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CNN Live Event/Special
Police: 49 Dead In Attacks On New Zealand Mosques. Aired 7-8a ET
Aired March 15, 2019 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ISA SOARES, ANCHOR, CNN: Welcome to CNN Talk. I'm Isa Soares. We'll begin this hour with breaking news, two mass shootings at two different mosques rocking New Zealand.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're shooting from inside the mosque and the firing just keep going.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What I did was basically waiting for that to bring toward - over the police.
JACINDA ARDERN, PRIME MINISTER OF NEW ZEALAND: It is clear that this can now only be described as a terrorist attack.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At least 49 people killed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In New Zealand nearly 50 are in the hospital. Police say the mass shootings happened at two mosques in Christchurch that's on the south island.
MIKE BUSH, NEW ZEALAND POLICE COMMISSIONER: We are currently dealing with an unprecedented situation. There were a number of IEDs attached to vehicles that we also stopped. They've been made safe by the defense force.
KRISTIE LU STOUT, ANCHOR, CNN: Young children are among the wounded. Also individuals previously unknown to police and intelligence are now in custody and families, they are waiting in agony for news about their love ones.
ARDERN: This is and will be one of New Zealand's darkest days.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SOARES: A horrific and heinous attack. We want to get your thoughts. Send us all of your reaction. If you are in New Zealand, please get in contact with us. If you saw what happened, if you were there, let us know wherever you are in the world. If you've been affected by this, please send us your comments. We will read them out. You can see it there at cnn.com/cn - at facebook.com/CNNI. We'll read them on air.
Well, of course, throughout this hour it's going to go an hour long show. We will get reaction as well from Christchurch, we have live report from there. But first let me bring you up to date about what we know regarding these shootings. Gunmen carried out mass shootings. We're talking about two mosques in Christchurch. So far killing 49 people and wounding dozens of others including young children.
Three people are now in custody in connection with the attack. Now, a man in his late 20s has been charged with murder. Police also found possibly two improvised explosive devices, IEDs, on a car as well. I want to join the panel now, faces that you know very well, Ayesha, Andrew, as well as Bonnie.
For those viewers who weren't watching the Facebook or live during Facebook, let me get your thoughts first because you're brought up a Muslim. You're a Muslim. Watching this, how does this make you feel, Ayesha?
AYESHA HAZARIKA, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND COMEDIAN, CNN: Just sickened and frightened. I think for a lot of us not just people in the Muslim community, progressives from lots of different faiths and nun have been warning about the rising tide of Islamophobia which has been normalized in public discourse. We see it from our political leaders. Bonnie mentioned Donald Trump. I would absolutely agree with that.
He hasn't even tweeted condolences or anything like that. He just tweeted a link to Breitbart News. Breitbart is a platform which has promoted kind of sort of an ethno sort of politics and hatred. We have prominent politicians in this country, Boris Johnson who was our Foreign Secretary, a man who covets being the British Prime Minister wrote a horrific article last year likening women, Muslim women to letterboxes and attacks on Muslim women went up after that.
Then we have a culture, and a media and a social media which not just tolerate hatred towards Muslims. It celebrates it and promotes it. And guess what, this has happened now. So I'm afraid a plague on all of your houses and shame on you. Shame on all the people that have promoted this type of hate. And I think for the Muslim community, they will be feeling frightened today. Today is Friday. Today is prayer day.
I've had Muslim friends contact me saying that they are scared to go to mosque today. Security and safety advice has gone out to mosques all over the world.
SOARES: Yes, all over the world, in fact.
HAZARIKA: So today is a dark day not just for the Muslim community but for anybody who pride themselves on having tolerance and who wants to hate - fight back against prejudice and discrimination.
SOARES: Bonnie, go ahead.
BONNIE GREER, PLAYWRIGHT AND COLUMNIST, THE NEW EUROPEAN: I want to echo that and offer my condolences to Muslims everywhere and especially today. This is Friday prayers, that those of us who are not Muslim we stand with you, and we will not see speaking out on what's going on. I think the privilege of this platform is to be able to nail some
things. I mean there's a lot of emotional feelings right now and I feel very emotional about it. But we need to look at exactly what this guy said fueled him. I haven't seen the manifesto, but my followers on Twitter have tweeted bits of it to me.
[07:05:03]
SOARES: We almost don't have to --
GREER: No.
SOARES: ... we obviously know what it's going to say.
GREER: No. But it's important to say it out loud because this is a white supremacist manifesto. This isn't a mentally ill person, because mentally ill people don't hurt people. They hurt themselves, they don't hurt anybody. Now, this is a white supremacist manifesto. This manifesto is about invasion. This manifesto is about the so called lowering of the white birth rate, this manifesto is the manifesto that the guys in Charlottesville chanted. "You will not replace us."
Very cold. Very calculated. And in my native land, the United States of America, and unfortunately for the rest of you, the most powerful human being on earth is a perpetrator of that trope. Donald Trump is responsible.
