It’s Time to Attack White Nationalism for the Terror Group It Is
Nobody can claim, as George W. Bush did, that ‘we’re going to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,’ because they're already ‘here’ with a vengeance.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
PARIS—Donald Trump was right. The special pleading around the question of whether to call terrorism by radical Muslims “radical Islamic terrorism” clouded a critical issue. The fight against extremism must start with ideas, and with language that is clear and unequivocal. Which is why we should be perfectly blunt about what Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old monster of Christchurch, claimed to represent, and did and does represent, which is white nationalist terrorism.
Tarrant may have been a lone shooter when he slaughtered 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand on Friday, but he was not a “lone wolf.” He was part of a much wider movement that is every bit as extensive as Al Qaeda was when it attacked the United States in 2001, and potentially much more dangerous to the future of Western democracies.
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