Disturbing footage of the Christchurch terrorist attack has been blocked online to stop the spread of white supremacist propaganda, as Australia is forced to confront encroaching far-right extremism.
Sickeningly, posts on some social media channels have been mocking the victims and celebrating the attack at two mosques last Friday.
Telstra, Optus and Vodafone have temporarily blocked websites that are still hosting video of the shooting deaths of 50 Muslim people.
Daily Stormer, 8chan and 4chan were among the websites blocked by Telstra and Optus when The New Daily tested access on Tuesday.
But not all of the commentary is so explicit, and the attack on Friday has prompted the question of whether hate speech has crept into the mainstream.
“Every time I write an article, I avoid the comments section and I tell my family to avoid them,” Yassir Morsi, a politics lecturer at La Trobe University, told The New Daily.
“Because even in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, you see people egging the government on and regretful he didn’t finish the job.”
Dr Morsi said some of the comments were “basically calling for genocide” and would never be shrugged off in the same way if they were uttered by a person of colour.
Former race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, a political theorist at the University of Sydney, said politicians and news media have a role to play in what is acceptable.
“Public debates set the tone for our society and for what people experience every day in their neighbourhoods, workplaces and public places,” Professor Soutphommasane told The New Daily.
“If people believe that they have a green light to vent hate, we should not be surprised to find them venting that hate in public.”
Read the article by Rachel Eddie in The New Daily.