SOARES: Tell us about why.
GREER: I have no problems with saying that. Donald Trump has throughout his public life, this is nothing new with him, but as President of the United States, he has put into the mainstream, into normal discourse, into normality language that denigrates people of color, that denigrates Muslims, that denigrate - it brings up the idea of invasion, that brings up the idea concomitant infection, and also the side tropes is the usurpation of white masculinity, it's all out there.
Now, we can talk around that, and I'm talking to you as a woman who is married to a white male. So this is not about white guys, OK. This is about a trope and unless we face it, we're going to have this again, this man is a clear and present danger to the world. And the 116th Congress of the United States has an obligation in relation to it.
SOARES: We won't talk about the manifesto. We won't go in too much detail about the manifesto. We do not want to give any of these men a platform to really ...
GREER: No.
SOARES: ... because it's full of hate speech, it's white supremacist talk really, and that which will fuel online radicalization. This is something, of course, that we have seen before, isn't it, Andrew? ANDREW MACDOUGALL, FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FOR CANADIAN PM
HARPER: Yes. It has, and there are parallels to what happened today in Christchurch, it happened in Quebec City a few years ago at just a different scale here, a horrific scale here. But in Quebec City, I think it was six or seven people lost their lives in similar attack with similar motivations. And again, the thing that strikes me when you look at this is the tonic to this kind of ignorance used to be information.
And I think part of what we struggle with a society now is how people go and get their information. And what these new online worlds do is put people that have these extreme views, not only together but together in such a way that it increases how nasty and violent their thoughts get to the point where then it spills out.
So I think we have a huge conversation to have as a society about how you think seek information to take away your own ignorance and so you can learn about other cultures instead of being fearful of other cultures and learning how to embrace an open society, how people are different, why they're different, and how that's not a threat to you. If you engage, and understand and accept that you're not the only one that has a claim to a particular way of life.
SOARES: I just want to read a couple of your comments coming, do keep them coming. Clair Cooper, "I'm a Kiwi, we are devastated by this, this is not who we are. Kenneth Jackson, "We need to realize words have consequences. Stop hating each other." Olof said, "Hate will prevail if we don't stop the fear based propaganda from world leaders about immigration." And that's going to the very heart, you were talking about that.
HAZARIKA: Yes, absolutely. So people on the online world and that is exploding now in terms of how we find our view, share our views, Andrew and I were talking in the green room beforehand about how social media - people would - it's not like social media has created bad people with bad thoughts, but it's allowed them to get together, amplify, intensify former community, sort of legitimize what they're doing.
And the thing that really, really worries me is exactly the point about leaders. People look to their leaders, political leaders, national leaders, global leaders, influencers, commentators, people that have a platform, and they take their cues from these people. People have no idea what a privilege it is to have a platform.
(CROSSTALK)
HAZARIKA: Exactly. And with power comes responsibility. And when you have leaders who literally are in a race to the sewer in terms of the most inflammatory, derogatory, as Andrew said, hurtful, hateful language about the other, about immigration, about calling dehumanizing immigrants and certain groups of people, this is what's going to happen.
And I'm afraid the media has got a responsibility as well. The mainstream media respected newspaper. [07:10:01]
Broadcasters have plucked these crazy hate-filled people from obscure websites and they have plunked them on the sofa on mainstream television and they have normalized and they have normalized their speech. And I'm afraid a lot of media producers have got to take responsibility as well.
SOARES: And just very quickly just on that point, just 1 percent of New Zealand's population over 5 million people are Muslim, 1 percent. Hold that thought for one second, because on that point that you were mentioning I want you to listen to this sound bite from the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARDERN: Many of those who have been directly affected by the shooting, maybe migrants to New Zealand, they may even be refugees here. They have chosen to make New Zealand their home and it is the home. They are us. The person who has perpetuated this violence against us is not. They have no place in New Zealand. There is no place in New Zealand for such acts of extreme and unprecedented violence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SOARES: And this came very early on straightaway she said, "There is no place for these kind of acts in New Zealand."
GREER: I think it's important that we realize that we as a species are social. We're always going to be talking to each other. We're always going to be getting our ideas from each other. We grow and we live because we interact. So the media - the medium itself is not the problem, it is how we talk to each other.
Again, to go back to what I used to said, we have now in this world something very unusual. We have about six world leaders who are xenophobes. And because of the media that we've created, we can get their ideas out, not only Donald Trump, we have Matteo Salvini in Italy, we have the new President of Brazil, we have Viktor Orban in Hungary. We have a host of people who are out there and they're talking and they feel our own natural aggression and in this country, in this country, we have breakfast television hosts, we have people who host talk shows, we have people on air that are clickbait, they are clickbait and that is what they're doing.
SOARES: And the reality is we will have responsibilities sitting here speaking to viewers all around the world.
GREER: Absolutely.
