They Are Us, but Who Are
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THEY ARE US, BUT WHO ARE WE? Individual versus structural constructions of white supremacy in the New Zealand mainstream news media following the Christchurch killings A thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Communication Studies. 31 March 2021 Ben Moore School of Communication Studies, AUT Attestation I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning. Signed: Ben Moore Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge the 51 people whose full and rich lives were ended while at peaceful worship in two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, 2019: Abdukadir Elmi, 70 • Abdul Fattah Qasem, 60 • Abdus Samad, 66 • Ahmed Abdel Ghani, 68 Ali Elmadani, 66 • Amjad Hamid, 57 • Ansi Alibava, 24 • Ashraf Al-Masri • Ashraf Ali, 58 Ashraf Morsi, 54 • Asif Vora, 56 • Atta Elayyan, 33 • Daoud Nabi, 71 • Farhaj Ahsan, 30 Ghulam Husain, 66 • Hafiz Musa Vali Patel, 59 • Hamza Mustafa, 16 • Haroon Mehmood, 40 Hosne Ahmed, 44 • Hussain al-Umari, 35 • Hussein Moustafa, 70 • Junaid Kara/Ismail, 36 Kamel Mohamad Kamel Darweesh, 39 • Karam Bibi, 63 • Khaled Mustafa, 44 Lilik Abdul Hamid, 58 • Linda Armstrong, 65 • Maheboob Khokhar, 65 • Matiullah Safi, 55 Mohamad Moosi Mohamedhosen, 54 • Mohammed Imran Khan, 47 Mohsen Mohammed Al Harbi, 63 • Mojammel Hoq, 30 • Mounir Suleiman, 68 Mucad Ibrahim, 3 • Muhammad Haziq bin Mohd Tarmizi, 17 • Musa Nur Awale, 77 Naeem Rashid, 50 • Omar Faruk, 36 • Osama Adnan Abu Kweik, 37 • Ozair Kadir, 25 Ramiz Vora, 28 • Sayyad Milne, 14 • Sohail Shahid, 40 • Syed Areeb Ahmed, 27 Syed Jahandad Ali, 34 • Talha Rashid, 21 • Tariq Omar, 24 • Zakaria Bhuiya, 33 Zeeshan Raza, 38 • Zekeriya Tuyan, 46 To you and all those who were hurt that day, and who continue to feel that pain: I am so sorry. I would also like to acknowledge the tangata whenua Māori. May this mahi take us one step closer to a better place for all. Thank you to my supervisor Dr Thomas Owen for his patience, guidance, and conversation. Thanks to AUT post-grad department. Thanks also to my mum, Julie Moore for her professional insight, and personal and emotional encouragement. Finally, thank you so, so much to my partner, Eden, for her belief, love and unwavering support. 1 Abstract On March 15, 2019, 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, NZ were killed by a white supremacist extremist. This thesis applies content analysis and critical discourse analysis (CDA) to a sample of articles from two New Zealand mainstream news media outlets, which mention white supremacy, from the three months following the Christchurch killings. The goal is to understand the extent to which white supremacy was constructed as a structural issue or an issue with individuals or groups. The research found that it was overwhelmingly the latter. Although there was some attempt to consider the structural nature of white supremacy, discussion of individuals and groups consistently undermined it. In this way, white supremacists were ‘othered’ from the hegemonic norm; leaving the western, Eurocentric culture upon which structural white supremacy is based largely unexamined. This thesis argues that white supremacy is indeed part of the underlying structure of Aotearoa New Zealand, and that the news media’s predominant focus on individual over structural manifestations only perpetuates the power of white supremacy as an invisible hegemonic ideological structure. 2 Table of contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 5 1.2. Why this topic? .............................................................................................................. 5 1.3. The research approach ................................................................................................. 7 1.4. The findings .................................................................................................................. 8 1.6. Notes on terminology .................................................................................................... 9 1.5. An outline of the thesis .................................................................................................. 9 2. Literature review: With great power comes greater power ......................................... 12 2.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 12 2.2. Defining white supremacy and whiteness ................................................................... 15 2.3. Structure, agency and the hegemony ......................................................................... 20 2.4. Individual vs structural white supremacy .................................................................... 22 2.5. Race, other categories and CRT ................................................................................ 30 2.6. Eurocentrism and nationalism ..................................................................................... 34 2.7. White supremacist institutions .................................................................................... 39 2.8. News Media and White Supremacy ............................................................................ 43 2.9. New Zealand ............................................................................................................... 48 2.10. Immigration and reluctant multiculturalism ................................................................ 54 2.11. Islam, Christianity and white supremacy ................................................................... 57 2.12. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 61 3. Research design .............................................................................................................. 63 3.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 63 3.2. Sample selection ......................................................................................................... 65 3.3. CDA ............................................................................................................................ 67 3.4. Quantitative content analysis ...................................................................................... 73 3.5. Author bias .................................................................................................................. 76 3.6. Restrictions ................................................................................................................. 77 3 4. Findings ............................................................................................................................ 79 4.1. Quantitative findings from content analysis ................................................................ 80 4.2. Quantitative findings examined in context .................................................................. 86 4.3. CDA of four articles ..................................................................................................... 98 4.4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 110 5. Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 111 5.1. Finding 1 – The dominance of individual construction .............................................. 111 5.2. Finding 2 – ‘Good’ New Zealand / ‘Bad’ white supremacist ...................................... 114 5.3. Finding 3 – Invisible normativity of Eurocentrism and whiteness .............................. 117 6. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 120 6.1. An holistic look .......................................................................................................... 121 6.3. Further research suggestions ................................................................................... 122 7. Reference list ................................................................................................................. 124 7.1. References for articles in sample .............................................................................. 150 8. Appendix ........................................................................................................................ 157 4 1. Introduction This thesis is concerned with understanding the extent to which Aotearoa New Zealand’s mainstream news media construct white supremacy as a structural issue or as an individual issue. To explore this, I gathered a sample of 113 texts from the two most popular news outlets, Stuff and The New Zealand Herald, which both distribute their content online and through newspapers. The sample was gathered from a period of time following Aotearoa New Zealand’s worst mass-murder at a single person’s hands in recorded history: the March 15, 2019 killings of 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch.