Opinion: The Christchurch terrorist was always going to get the maximum sentence - so why did all these people feel compelled to speak about the unspeakable damage he had inflicted on them? | JacquelineMaley
by Dostoyevsky. I know because I am making the attempt.
The protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s great masterpiece is destitute and nihilistic, and his murder victim is a pawnbroker who lives in a St Petersburg tenement.The next few months will be a contest between my pretensions towards intellectual seriousness and my attention span, which is frayed by the usual modern things – smartphone use and the existential dread of the pandemo-recession.
Zahid Ismail, who lost his twin brother, Junaid Ismail, in the attack, said his family would look after his brother’s children, “who will become confident, proud Kiwis who will live in the same place their daddy lived”.Illustration: Reg LynchOther victims elevated the grace of the faith the terrorist hated. Janna Ezat, who survived the shooting but lost her son, said to the killer: "In our Muslim faith, we say, if we are able to forgive, forgive. I forgive you.
Victim impact statements can be tendered privately to a judge, but these were spoken in open court, as a public act that was profoundly social, a counter to the anti-social nihilism of the killer. Julia Quilter, associate professor of law with the University of Wollongong, says victim impact statements have two primary functions. First, they inform the sentencing court about the harm caused by the crime, in order to influence punishment via sentencing.
Dostoyevsky’s great novel is a literary depiction of guilt. What guilt should Australia feel? The Grafton-raised terrorist was radicalised online but he was made in Australia. He was stunted by online gaming culture and the rankest corners of the white supremacist internet.The ideas – if you can elevate them to that – from those corners are no longer marginal. In the mainstream politics of Trump, folk who espouse those views are “very fine people”.
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