SOARES: We have a responsibility. There's so much we've been talking about, the immigration policy, what this means for Muslims right around the world and of course thinking of you, I'm offering my prayers and everyone here at CNN thinking of all of those who lost their lives today. But let's take a step back and look exactly what happened. This video that was live streamed, the whole thing is heartbreaking, shocking.
Anna Coren is in Hong Kong and I know that when you watched it, I heard you this morning roughly about five o'clock this morning, you're extremely moved. Anyone would have been moved by that. Talk us through every detail of that video. And I ask viewers please don't watch it, because if you watch it you're just giving them a platform. You don't need to watch it. Just listen to what Anna has to say.
ANNA COREN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, CNN: It's horrendous, Isa. It's something that you do not want to see. It is chilling. It is heartbreaking. We're in tears watching it because you are seeing people executed in cold blood. This wasn't a movie. This wasn't a video game, which is what it felt like. This was a 28-year-old Australian man who comes from this beautiful country, who's now living in New Zealand, another beautiful country, and he is committing mass murder on a scale that New Zealand has never ever seen.
It's a 17-minute video that as you say was streamed live across Facebook. He starts in his car. He drives to the mosque. In the car they're playing music. He parks. You can see all of these semiautomatic weapons in the passenger seat. He then goes to the booth. He opens it. You can see magazines. You can see more guns. Jerry cans which you presume was filled with fuel.
He walks slowly to the gates of the mass. He walks in. He starts firing. He gets to the front door. Continues to fire, mowing down anybody in his path. You can hear these people who are there for Friday prayers. They are screaming. They are moaning. Calling out for help and he is not flinching. He is continuing to execute these people.
You see them falling, slumping to the ground. He reloads in the corridor. The killing spree continues for a few more minutes. He then walks out onto the pavement. Obviously, by this stage people have heard these rapid gunfire which is never heard of in Christchurch, in New Zealand, and he then starts picking up people on the pavement.
[07:15:03]
These bystanders. He goes back to the car, reloads, walks back into the mosque. The killing spree continues and this is the part that is just chilling. There are these bodies slumped on the ground, dozens of them. And he goes up to each of those bodies at point blank range and execute every single one of them.
So even if these people were playing dead or hiding, there was no chance of them ever getting out of this place alive. He walks out slowly, methodically. He's not in a rush. He sees a woman on the pavement. She's standing there. He shoots her from a distance. Walks up to her and then shoots in the head.
He then gets back into his car, music blaring, you can hear him talking. He's laughing at some stage. He starts firing out at the windscreen out the passenger window indiscriminately shooting at bystanders. And what is so bizarre is that he then gets to a pedestrian crossing and there are these people walking past and he stops for them and then drives on. Drives on to what we assume was the next location. That second mosque, where even more people were killed.
SOARES: It is just killing the way you've described it, Anna. I'd ask again for people not to view it. We'll talk about the live streaming elements of it. This particular incident, you're saying that's one of the mosques, correct, and we know what happened in the other mosque?
COREN: Yes, so that was the first mosque. We believe that they were 41 people that were killed inside that first mosque in Deans Avenue in Christchurch very close to the CBD of Christchurch. He is then driven in his car to the other location. The second mosque was a little bit smaller where he has killed another seven, eight people. It is just horrific to think that this happened in broad daylight.
You can hear the police sirens. They started - they're driving past him as he's driving out, so he would have been perhaps several minutes after he's left the scene. You can hear the police sirens as he's driving away. But this is somebody who is there to create absolute utter terror.
And we've heard from the New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush, he has said that one of the cars that was pulled over with one of these offenders that they were two IEDs inside that car. So if it's even possible to imagine, you would have to think that that their attack was meant to be even bigger, that perhaps he had intentions of carrying out some sort of suicide bomb blowing up a building.
but this was somebody who was allowed to rain terror on a city in the beautiful country of New Zealand with a population 5 million people and just rock its foundations.
SOARES: And we know three people have been taken into custody. One person, Anna, has been charged with murder. But I want to focus on this gentleman you're talking about. A 28-year-old Australian. Being Australian yourself, how do you think that will be received this news that he was Australian back in Christchurch, New Zealand?
COREN: It's just - I don't want to get emotional, but there is a kinship between Australians and New Zealanders, like they fought together during the war. They're brothers. They're sisters. There's a small strip of water, the Tasman, that separates the two countries. But New Zealand, Australia there is such a bond.
So to think that this 28-year-old Australian who we understand had only vein in New Zealand for a short time has just committed this terror, has committed this massacre in a country that is peace loving, that is welcoming to migrants, that is welcoming to Muslims. I mean, it's immigration policy is so much more welcoming than that of Australia and who knows perhaps that was part of his motive.
And we heard from the Prime Minister today of New Zealand she said, "New Zealand is the home of these refugees, these people who've come from war zones, whose homes have been destroyed, who don't have homes anymore. New Zealand is now your home." And yet here you are undergoing more pain, more suffering, more terror. She said, "That is not New Zealand. New Zealand is your home. It is not the home of these perpetrators."
