, Islamphobia – Trojan horse amidst the Right, Arktos Journal, 26 April 2019, https://arktos.com/2019/04/26/islamophobia-trojan-horse-amidst-the-right/

[2] The Nakba did not start or end in 1948, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/05/nakba-start-1948-170522073908625.html

[3] Ibid.

[4] Israel Shahak, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Pluto Press, 1999, passim.

[5] Rights group calls on AG to probe online praise for New Zealand killer, Times of Israel, 16 March 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/rights-group-calls-on-ag-to-probe-online-praise-for-new-zealand-killer/

[6] Zionist Organization of America head tells Congressional hearing that NZ shooter was ‘left-wing’ terrorist, JTA, 9 April 2019, https://www.jta.org/2019/04/09/united-states/zionist-organization-of-america-head-tells-congressional-committee-that-new-zealand...

[7] New Zealand mosque chairman slammed for blaming Christchurch shooting on Mossad, Times of Israel, 27 March 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-zealand-mosque-chairman-slammed-for-blaming-christchurch-shooting-on-mossad/

[8] Ibid.

[9] Dangerous Antisemitic conspiracy mainstreamed in NZ, IINZ, 26 March 2019, https://israelinstitute.nz/2019/03/dangerous-antisemitic-conspiracy-mainstreamed-in-new-zealand/

[10] K R Bolton, NZ in wake of Christchurch mosque shootings, https://www.kerrybolton.com/new-zealand-in-wake-of-mosque-shootings/