There was another terrorist related incident in London today. It seems we have one roughly every six months these days. I know that’s not accurate but it certainly feels that way. I also don’t really understand what such an ambiguous statement terrorist related incident means. The media love jumping in without all the facts and throwing around accusations of A, B and C before they really know anything. This is as much down to their irresponsible necessity to sensationalise anything they can as it is to the constant demands of twenty-four hour news coverage. I also don’t know the facts but I’m also quite sure I’m not going to dangerously mislead the seven people, including my Mum, who read this.
Seemingly a man entered a shop and started stabbing people. He was someone who the police had been monitoring for a while now and it must be for this reason that they believe this was the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims, thank you Google dictionary for that definition of terrorism. To speculate what exactly happened and what his motives and rational for doing what he did are pointless. This is partly because I don’t know and probably never will, but also because I imagine them to be far more complex than the lazy and dangerous ‘bad man’ narrative some would have you believe.
The London Mayor Sadiq Khan used the exhaustingly tired cliche that he wanted to “destroy our way of life” but curiously enough also said that the Metropolitan Police truly “are the best of us”. Despite all the other information that entered my mind while reading about todays incident, this statement shocked and offended me the most. I’ve met the Met as the sticker they stuck on my bag once said; I have certainly felt compelled after and since that moment to use a rather different type of superlative to describe them.
The idea that people are trying to destroy our way of life though is a very interesting one and something which never really gets discussed in much of a mature manner in any of these public news style debates. Are we supposed to just believe, as many do, that this man simply hates democracy and freedom, two increasing loose and ambiguous concepts. Is our way of life not in fact capitalism and globalisation? There seems to be something more constant and tangible about that than some abstract notion of freedom and the illusion of a version of political theory invented over two thousand years ago.
Perhaps to admit that there may be reasons other than that he hates us simply for existing would mean not only that we may have to discuss whether any of his beliefs or rationale have any credibility or justification but that this de-humanising narrative is an irresponsible and dangerous one. It must be said that at no point do I justify killing anyone, especially innocent people going about their daily lives but this narrative we’re all willingly skipping along to never really deals with why this man felt compelled to do this in the first place. Perhaps if it did we may just have to deal with the one thing we really can’t and that’s ourselves.
Observations and Misunderstandings 