SOARES: Thanks very much, Anna Coren. It's understandable why you're getting emotional. We're all going emotional. It's a truly heinous and horrific crime. I just want to read out some thoughts before we go to break.
[07:20:00]
Hama Fatah saying, "Why? Just because we are Muslims." Jordan Bray, "It's such a terrible disgusting act in such a beautiful country. My condolences to all those affected. And Jade Cutright, "As an Australian, I am absolutely disgusted and sickened." We'll continue after the short break.
Really a dark day for New Zealand, 49 people dead, 48 being treated for gunshots including children, two mass shootings at two different mosques in Christchurch all happening during Friday prayer with one of the killers live streaming the killing on Facebook. Of course, we are not going to air that footage. We do not want to give them a platform. Please send us your comments. We want to get your reaction.
If you're in New Zealand, if you're in Christ Church, let us know your thoughts. If you're Muslim or anywhere around the world, we want to know how you feel. Do you feel safe going out in the street? Do you feel safe going to Friday prayers? Let us know your thoughts at facebook.com/CNNI.
I also want to get some of the reaction that we've been seeing. First of all, I think we have a comment from the queen. I know we haven't heard from President Trump. Ayesha, I know you are mentioning. The Queen Elizabeth had this to say, "I have been deeply saddened by the appalling events in Christchurch today. Prince Philip and I send our condolences to the families and friends of those who have lost their lives. I also pay tribute to the emergency services and volunteers who are providing support to those who have been injured. At this tragic time, my thoughts and prayers are with all New Zealanders."
And I want to bring some more comments in from Jacinda Ardern at dawn, there we go, this is her tweet. This is what she tweeted. "What has happened in Christchurch is an extraordinary act of unprecedented violence. It has no place in New Zealand. Many of those affected will be members of our migrant communities. New Zealand is their home. They are us."
And that's what saying just before the break, just 1 percent of New Zealand's population of almost 5 million are Muslim. I also want to bring in a tweet from present Turkish President Erdogan. This is what he had to say, "On behalf of my country, I offer my condolences to the Islamic world and the people of New Zealand, who have been telling targeted by this deplorable act. The latest example of rising racism and Islamophobia."
[07:25:06]
And if you're just joining us, you'll recognize our panel. And I want to go to Ayesha because we've heard from our correspondent, Anna Coren, on talking us through that video in detail. As a Muslim I want to get your reaction because for us we were extremely - we were shaken just hearing it. It's chilling. How did it make you feel?
HAZARIKA: Well, I mean, I was so upset and credibly emotions, still am. And I think there's so much misinformation and these tropes about what it is to be a Muslim person. But if anybody has ever been into a mosque on a Friday for prayers or if anyone has ever been into Mosque, if anybody just knows Muslim people, that is not what Muslim people are like.
Muslim people are incredibly humble. They're sober, literally. They keep their head down. They are - they find a joke in that. We are a marginalized community. We're always at the margin. We're always at the bottom of everything. We are the people that - and we staff your local corner shops, we staff your late night kind of kebab shop or something that.
We are in the kind of fringes of society. I mean, I'm very fortunate to have this kind of platform. But we're not in the upper echelons of society. We keep our head down. We work really, really hard. We teach our children to keep their head down and work hard and be good, sober, decent kind of quiet humble people.
Friday prayers is a very kind of special place. It's very, very quiet. It's quite meek. It's quite meek. So the graphic violence and the precision and the cold calculating nature of the massacre that he planned just was made all the more graphic. Because I'll tell you something, going into place like that, Muslim people probably wouldn't even know how to fight back.
I mean nobody would know what was sort of going on, but you're talking about people who have gone to a place of worship and it's incredibly supplicating and meek and gentle and it just goes back - Bonnie says something very, very powerful afterwards which was this trope, this poisonous trope against Muslims has just - it has reached fever pitch.
Now, I've worked in British politics for a long time for 20 years. I worked on a piece of legislation called the Equality Act and it was about sort of giving greater rights to different communities including religious minorities and Muslim people. And my goodness, the hatred we got, I mean, that was like 10 years ago, just from that piece of legislation.
We had prominent newspapers which are highly selling newspapers in this country saying that Muslim people were trying to ban Christmas and things like that, just to cause this division in society to keep just sowing the seeds of hate against the Muslim community. And it has not stopped. It's gone up, and up, and up, and up and up. And that's why these awful things are happening.
By the way in the United Kingdom there have been some horrible attacks against Muslim people as well. There was at Finsbury Park, at mosque, there was an attack. And recently there have been attacks all across the country.
GREER: The Mayor has been threatened in the manifesto that was issued. The mayor of our city, Sadiq Khan.
SOARES: Yes.
GREER: I want to say in addition to offering my condolences to Ayesha and the whole community and hope today is solace for you at prayers. This is a white supremacist trope. This is about Muslims, yes, indeed. But it's also mainly about white supremacy.
