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Can we have clarity of terms? The Christchurch murderer was clearly a violent white-ethno-nationalist, NOT a "right wing extremist". You can be in favour of free markets, low taxation and limited government (all typical "right wing" positions) all you like, and however "extreme" your views in these regards, it will not lead you to make your way, armed, to a place where people of races other than yours (non-whites, in this case: the murderer was concerned primarily with race rather than religion) tend to congregate, with a view to committing mass murder.

A right wing person (in the sense of someone who is in favour of free markets, low taxation and limited government) can of course be of any race, or mixed race, or may neither know nor care what race he or she might be classified under. It is of course possible that he or she is an ethno-nationalist of a particular race, whether white or otherwise, as may be a person who is in favour of a socialist economy, high taxation and big government (that is, a left wing person).

There seems to be an unfortunate tendency these days to suppose that everyone's views on everything can be placed somewhere along a one dimensional scale, with one end marked "extreme left" and the other "extreme right", and that you only have to determine a person's position along that scale to have a fix on that person's views on absolutely every social or political issue. It is not so, and in fact is dangerously confusing. Even if newspapers, politicians and the public are not accurate in their words, we lawyers should strive to be so.

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