The fact that the media calls it globalism and not Caring About People is not helping matters. I’ll be brief: I’ve looked for leftists against international consideration - and found zero. Meanwhile, racist, white supremacists wave the flag of being against taking responsibility for their actions and colonialism.
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I can’t think of any reports of technical cooperation/capability development between otherwise disparate groups(nor does even the most exhaustive surveillance of eco activist types seem to turn up much that can even be trotted in front of the cameras as looking like evidence of scary capabilities or plans. Plenty of being pesky against profit, some vandalism and sabotage; but the fact that the unambomber still comes to mind as an atypically lethal example doesn’t exactly imply stiff competition).
That said, there are at least some who seem to have a sincere commitment to the ‘soil’ bit of ‘blood and soil’. Those are more of an organization whose ideology overlaps that of greens and hard right; rather than a cooperation between a green organization and a hard right one, though.
I haven’t seen specifics on time, but long enough to join a gun club, specifically a club that freaked out at least one attendee enough to notify the cops. https://www.npr.org/2019/03/18/704584995/shocked-new-zealand-rifle-club-revokes-membership-of-mosque-shootings-suspect http://time.com/5554073/christchurch-bruce-rifle-club/
We have seen this in Germany, too. Most prominently with the so-called “NSU”.
The following is in German, but sheds some light on the failings in that case. And has echos of what was described above.
Title in English:
Organizational Failure and the Investigations into the “National Socialist Underground
From the abstract:
“The article asks why the German police forces clung to the belief that the murders perpetrated by the NSU originated in the milieu of organized crime, instead of changing this investigative focus in the face of a homogenous victim group that indicated right-wing terrorism.”
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Sorry, where was the sarcasm? 
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He’d been living in Dunedin for two years. They missed him for two fucking years despite a long history of posting extreme white supremist views online. And, if you believe the Turkish government, there were some suspect travels around the world and links to a larger group.
And then he bought a whole bunch of guns. But still no red flags, apparently.
Speaking of which he also somehow got a gun license - which involves pretty thorough background checks, including interviews with partners, family members, flatmates etc as well as the applicant themselves. For example, a friend of mine was interviewed when her partner went to renew his licence - and she was tactfully asked if there’d been any domestic violence in their relationship, while her partner wasn’t in the room. Then discreetly given a number and email address so she could let them know if there was anything she didn’t feel comfortable telling them while he was nearby. And if anything like that comes up, it’s pretty unlikely the application will be successful.
But with the gun law reform already committed to, I imagine that whole process is going to be under review at some point too.
To be fair to the cops, that guy didn’t complain specifically about the Christchurch terrorist but others at the club. But on the other hand, it sure doesn’t look like they put a lot of effort into investigating the complaint.
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I’d say it’s just down to Tom-Clancy-era thriller thinking. Enviro-activists=real terrorists as far as they are concerned.
There was a period after the Cold War went colder where everyone, spy organisations included, was looking around for new threats to justify their existence/write a new bestseller about.
The environmentalists were already on the watchlist because lots of them were lefties and the East bloc security services were happy to give the impression that they were supporting/funding/infiltrating them in order to waste West bloc security services’ time.
So the big threat went away for a while and the enviromentalists went higher up on the watchlist. The fact that, as @Sidsalinger says, environmentalists tend to annoy people with money doesn’t hurt of course.
Plus it’s simply a lot easier and safer to keep an eye on a bunch of treehuggers meeting for a sustainable fair trade coffee and a discussion about maybe handcuffing themselves to a refinery gate or letting a bunch of lab animals out than it is to get inside say an ISIS cell or to identify the one online nazi out of millions who actually intends to go through with his boast that he’s going to kill some Muslims.
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And yet BB and others are applauding when certain kinds of power are given up freely. For the good of the community, obviously. I guess when it’s a power you don’t use or care about, giving it up ain’t no big deal. But when asked to give up power that actually effects them, then suddenly giving up power in the interest of security is too much to tolerate.
So you want BoingBoing to support gun rights & the free market?
When a weapon is used to terrorize marginalized people, then yes, it should be goddamn taken away for the good of everybody.
Mass surveillance is used as a weapon to enforce the status quo - which, in this case, is oppressing marginalized people and people of colour stateside. The American system exists for the benefit of white people, by white people.
Compare, contrast, and reflect.
That’s why taking away guns is a Good Thing and mass surveillance is not. Look no further than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to see how easily surveillance is weaponized to entrench existing power structures.
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I am looking for consistency. One right is too powerful for the private citizen to be entrusted with and the government is trusted to regulate, control, and restrict. Yet that same government clearly can’t be trusted with surveillance. It strikes me as both ironic and hypocritical.
Your free market comment doesn’t really relate to any of my points.
That’s because you have an entrenched stance to cry whatabout on. Especially considering that one necessitates a complete lack of transparency in how it operates, making it rife for corruption and abuse. Meanwhile, gun regulation is taking a corrupt and abusive private institution and using one of the few knobs the public has to cool its jets. That would make them similar of mind - especially since individual privacy and institutional transparency is what @doctorow is all about.
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Thanks for that - the articles I saw immediately afger the event didn’t make it clear he was actually a resident. That changes my view
I see your point. Still, given the assumption of extreme fanaticisms as a possibility, the two groups may be seen by beholden-to-big-business governments as having one important overlap: the targets, i.e., big business and governments. We know a major part of what the NSA does is brainstorm threats however extreme (even enlisting the help of “futurists”), and from there imagine preventative and counter measures that could be taken. If local governments here teargas energetic demonstrators (and surveil their organizers) because they need to protect some storefront windows, then it’s not a stretch for an even more powerful fed government to imagine that one day a far, far left environmentalist would seek help in blowing up things a la 1920s anarchists. Now, I’m not saying the threat of terrorist/environmentalist coordination/enabling is actually happening nor that it is likely to happen. I’m saying that when it comes to protecting some status quo, government security agencies’ paranoia will win out.
Except in this version the spies are the antagonists! Prior to last week NZ’s previous terror attack was in the 80’s when French spies planted explosives on a Greenpeace protest boat and killed a photographer.
Recent governments have passed some heavily restrictive legislation against protest. I guess it’s understandable as direct action has been relatively effective in the past. This lead to a nuclear-free country but is illegal now…
And the guys who did this and got away with a slap on the wrist wouldn’t today…
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They didn’t miss him. They made a conscious decision to ignore him because the people who give the security services their orders don’t care about him. The 1%ers who run things care about people whose activities could threaten their profit margins, but they don’t care at all about people who only threaten the lives of other insignificant peons the 1%ers dont’ care about.
This is just like the American “justice” system. The system is not broken. It’s working exactly as designed. It was designed to protect the interest of those in power.
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