I'm looking at Mother Emanuel Church in the United States, the synagogue in Pittsburgh. These people go to soft targets because these people are there and they're quiet. This is a zero-sum game. This is not about, "Let's live with the Muslims," or, "Let's convert them." This is wipe them out and people like Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini, these people are saying, "These people are replacing us." It's not about, "Let's have a space for them." "They're replacing us."
And if we don't face this, we're going to cry again. And next time, it's going to be about, again, some black people in church in the south, it's going to be about some Jews, it's going to be about Muslim, it might be about us. We need to really face. This is a war and they're at war with us.
SOARES: And after the break, we will talk about those topics about racism, the hate speech that we've seen as well, but also about white supremacy. The rise of the far right, not just within Europe but within right around the world. And I'm going to leave you a couple of comments before we go to break. Dean Pound, "As someone who lives in Christchurch, I'm disgusted by abhorrent act. I am ashamed that this could happen." Heidi, "We are all brothers and sisters in the world. Stop the hate and racism, please." Mario sending prayers from Lampung, Indonesia for the victims, "Deepest condolence. We must create a peaceful world." We'll be back after this short break.
[07:30:09]
Welcome back to CNN Talk. We've been covering the attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, two mass shootings at two different locations. Different mosques, in fact, in Christchurch, 49 people dead, more than 48 people are being treated in hospital including children for gunshot wounds. Truly heinous and hideous and really shocking attack that shock right to the core of New Zealand right around the world, Muslims around the world.
Let me bring up to date with what we know. A man in his - a gunman carried out mass shootings, we know in two mosques in Christchurch, we 49 people and dozens wounded, including young children. Three people are now in custody in connection with the attack.
Now, we heard one of our correspondents talking about this earlier. A man in his late 20s has been charged with murder. Police also found possibly to improvised explosive devices, IEDs, on the car as well. New Zealand's Prime Minister we've been hearing from throughout this hour, Jacinda Ardern, described the attack as an extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence and this is what she had to say take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARDERN: ... can see images live from Christchurch. It will be obvious to them that this is a significant event and I can tell you now this is and will be one of New Zealand's darkest days.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SOARES: Let's bring in our Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward. Clarissa, I want you to, if you can, give us a sense of this manifesto, because it's a very long, I don't know how many pages you can tell us how many - how long it was, but the sort of manifested that we've seen before, you have covered far right, the rise of far right in Europe. What did you see from that manifesto? What could you lead in?
CLARISSA WARD, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, CNN: Well, so we've been poring over, Isa, 87 pages of hate filled rants and also a very deliberate use of right-wing, far right wing means and tropes that have been popular on the internet. At times the tone is almost playful. It's designed, Isa, by its very nature, and the way he talks and the things he discusses to be provocative.
[07:35:00]
It seems that his goal here not just with carrying out this heinous terrorist attack, but with putting out this manifesto before he does it is to provoke a reaction, to provoke a retaliation. He talks a lot about wanting to drive a wedge in society to essentially rip apart liberal democracies as we have come to know them. And what's interesting, Isa, is that he uses a lot of the ideology and the language that we're more used to seeing from Al-Qaeda or from ISIS.
If you look at Al-Qaeda's textbook manual, the Management of Savagery or ISIS' idea of eliminating the gray zone. It's the same idea of using violence as a way to precipitate internal strife and conflict and friction between different ethnicities and religious groups in western liberal democracies. He's very much preoccupied throughout these writings with this idea of replacement, of invasion. The idea that Muslim migrants are flooding into western countries at an uncontrollable level, that they are reproducing at an uncontrollable level, that they will be more numerous than white people in no time at all.
These are themes that we see over and over again on the internet in right wing names. And perhaps more alarmingly, Isa, we see them more and more in mainstream political discourse here in Europe also in the U.S. and that's a big concern from Muslims that I had been talking to throughout the day who say, "Listen, clearly this person is a terrorist who adheres to a terrorist right wing terrorists ideology."
But more broadly what the real worry here is or the underlying concern is that there has been a sort of mainstream of a lot of the ideas that have traditionally been a spouse by far right-wing terrorist groups, Isa.
SOARES: And I know, correct me if I'm wrong, the documentary that you did on the rise of fall right in Europe, you spoke to some of those politicians today. Did they take any sense of responsibility for the hate speech that we've been seeing in the past several years?
WARD: No, they will always couch it in, "This is freedom of speech. We have to be honest about what we're seeing." And they would no way attach their actions or rather their words to the actions that we've seen. And it is important to emphasize not everybody will listen to hateful ideas and go and take a semiautomatic weapon and mow down 49 people in cold blood as they attend Friday prayers.
It takes an added level of zealotry or conviction or terrorist inclinations to go ahead and do that. It's always difficult to try to make a clear connection between what might be becoming a casual mainstream rhetoric that is born out of far right wing ideologies and between actual acts of terrorism. But there is no question when we look, this is not an isolated event, Isa. We saw in Quebec, six people were killed.
