Shooting survivor Wasseim Alsati, left, with journalist Patrick Gower in Christchurch (Photo: Patrick Gower: On Hate/supplied)

Pop CultureAugust 31, 2021

Review: Patrick Gower: On Hate puts the focus where it should be – on the victims

Anjum Rahman

Contributing writer

Shooting survivor Wasseim Alsati, left, with journalist Patrick Gower in Christchurch (Photo: Patrick Gower: On Hate/supplied)

The journalist’s documentary about the mosque shootings and their aftermath was a reminder of the incredible strength of those left behind, writes Anjum Rahman – and of the risk that far right extremism still poses to New Zealand.

I’m writing this in tears and nauseous, feeling utterly re-traumatised after watching Patrick Gower: On Hate. Still, I wasn’t there, I didn’t lose a family member, I didn’t witness my loved ones dying. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be in that situation.

There are those who think we should stop talking about the events of 15 March 2019, who want us to put it behind us. It’s all part of the supremacist view that the human losses this country has experienced – of tangata whenua, of people of different faiths, people of colour – are just grievances that these communities should “get over”. According to these people, only selective history should be told and retold, commemorated and discussed. Somehow, it’s never ours.

In that context, it’s commendable that Patrick Gower and his team have had another look into the mosque shootings of March 15 2019. His interviews with the victims alone make this compulsory viewing – their willingness to share their experiences and their grief is generous beyond words.

In the documentary, sociologist Paul Spoonley, an expert on the extreme right, says New Zealanders were “naive” for not foreseeing that an attack like this could happen on our soil, but that is a disingenuous claim. At best it was wilful blindness, a determination to not look. But there were many instances where our government was specifically asked to look. They chose not to, until too late. That’s not naivety, it’s quite the opposite.

Prime minister Jacinda Ardern in Patrick Gower: On Hate (Photo: supplied)

Among Gower’s interviewees is prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who discusses the response to the attacks – both her own personal response, and her government’s. She is asked about the findings of the royal commission of inquiry into the attacks, but her interpretation of the findings is off-kilter. The report didn’t conclude that the government’s actions played no part in March 15 – in fact, it found many systemic failures, lack of adequate funding and more.

The terms of reference for the commission prevented it from looking deeply into the role of media and social media in the lead-up to the killings. With no official findings on the issue, this is where the media itself can be most useful: by exposing radicalisation online, showing how it happened for this killer, and exploring what needs to be done to stop it happening again.

Unfortunately, the media cannot force YouTube to provide a viewing history for the Christchurch killer, nor to show what the recommendation algorithms were serving him. The royal commission or the New Zealand justice system might have had that power, but the guilty plea by the killer means the latter is of no help. The only other option is a coronial inquest.

Read more:

Sara Qasem: A grief beyond words

In the absence of YouTube records, the interview with former far-right extremist Caolan Robertson – now a film-maker and activist dedicated to helping people escape the far right’s clutches – was useful in revealing how the platform is radicalising many of its users. According to Robertson, a former admin of far-right personality Stefan Molyneux’s YouTube channel, 81% of Molyneux’s views came from the recommendation algorithms and not from subscribers. This was a crucial part of On Hate; we need to understand the way algorithms are creating radicalisation among users of online platforms by pushing people to more and more extreme content. There is not enough research in this area, and while we wait for the research to catch up, the harm is happening now.

It’s time to be tougher on tech platforms, as other countries are doing in various ways. There are definitely some major issues with proposed legislation overseas, and we need to develop what is best for us. There are two areas that are critically important. First, we need to be able to audit the outcomes of algorithms. While the code behind these algorithms is the intellectual property of the tech platforms, the impacts of algorithms affect us all. An independent audit of these impacts has to be a legal requirement.

Second is the need to hold platforms liable for material they host and amplify, particularly where they are made aware of content that is harmful. They cannot claim to be little more than a postal service when they are curating users’ feeds, the results that search engines provide, and the ads that users see. These platforms act like publishers and they need to have the same responsibilities (and pay their fair share of taxes, but that’s an issue for another day.)

Sara Qasem, whose father Abdelfattah was killed in the attacks, in Patrick Gower: On Hate (Photo: supplied)

Back to the documentary. It was refreshing to hear the prime minister be so unequivocal about racism in New Zealand: “If you’re asking me if there is discrimination in NZ, has our Muslim community bore the brunt of that? Undeniably.” It’s rare for a leader of a country to openly acknowledge discrimination in this way, but typical of her strong messaging after the attacks.

