If civilization meant anything at all, I thought, it was this. It was non-Muslim families crowding into a mosque the day after an act of fascist terrorism. It was a group of Māori men performing a war dance in the name of inclusion and solidarity and collective grieving: the precise symbolic opposite of fascism. It was not the building of bunkers beneath private land that would allow us to survive the catastrophes we faced, but the strengthening of communities that already existed.