And in this Manifesto, he talks endlessly about Anders Breivik, and this idea of the reborn Knights of Templar. Again, calling back into mind the crusades, the exact same language we hear ISIS use when they described the west, when they talk about the Crusaders really feeding into each other in this sort of abhorrent terrorist extremist symbiotic relationship, Isa.
SOARES: Clarissa Ward, our Chief International Correspondent. Thanks very much, Clarissa. And Andrew, it's exactly the point you were making, this kind of hate-filled speech that we've seen before. These are people being radicalized online. Ayesha - you were saying, Bonnie, that it is not just an individual who was unwell, who's sick, it's a very different type of thing, but we have seen this before.
MACDOUGALL: Yes, and it used to be the results was in a city or a population a couple of people that had these views, but didn't express these views because they were hateful and hurtful.
SOARES: Yes.
MACDOUGALL: And you wouldn't do that in polite company. The internet has now given them this unpolite company that they can go talk to. And when they talk to these people, they find brotherhood and solidarity of the most perverted sense and that there's somebody else who has these dark thoughts and then they talk to each other, then all of a sudden this has been up to the point where they feel validated and what it takes is that is that match strike, like a Donald Trump or somebody who is in a position of power to delegitimize even a fraction of the feeling they're feeling to make them feel that there is also somebody out there who wink, wink, believes the thing that I believe and we're all afraid to have that conversation.
SOARES: And we'll talk about this with Samuel in just a moment. But I've got a statement just come in from the White House, I'm just going to read out. "The United States strongly condemns the attack in Christchurch. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. We stand in solidarity with the people of the New Zealand and their government against this vicious act of hate." Sarah Sanders, the White House Press Secretary.
[07:40:03]
GREER: Anything from the President?
SOARES: Nothing so far I'm seeing from President Trump.
MACDOUGALL: Activate against whom --
SOARES: Yes, exactly.
GREER: That is the press - that is not the President of the United States and we need here from Donald J. Trump.
(Crosstalk)
HAZARIKA: A man who has demonized. He's like kind of Muslim beta in chief on the planet. He has set up a ban against Muslim people.
GREER: And that's what he calls it. He calls it that.
SOARES: And everyone will be watching to see exactly what ...
(CROSSTALK)
SOARES: Let me bring in Samuel because we were - you're talking about that, Andrew, about how it's all changed, how technology is facilitated, has given these people are platform. The video we heard from Anna Coren in detail, we're not airing it for obvious reasons. What is Facebook and other social media, what are they doing to stop this from actually being in the mainstream, being online so we can see it?
SAMUEL BURKE, TECH CORRESPONDENT, CNN: I'll answer your question, but I just want to connect dots between what Clarissa has said and what Andrew is saying.
SOARES: Yes.
BURKE: This is somebody evident from his manifesto has been affected by what's been said on social media. Then the attacker goes on social media and live broadcasts this massacre through the Facebook platform. So I just want to put up on the screen exactly what we know about what's happened here.
Now, there is a body cam that's used, that would show it wasn't just taking the time to go and hold up the phone and do it, that they've connected a body camera to something that can be broadcast on social media. And then we see that Facebook is saying that they took down the video quickly.
SOARES: How quickly. BURKE: But Facebook won't say, did they take it down as it was live
streaming to how many people it was live streaming, was it after it live streamed, the video is still up on all of the major social media platform.
SOARES: And why important? Explain to our viewers why it's important if they took it out during or after.
BURKE: Because once it's up, it's going to go, and go and go. For instance, what you're seeing right here is a Facebook video that says, "This video may show violent or graphic content." And then look at that button in the lower right hand corner, uncovered video. If you click that right now on Facebook, you will see a TV broadcaster had decided to air this video raw, no edits, just air it.
SOARES: So you could watch that.
BURKE: So you could watch it now on Facebook. Facebook isn't blocking you from watching it. They're just warning you that you might see something violent here, so the cycle continues. Now, this is an important part, obviously, this broadcaster has made this decision but the algorithms that we always hear these social media companies talk about are going to take down this content automatically. It's going to work so fast that it won't even go up.
In this case, the decision of this broadcaster to air the video has confused the algorithms, because now it sees the news logo in the lower right hand corner it says the banners that are up on TV stations that says this is a newsworthy event. Possibly, maybe we need a human to tell me where they take us down or not. In the meantime, it stays up for thousands, if not 10s of thousands, if not billions of people to see ...
SOARES: And the more people click it.
BURKE: ... and radicalization could be done.
SOARES: And the more you get people clicking the high will be in your Twitter, in your Facebook, correct? That's just in terms of the algorithms, that's how they works.