As a journalist, Patrick Gower has a tendency to insert himself a little too much into the stories he covers. He did it just recently over the “They Are Us” script and I was worried it might again be the case here. Certainly, there was too much focus on Gower for my liking. Having said that, I appreciated his mea culpa about his 2018 interview with Molyneux and fellow extreme-right supremacist Lauren Southern, during which the duo seized the opportunity to spout their repugnant views. While he has said it before, his clear expression of regret – “That was a fail. I failed” – was hugely important.

That’s because research shows that publicising extremist material and viewpoints causes harm, even if the purpose is to refute them. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored, but care needs to be taken to ensure that this material doesn’t reach those who are inspired by it. By giving the Canadians a platform when they visited Auckland in 2018, Gower (along with TVNZ’s Sunday, which also ran an interview) gave the duo legitimacy and a much wider audience than they otherwise would have expected. The role of the media in far-right radicalisation needs a lot more attention.

A banner hung in the days after the mosque shootings (Photo: Patrick Gower: On Hate/supplied)

I would have liked to see more of anti-far right supremacist research group Paparoa, and what they have been able to uncover. Earlier this year, the police commissioner wrote about the balance between intelligence work and state intrusion into the privacy of its citizens. The examples he used undermined the point by ignoring racism, but it is a conversation we need to have. I’m extremely grateful that Paparoa does this work voluntarily, bringing threats to the attention of the authorities.

On the whole, the documentary did a good job of presenting issues to the public in a digestible way, while keeping the victims at the forefront. It was never going to be an easy watch, but I hope my fellow Kiwis not only watched it, but continue to engage with the issues it raised.

Since March 15 2019, I’ve often thought about how our community has suffered so much from a single event, and what must it be like in those countries where an event like this happens almost every other day. In the name of liberation and spreading democracy, in the name of revenge and retaliation. There are countries who face this number of dead regularly, with no mental health support, no welfare payments, no way out. The ones who manage to get here as refugees are subjected to the hate of supremacists who begrudge their every breath and want to harm them more. It needs to stop.

Keep going!

Sara Qasem and her Dad, Abdelfattah Qasem. Photo: Supplied.

SocietyAugust 31, 2021

A grief beyond words

Sara Qasem

Guest writer

Sara Qasem and her Dad, Abdelfattah Qasem. Photo: Supplied.

Sara Qasem, who lost her father Abdelfattah Qasem in the March 15 terror attacks, shares why she chose to speak up against hate in a TV documentary that screens tonight.

Losing someone is a rather hyperbolic experience. Losing someone in a terrorist attack at the age of 23, with that same person being your dad, your best friend, the noise-maker and life-bringer of the house, on a regular Friday, is a grief that goes beyond words.

On March 15, 2019, my dad, Abdelfattah Qasem, was one of the 51 martyrs who stepped foot inside the large, brown wooden doors of the Al-Noor mosque in Christchurch and never walked out. I remember odd details about that day. My mum calling a good friend of Dad’s amid the commotion. Traffic, police sirens and ambulances rocketing past. Mum’s comforting yet stern voice, “Where is Abdul? He never came home.”I t was odd. Surely she wasn’t talking about our Abdul? The noise was so deafening, yet all the same, the sinking silence within me was unnerving. Dad wasn’t coming home, but I wasn’t going to accept that, not until proved wrong.

My dad was a magnetic man. He was joyful, vibrant, intelligent, hardworking, and so very funny. He had dad jokes for days. He wasn’t only magnetic to people, but he cared deeply for animals too, a leader of the land and farmer of his very own lifestyle block. I like to link the analogy of living on the land, just like he did growing up amid the Palestinian olive groves, to us, his children. Alongside my mother, Siham, he raised us with hope. My two older sisters and myself were their seeds of love, my mama used to say, ploughed with careful intention and the hard work and sweat off my parents’ brows.

