On March 15, 2019, Brenton Tarrant, an Australian national living in New Zealand, killed 51 people (and wounded 50 others) in consecutive lone-gunman terrorist attacks on two mosques in the Christchurch, New Zealand area. Prior to these attacks, New Zealand had been relatively free of attacks borne out of right-wing extremism, and had, theretofore, focused the bulk of their counter-terrorism efforts on Islamic extremism. But now, in the aftermath of the attacks, the country has joined the now familiar struggle to understand why these attacks happened, and whether anything could have been done to prevent them.

As to the question of why this happened: is New Zealand alone among western democracies in missing the growing threat from the right? Of course not. Ask ten people in the United States whether there is a greater chance of attacks by either Islamic terrorists or right-wing extremists, and I would wager the majority would say the Islamic threat is greater. Since 9/11, the majority of homeland security and intelligence resources have been focused on the Islamic threat, but attack data since 9/11 would strongly support the need for authorities to re-calibrate their priorities. According to the New York Times, “in the decade and a half since 9/11, nearly twice as many people were killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Islamists.” (International NYT, June 20, 2019, Charlotte Graham-McLay and Jamie Tarabay).

And as to whether the attacks could have been prevented, well, this is an even more complicated question. Postmortem forensics of the activities, views, and online activities of the shooter paint a picture of an angry individual with a deepening affinity for right-wing hate ideology. That he applied for gun licenses and traveled abroad to visit places where other innocent people have been killed by extremists are more potential indicators of a person on a path to violence — but how to exceptionalize this needle in the proverbial haystack? In western democracies, until or unless a person comes into contact with the criminal justice (or intelligence) system, whether that is through their own activities or if they are brought to the authorities’ attention, then our current approach and our technologies are challenged to manage this enormous task. And while there is a growing sophistication of predictive analytics software algorithms available today, can these tools mitigate or overcome either the shear volume of hate speech that exists in the blogosphere, or the free speech and privacy protections that provide cover to such hatred?

Despite these challenges, throwing our hands up and doing nothing is not an option. We owe it to ourselves and our communities to continue to try and get out ahead of these attacks, and be proactive in our efforts to reduce the threat of violent extremism in our society. I look forward to being part of that solution.