I find I just cannot conceptualize 50, just like I cannot conceptualize 10000. It’s too much.

I can understand the one that was just presented to me.

If you want to conceptualize just how terrible the loss of fifty people is, imagine this story happening to somebody you know. It doesn't matter who, just pick somebody. Then pick another person, and then another, and another, until you've got dozens.

It will probably be overwhelming by the time you hit ten people (and probably not a useful exercise to continue past that), but does it help to conceptualize it.

Well, from a NZ perspective 50 is, as a percentage population-wise, greater than the death toll from 911 in the US - we expect our government to take equivalent level of actions to those the US took against alQuaeda/etc against white supremacists/alt-right supporters to remove future threats from our community.

How would you suggest doing that exactly?

alQuaeda/ISIS = External threats where you can put the blame on a specific area of the world, then promote war politics. I'd be curious to hear your opinion on how effective post 9/11 politics were in that manner. It's not like evil was eradicated, plus the collateral damage.

Is there a factory that make white supremacists where we should drop bombs?

Beware of the slippery road to define that "factory", also.

I think that's kind of the point of my rather tongue in cheek follow up below

We will have to keep an eye on this very dangerous part of our population in the future, we'll start by denying them access to the worst sorts of weapons so they can't be so dangerous in the future.

When you say "denying them access to the worst sorts of weapons", are you proposing that certain group can keep their rights of access while others cannot? How can you really apply that in an objective manner?

Or perhaps you mean in a broader sense remove them access to all kind of platforms to not spread hateful messages?

Those are dangerous discriminatory power to give, as today it might target your opponents and tomorrow yourself.

The reason I bring this up is not because I care about white supremacists per se, but because it's a tool to start applying "hate speaches" politics, where hate is itself very subjective and too often interpreted as "things I don't like to hear".

We are changing our gun laws here in NZ and likely doing it this week, although what that change looks like isn’t clear to me. https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/385081/christchurch...

these days the word slippery seems to be a code word for "do nothing".

This is because government does not have the right to punish people by association. It's an unfortunate consequence of freedom principles: Bad things can happen, and you can work to prevent bad things from happening, but you must be extremely judicious in how you do so or you fall into tyranny.

So very often the only thing to actually do is punish those responsible for bad things, sadly after the bad thing has already occurred.

> we expect our government to take equivalent level of actions to those the US took against alQuaeda/etc against white supremacists/alt-right supporters to remove future threats from our community.

No-fly lists, large-scale warrantless wiretapping, and waterboarding of suspects?

(however we probably wont be invading Australia to root out the white supremacist threat there, nor Antarctica because someone in the PM's family has a beef with penguins)

How about chastising the major world leader (of a New Zealand ally) who the shooter spent a lot of time quoting, and whose supporters and ideology were clearly a strong influence to the shoooter?

Funny how you blame all "alt-right supporters" for violence, similar to how so many of them blame all "Muslims" for terrorism.

Alt right is a political term coined by a white supremacist, and encapsulates reactionary ideologies and intolerant, hateful and violent attitudes towards certain races, faiths and nationalities. Those who identify with the term or act accordingly can be accurately grouped with their ethos of violence, and have their ethics and politics more accurately summed than entire nationalities and/or world religions can.

> encapsulates reactionary ideologies and intolerant, hateful and violent attitudes towards certain races, faiths and nationalities.

Islam is a reactionary ideology and encapsulates intolerant and violent attitudes towards certain beliefs, genders and sexual orientations.

Islam was a reactionary to the 6th century tribalistic pagan arab . See the history of early Islam [1]. It encompasses changes including racial equality, Women's right and social security.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_social_changes_under_Isl...

from Google:

"reactionary" adjective opposing political or social progress or reform.

I really hate this word, it makes no logical sense, but that’s language for you :D

Did you already forget the millions of muslims who tried to rise up (and were mostly denied unfortunately) to throw out the dictators in their respective countries in 2012?

Their sole act of resistance against those dictatorships just contradicts your stance that Islam is a reactionary ideology. It's a religion, and as such, encompasses too broad a spectrum of beliefs and interpretations for you to simply put that under the same umbrella and call the entirety "reactionary".

I suggest you follow İyad el-Baghdadi[0] (the Emirati, now Norwegian citizen, not ISIS chief evidently) because you'll learn a lot about Islam that you probably didn't know.

[0]https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi

I will.

Although looking through his tweets, this doesn't look very promising:

https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/87367361002783129...

He's making up a strawman "reject Sharia" argument, whereas most criticism is clearly meant (and usually also worded) as "reject Sharia law". Pretty dishonest (although that's how politics works, if it's not divisive propaganda nobody listens).

Ah I see. Yes, coming for non-native speaker, english is sometime confusing.

Anyway Islam seems like reactionary if you look at it from today standards and in need of a reform (which I believe it's happening right now). But it really had some progressive ideas for the times even compared to their neighbour medieval Europe.

This is sad but quite true. Whenever you can, when seeing news about an attack big or small try and push your mind to empathize with them more, it's important to realize what cost terrorist attacks and mass shootings have on our society.

I get the message, sure, but relating to just one person is an excellent starting point, especially in situations where the victims might be “the other”.

The guy appears to have been heavily into online games. If this fact humanises him to one young gamer whose head is in danger of being turned by the alt-right then I think it does the memory of the other 49 proud.

Ohh that is absolutely right. Articles like this transform a tragedy from a number to reality for most of us. But it then helps us remember that this story, this life is just one of the many.

The other aspect I wanted to touch which I know is hard and I don't know if I can do it successfully is that every life has dreams and meaning. This person seemed great in many ways accomplished, helpful and humble. But while others might not be accomplished or life that we can't easily relate to their friends and family the loss is equally shocking and horrible. As many people said and which is true for me too, that it's hard to internalize so many lost lives, such numbers. But we can try even if we are not fully successful.

I'm just worried about the filter bubble, the ones that agree with you will see this and other articles like it. People with hate will see totally different articles fuelling their hate. Social media will have a lot to answer to sooner or later.