BURKE: The really important here is that people say make sure you don't share the video. It's not just sharing the video. Even just watching the video will make it - so the algorithm will say, "Well, Isa has watched this. Sam watched this." Even though we have been in this case on social media." The more people have watched this, the more it will show it to other people and again the more radicalization that will happen. And you see we go right back to what Clarissa said at the beginning of this blog, what Andrew was saying about this radicalization happening online that becomes so difficult to stop.
GREER: And can I just add to that that this act itself is designed for social media. This is not a private act. This is not something someone is doing. This is designed for what is happening now. It is designed for this conversation. It's designed for everything that's going on. The Nazis did that in the 30s. It is what it's made for. BURKE: The attack itself is not the only weapon.
GREER: Exactly.
BURKE: This is also the weapon.
GREER: It is the least weapon, yes.
(CROSSTALK)
SOARES: Just pause for a second we've got a - come in a tweet from President Trump. We were talking about this earlier, when is he going to tweet something, say something. Let's bring it up, if we can, Stephanie. "My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosque." You can see it there. "49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all."
Does that go far enough for you?
HAZARIKA: No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. It's an absolutely ridiculous statement. There's a big elephant in the room missing from that statement. It begins with M, it's Muslim. "My thoughts and prayers go out to people of New Zealand." What about the people who have been killed? What about same solidarity with the Muslim community? You can tell he won't have just fight that off by himself. You can tell that people have gone through that with him and they have deliberately not mentioned the Muslim community and that speaks volume.
[07:45:01]
Because they know that they are complicit in this global hatred of Muslims and they don't want to bind themselves. He knew that if he put the word Muslim into that statement ...
(CROSSTALK)
HAZARIKA: ... he was going to alienate himself from his base - by the way he's not the only one. Our British Foreign Secretary this morning Jeremy Hunt who by the way has got - eyeing up for the leadership with the Labour Party, the Conservative Party. He did a tweet as well.
SOARES: Can I bring that tweet in?
HAZARIKA: Yes.
SOARES: And I will talk ...
HAZARIKA: Not a mention of the Muslim community.
SOARES: Here's the tweet from Jeremy Hunt, "Our hearts go out to the people of New Zealand following the news of this terrible act in Christchurch. New Zealand is one of the most peaceful, peace-loving and generous nations in the world. Your friends in the U.K. stand with you today in deepest sympathy."
HAZARIKA: You could think that was a natural disaster. You could think that that was a flood or something like that. Not a single word of terrorism or Muslim community.
SOARES: We'll talk about this in more detail. I know you've got something to say about this tweet from President Trump. I want to pivot again to the technology, because this is an angle that we need to continue exploring. What has Facebook, Twitter, any other companies have said, social media companies, about this, Samuel?
BURKE: Well, let's just put up with Facebook not just about their own platform but, of course, Facebook is also the owner of Instagram. They're saying ...
SOARES: They have a responsibility here too at the end of the day.
BURKE: And I think they recognize that. Facebook is saying, "New Zealand police alerted us to a video on Facebook shortly after the live stream commenced and we quickly remove both the shooter's Facebook and Instagram accounts and the video. We're also removing any praise or support for the crime and the shooter or shooters as soon as we're aware."
Unfortunately, as soon as they're aware is not fast enough because right now if you just misspell New Zealand, for example, you might be able to go on and find this video as we're looking, not watching, we're trying to make sure that we can see if this is still coming up. It's coming up in droves. And again not just on Facebook, but across all of the major social media platforms, Isa.
SOARES: Have you seen any of these terrorist attacks, the use of body cam before. Is this the first time we're seeing it?
BURKE: No.
SOARES: Kind of live stream.
BURKE: Unfortunately, we have seen this before. We've seen ISIS live streaming event. We've seen young people unrelated to attacks take their own lives on social media. I mean, this is a whole new problem that we were already discussing about the implications of video that can be posted so quickly on social media and then came live streaming where it's happening, obviously, live in real time and makes it that much harder for the people to take down the content, because it's not that they can go to a link and see a hundred people have viewed this, they may just be 10, but once those 10 people have viewed it, taken it, shared it, it goes on. It's all happening in real time, which makes it that much harder to deal with.
SOARES: And let's just remind everyone, it's not just about the fact that you've watched it, it's what it can do to you, how it affects you, but also how it can potentially help fuel radicalization.
BURKE: Even the moderators - there's just been an incredible piece of journalism done by Casey Newton of The Verge which went and looked at moderators in my home state of Arizona working for Facebook. And some of them admitted that they started adopting the views, concerns about Muslims, thinking that the Holocaust may not have happened after being exposed to this content. And these are the people who are trained to be looking at this and even they are suffering the consequences.
SOARES: Andrew, your thoughts on how really technology watching something like this, the impact that can have on anyone who's just seen this and how it fuels, in many ways, radicalization.
MACDOUGALL: Yes. There's two levels here. I think there's the known impact and then there's the subliminal or unknown impact that people have.
SOARES: Correct.
MACDOUGALL: And that's the real danger here, I think, is when you're viewing content like this, it works on two levels. And even if you're associated with people who view this content, it works at that level, and Facebook can actually manipulate your emotion. They've done this in studies going back seven, eight years.
