This is always what governments do following a tragedy or national shock. There are so many examples, it's hardly worth listing them, and it's one of those things I really hope most people can realize and see for what it is. Disasters, tragedies -- they are perfect opportunities for a state to seize more power, more control, more submission.

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I really think people need to be spreading this message loud and clear - the government and the mainstream media that echoes their propaganda are not interested in preventing this kind of thing in the future, and are not interested in protecting or providing for their citizens in an effective way. Everything they say and do following terrorist attacks especially must be resisted and be met with skepticism and suspicion. It's amazing the kind of liberties they can swipe out from under us the moment the public starts feeling unsafe and scared, and the worst part is the most aggressive and hysterical supporters of this kind of overreach will be other citizens - eager to shame and slander anybody as indifferent to or even supportive of the tragedy if they resist whatever the coercive state tries to ram down their citizens' throats.

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It's kind of funny how obvious they are being though... Trying to go after Dissenter is just rich... So fucking obvious they've been fearful of the potential that site has to undermine the mainstream narrative and were just waiting for an opportunity to go after it. Seems to me like they jumped the shark, since it's quite a reach to say that it is at all related to what happened. It would be just as easy to make the case that the kind of alternative media and anonymous social networking the shooter grew their worldview out of is no more a 'cause' of what happened than the government's aggressive attempts to use their citizens' exposure to news media as a blatant propaganda tool, and becoming increasingly authoritarian and aggressive in doing so. You know the anti-mainstream media might not have as many radical or violent subsets if the established, corrupted, media weren't so dishonest and agenda driven... People are so much more likely to swing far in the direction of radical anti-social views and behaviors when they can so clearly see that the dominant narrative is a bold faced lie, when they can see what they know to be truths stomped out aggressively by the state and it's cohorts, when they are made out to be the worst of the worst antisocial lunatics for not buying into the narrative... When there's so much dishonesty and manipulation in the status quo, it makes it a lot more likely for people to fall into the extremes, to become something they otherwise never would have become, I think.

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Point being, the kind of response we're seeing from NZ state right now (and the kind of government intervention that's being talked about throughout the west) is precisely the kind of stuff that pushes people into the insane fringes. And how are we even to define and to understand the genuine fringe, extreme, dangerous ideas when even the slightest dissent made by reasonable, compassionate, well meaning non-lunatics is labeled as fringe, extreme, dangerous... This is so obviously the lesson we should be taking from all of this, but unfortunately it seems like things are going to get much worse before they get better. Just think about what a typical news consumer who just takes in the state-approved narrative fed to them by the established news sources would think about a shooting like this -- they've been told day in and day out that they are surrounded by Nazis and white supremacists, who want to keep their firearms to start massacres and wars, who are on the rise and poised to destabilize everything, and then when an event like this occurs it's just proof that the Nazis and the white supremacists are a serious threat. And then all sorts of popular, influential people and ideas that go against the dominant narrative are dishonestly and explicitly connected to both the people that perpetrate the violence and white supremacy/fascist/racist/genocidal ideas. And the regular Joe can see that these popular (and growing in popularity) dissenters and dissenting ideas are becoming more and more common... It's just such a recipe for disaster. All this dishonesty and misrepresentation is making it so that huge swaths of people, who in reality share so much in terms of their values (they just don't know it because they're being lied to about what each other genuinely believe), are at each others' throats. It just makes me sick to think how this can all turn out. The political class seems convinced that the public is too stupid and too volatile to handle being exposed to multiple different narratives and worldviews, either that or they just know that it will be inconvenient in their quest for wealth and power, so they do everything they can to stomp out the dissent and get everything in line with what their propaganda arms are disseminating. But they are using violence to do this -- as any law being enforced by the government is a being enforced by their monopoly on violence. Since the kind of dissent they are willing to criminalize is becoming broader and broader, the amount of people that will feel justified in using violence themselves becomes bigger and bigger. And maybe it starts with the fringe lunatics who were predisposed to that kind of depravity anyways, but since every one of those instances leads to the state capitalizing on the public's subsequent fear and demands to be protected, it's not unreasonable to predict that more and more people who would otherwise be living relatively peacefully in their society might see drastic, evil and destructive acts of defiance as productive.

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I haven't read the manifesto, but my understanding is that the shooter was basically acknowledging all of this, so I guess that's why so many folks are saying the establishment is playing right into his hand. Frankly, I think it's the other way around. He was playing right into their hands, as this sort of event so obviously benefits the tyrants looking to seize power and control more than it benefits anybody else, and this idea that we could convince them to respond in a way that runs counter to their interests and goals, in a way that is totally different from the way pretty much every government/establishment/ruling class has responded to violent tragedies in their countries throughout history, in a way that is restrained, reasonable, proportional, or productive... it's just a pipe dream man. They never pass up on opportunities like this. Even when their cynical and self-interested ploys are transparently just that... While I think false flags definitely happen, I don't think the events of this scale usually are that, but it freaks me out the way people who believe xyz tragedy is a false flag are treated, since it should be obvious that the very institutions that claim to want to protect us from these events have the most to gain from them. Frankly, it proves their point in a lot of ways when they get deplatformed, smeared, disparaged as the scourge of the earth (a la Alex Jones). And considering all we've seen in the 21st century as far as how terrorist attacks and tragedies are used by governments in their propaganda and in their expansions of power and control, we should know people who approach tragedies as hoaxes or false flags aren't necessarily crazed lunatics who don't care about the deaths of innocents. They may be naive and blinded by too much confirmation bias in their examination of the evidence, but they are right in believing various governments will stoop to that level to further their agenda, and frankly I think more people need to acknowledge that. Because the more isolated and shunned those people feel, the more likely they are to sink further into anti social and eventually violent behaviors and worldviews. They start off by understanding or uncovering a truth that the dominant narrative ignores, and when they are banished from society and social life for knowing a truth, they very well might sink into delusions and start rejecting every other dominant idea and societal belief - like the fact that the lives of others are precious, that we share humanity, that violence is immoral... Does that make sense?