“Solidarity and anger. Those were my immediate emotions.” So I wrote three years ago after Islamist gunmen wreaked carnage on the streets of Paris. And they were my immediate emotions – indeed of most people, I assume – on hearing of the horror in Christchurch, New Zealand.
“Beyond solidarity and anger,” I added, “we need also analysis.” That’s even truer after Christchurch. The issues raised by the barbarous terror are many and urgent – the rise of the far right and how to combat it; how mainstream commentators talk of Muslims and immigration and whiteness; the boundaries of free speech; the regulation of social media. And so on. I will no doubt have my say on these issues in the coming days.
There have been powerful, thoughtful responses over the past 48 hours. What has been depressing, though, has been the way that much of the discussion has degenerated into name-calling and invective. The dead of Christchurch have seemingly become a stage on which every contemporary debate from Brexit to the politics of identity is played out.
The rawness of anger inevitably clouds judgment. The grammar of social media inexorably leads to polarised confrontations. But there is also the erosion of the capacity for both self-reflection and self-restraint, a feature of recent public debate. This is not simply to chide others, for I recognise it in myself too.
The dead deserve better. It’s a meaningless, vacuous phrase. Except in this sense: insofar as the dead live on, they do so in the memories and aspirations of the living. In our writings and in our actions. To say that the dead deserve better is to say that we should be better in the way we engage with the living, with each other. And we should.
• Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist
• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day. In New Zealand, the crisis support service Lifeline can be reached on 0800 543 354. In Australia, Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Irish Republic, contact Samaritans on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
