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UK, are you OK?
Labour councillor calls for people to 'cut the throats' of 'Nazis and fascists'
Suspended Labour councillor arrested over video ‘urging people to cut throats’
Probably anyone reading this is familiar with the story so far: three gradeschool children in Southport were knifed to death, and ten others injured, on July 29th at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club. The alleged perpetrator, Axel Rudakubana, is reportedly the son of Rwandan immigrants and was 17 years old at the time of the incident, but has apparently since passed his 18th birthday. The events, allegedly in part as the result of some false reporting concerning Axel's identity, led to a number of protests, which led to a number of counterprotests.
Why would you counterprotest a protest against the knifing of schoolgirls? Well, apparently the original protests were racist. It's pretty important to not be racist. Sufficiently important, I suppose, that people would rather talk about that, than about the dead schoolchildren who, but for recent immigration from Africa, would likely still be alive. Not that Axel is an immigrant, of course. He was born on the magic soil of the UK, so it's apparently racist to notice that his parents weren't. I saw one article suggesting he might be autistic? Good sources are hard to find.
That brings us to the current events! Labour councillor Ricky Jones apparently found some inspiration in Axel's extracurricular activities, as he is very clearly articulating additional knife violence as the proper response to people protesting the murder of little girls. I actually had a surprisingly difficult time finding the original video; most of the articles throwing around the word "alleged" did not judge me fit to judge for myself. I assume Ricky was born tone deaf because throat cutting seems like an especially poor choice of words given the circumstances--though I guess I don't know for certain that Axel managed any literal throat cutting in the process of (EDIT: ALLEGEDLY) butchering schoolchildren. The UK does not have any particularly meaningful or toothy Free Speech legislation, either, though in this particular case I can imagine Mr. Jones facing consequences even here in the United States. Remind me, is it still okay to call for the punching of U.S. Nazis? Was it ever? I seem to have lost track.
Axel's knifework is not being treated as a terrorist attack (yet?), but here's where things get weird.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:
Taylor Swift shows in Vienna canceled over alleged planned terrorist attack
Suspects in foiled attack on Taylor Swift shows were inspired by Islamic State group, officials say
Will we hear more about Axel's motivations? I suppose Taylor Swift is just so famous that at this point any plot to kill large numbers of people would, statistically, run into Taylor Swift events eventually. But now I'm wondering if Axel was just, you know, reading the same weird terrorist handbook as the Austrian terrorists. They were even the same age--the two arrested in Vienna are 19 years old and 17 years old. If I had a nickel for every time a 17 year old boy tried to murder Swifties en masse, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice!
I'm sure much smarter and well-connected analysts out there are way ahead of me on this one. And probably it's nothing! And it wouldn't really matter if it was something, beyond maybe bankrupting a handful of Taylor Swift event ticket scalpers in the near future. But it's all very weird.
Especially the part where counterprotesters started literally calling for and cheering on more knifings.
My only observation is that I have been told many times by smug Europeans and Australians, on this forum and many others, that they have found a way to "true multiculturalism" and "peaceful cohabitation" that continues to elude American society, with our polite segregation and constant miasma of racial tension. To which I have always pointed out that the only reason they are able to believe this nonsense is that their societies are still less diverse than ours, with national populations that are still, for the moment, supermajority white. They will learn better, one way or another.
The future of European cities won't be pretty if what happened to the U.S. in the 1960s is any indication.
Lately, I've developed a grim fascination with the 1950/2024 comparison shots of various American cities, both large and small. In 1950 they were bustling centers of activity, with well-dressed, thin, professional people scurrying to and fro. In 2024, they are just like an intersection with giant parking lots and maybe a payday loans store.
Ignorant Redditors like to blame car culture for the collapse of American cities, but cars merely enabled people to escape the crime and urban decay. The process of ceding productive areas to the least productive citizens is now beginning in earnest in Europe as well, although in this case the cities are rotting from the edges inwards.
Like a receding glacier, the genteel areas of a city like Paris get smaller and smaller. Soon, the scowling male faces of the banlieue will reach the heart of the city and the City of Love will become the city of trying not to get sexually assaulted as you wander down the once-thriving boulevards.
American cities were bulldozed for cars in the 50s. American cities looked like European cities: https://i.redd.it/mn45jsmhowna1.jpg https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate-cities-history
Never forget what they took from you.
I still don't understand why having highways that go to the places worth going to is bad. I guess some people hate driving, but once we get self-driving cars this will be seen as obviously correct right?
IMO, the money spent on highways and other car-related infrastructure since 1920 should have been spent on maintaining and increasing urban public transit and passenger rail service (anyone remember interurbans? Like streetcars, but they traveled between towns rather than within a city).
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Highways are cool! But they demolished beautiful buildings downtown instead of building highways in less dense areas.
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Anti-car activists have a mental model of an ideal world with a level of density they believe is incompatible with typical roads, and often think even moderately car-traversable areas are Literally Causes Of Death.
I'm... not a fan, and to be blunt their underlying claims range from merely misleading to outright malicious lies, but they're a pretty common viewpoint.
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A large part of why ‘the places worth going to’ are worth going to is that there isn’t a highway going through them!
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