The moment I realised my dad was one of the fallen, it felt as though hope was gone, like my lungs had been flattened into two large skipping stones. As I sat in silence, watching them fly across the river with the help of a wind I didn’t bargain for, I thought to myself: why? Palestinian? Middle Eastern? Brown? Muslim? In that moment, I promised myself I would never feel like an outsider again. We are not simply carbon and bad timing – we belong here, too. I heard it within me, and within the outpouring of aroha from the people of Aotearoa too: “This is your home, and you should have been safe here” (All Of This Is For You by Ruby Rose).

In the months following the attacks, the bravery of my community in extinguishing the flame of hate with peace was not a easy pill to swallow, not one glazed in sweet honey like baklava. It takes guts to tremble, and then to have the strength to soften. Poetry would say that “my people have given you earthquakes”. Just as earthquakes shake, after a period of time we slowly rebuild. I decided that I must take this life with all its love, loss and destruction, and speak without static – to rebuild. I knew there was work to be done in Aotearoa.

But it isn’t a simple thing to carry such a public grief. I’ve always been concerned about people’s ability to truly capture the essence of our lost loved ones, as well as the dangers of hate and division that still exist on this precious land. I understood very quickly that short clips, news articles and sporadic photographs could only ever amount to so much in painting a complete picture of both the good and the bad. We needed honesty and vulnerability, because change is not achievable if we don’t face our pre-existing biases.

Sara Qasem appears in Three’s Patrick Gower: On Hate. (Photo: Three)

Although I have these worries, the sheer power of love continues to quell them with ease. Love is a mother tongue within this land. I carried a weight, but I saw your hands had blisters from sharing the load as we healed, educated and taught love together. I saw it in the flower wall, in the cards and touching gifts, in the phone calls and silent encounters where strangers would weep as they hugged us wherever we went. I saw it in the stranger who retouched my chalked message on the walls of the botanical gardens for over two years, still unnamed. Strangers indeed, but connected by our humanity.

It is one of the main reasons I decided to take part in Patrick Gower’s On Hate documentary, because I knew the people of Aotearoa would be willing to listen. Patrick has walked alongside many in the community from day one, and continues to do so. We need to look at what comes next, what we can learn from this, and what must be understood so that something like this never happens again.

In my short few years on this planet, I feel as though I have lived a few lifetimes. I rarely cry about anything else, because it all feels so small in comparison. I often have to remind myself that I am not alone in my struggle. Fear still sometimes sits in the corner: I still sometimes feel that if I am in a place of worship on the wrong day at the wrong time, I will come to hear the whistles of bullets in the house of God, and end up in the presence of God instead.

I’m still learning; I haven’t found the handbook on how to cope when you lose your dad and other beloved community members in your early 20s in a mosque terrorist attack in a country you originally moved to for safety. But poetry helps. It’s been my solace; the vacant space which sits between my heart and mind; a field of lavenders with each root grounded in bravery and vulnerability. Poetry helped me write this timeline as best I could:

Dear reader,

3 months on, I was desperate to maintain the mana and identity of my father; he was not but a number. 6 months on, and I only had the nerve to tell the people the good parts, I was worried they’d leave. 1 year on, there was justice to be taken; nothing like this would ever occur again and judicial measures would have to be made. 1.5 years on, and I was confused. I watched the dust settle and always wondered who changed the world; I knew some folks do, but surely not in small towns on islands at the end of the world? 2 years on, it’s strange, because it’s 2 years on. I can tell you think I have it rough. I’m familiar with what it is like to keep a tally of all that is no longer here and all that is lost. I know what it feels like to be too tired to drive or lace my shoes, and sometimes, I still feel like a tourist trespassing on private grounds. But you, leaders of love, have opened the gates to the garden and walked with us amidst the lavender fields. I have finally forgotten the ‘i’ in terrorist; a coat so heavy in the scent of fraudery, it was never mine to wear. 2.5 years on, my mourning has melted my grief into anger, but my anger is in fact not anger, but passion, and my passion is softened with the scent of love; but forgiveness is not a tidy grave. I will leave this life so shattered that there will be a thousand slices of heaven for all of my fragments of vulnerability.

My fathers name is Abdelfattah Qasem; a husband, father, friend and hero, who left on an average Friday and didn’t come home. I don’t want to leave this life without having come home, I have a choice. So instead I will share my story and take this life with all of its love and loss, and speak without static. From that, together, we will sow seeds of hope within the land of Aotearoa, and raise a generation through bravery and love.

Sara Qasem appears in Patrick Gower: On Hate, airing at 8.30pm tonight on Three