BURKE: They've proven it.
MACDOUGALL: They've proven that they can make you sad just by what they put on your feed if they feel like doing it. And to your point about algorithms, that is the control of the world now that we know nothing about. Ordinary people even clued in people have no idea to what degree technology companies whether it's Google, Facebook, Amazon manipulate you to get you to buy stuff, feel stuff, watch stuff, hate stuff.
And until these tech companies and I'll put them at the center along with politicians, get their heads in the game and figure out how complicit they are in aggregating these people, emboldening these people and then broadcasting their sick work to the world, they should be ashamed of themselves too.
GREER: Technology is not going anywhere, it's going nowhere, OK. And not only that, this kind of thing actually makes it bigger because technology itself learns from this kind of thing. It learns. It literally learned and --
BURKE: How to make it more popular.
GREER: Exactly.
BURKE: That's the problem.
GREER: So my point is we can talk about that. That's important, but it's much deeper situation. We're not going to get rid - I mean you know this. I'm not saying ...
(CROSSTALK)
BURKE: Of course, into your point, Bonnie, we know that oftentimes the humans have lost control of the algorithm. GREER: Exactly.
BURKE: The proof is in the pudding when YouTube start surfacing videos that no company would want airing their ads first before these videos and YouTube is not even aware of it.
[07:50:07]
It's the companies. It's the users who are saying, "Well, why does a big brands ...
GREER: Exactly.
BURKE: ... have their ad airing before this anti-semitic, anti-Muslim hateful video?" And YouTube will tell you oftentimes, "Well, we didn't know that was happening." They've lost control of the algorithm.
GREER: That's my point. That is my point.
SOARES: We want to take a short break, but before we do that I want to show our word cloud as you're sending us comments. Keep sending them in. I'm reading them, but if I just bring the word cloud and these are the most typical words that we've been seeing. We've seen lots of emerges as well, condolences, sad, praying, families, terrorism, religion, our deepest thoughts, bigotry, you can see it there. Terrorist we're seeing there. So some of your thoughts that you're bringing in, continue sending us and continue sending your thoughts.
I also want to read a couple here. "My friends and I put flowers and a card in the mosque in Monash Canberra, utter disbelief at the unprecedented violence in the city I grew up in. I feel so shocked and sad. They are us." "Bonnie is right, evil is ancient and a big, big hug to Ayesha and everyone who feels the way he does, love from Hong Kong." We'll be back after this short break.
Welcome back to breaking news. You're watching CNN Talk. We're covering the hideous and horrific attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, 49 people dead, 48 people being treated in hospital, including children from gunshot wounds. You've been sending us your comments. Thank you very much. I'm going to read a couple. Paula Daily, "After today, life here on New Zealand no longer be the same." "The video," says Julie, and this is pretty much what we were talking about earlier. "The video should not be on social media." "How was the individual in possession of such deadly weapons?" "Don't be provoked by this attack. It's what the shooter wants."
And I know we don't have very long on the show, but I want to get your final thoughts on this because like you said, Bonnie, unfortunately, this could happen again if it's not Muslim community being target, it's someone else.
GREER: It will happen again unless we understand that this is a war and these are not crazy people. These are not people. These are people who see this as a zero-sum game. This is about the fear of white replacement. It's all of this. It's Muslims now and they're easy.
[07:55:00]
They will be - but it's all of us. And the other quick thing I want to say, yes, what Ayesha is saying is absolutely correct, these people are about technology, but the technology is marching ahead. I have problems with Twitter. Donald Trump doesn't. So you have to ask the question, Twitter doesn't want to deal with this. They don't want to.
SOARES: Ayesha.
HAZARIKA: Well, first of all take Islamophobia seriously. I feel that Islamophobia is something which has never taken seriously. Islamophobia has been mainstreamed into normalized conversation by political leaders, by the mainstream press, by influences.
We have a place now where a man called Tommy Robinson is - he is a source of a lot of hate, in fact, the New Zealand Prime Minister said that there was stuff, he was generating kind of hate and I make this plea to anybody with the platform. I don't care what religion you are. I don't care what politics you are, if you have a heart and you are distressed by these things, use your platform judiciously, do not promote hate. Stop promoting hate and stop rewarding extremists.
SOARES: Andrew final thought.
MACDOUGALL: I would say don't let this moment past. Let it stick where it hurts and keep the pressure on the people that can make a difference about this on policy makers, on technology companies. We don't want to see this happen again. Keep shouting at them, because it will happen again and we don't ...
SOARES: Go ahead, Samuel.
BURKE: The proof is in the pudding. The social media is in the planning of these killers and we've seen that today.
SOARES: And that does it for us in the show. We want, of course, send our condolences to everyone who's been affected by this heinous attack. Keep your thoughts coming in. From everyone here at CNN, thank you very much for watching.
[07:00:00]
