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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.
Just a quick point which has been bugging me in several of these Motte threads about the issue...
Isn't it definitely worth mentioning that if he were born in the UK, it's not at all a "recent" immigration? That's just flat out wrong!! Objectively! I don't know why all the comments seem to conveniently gloss over this. Even if we're playing the counterfactual game, which is always epistemically suspect in the case of individuals, the debate would be about immigration policies 18 years ago, not current immigration policies. Now, given, the PM at the time was Tony Blair, who was Labour, so maybe there's a connection there, but still (it's not like Labour has been in charge for long enough to meaningfully affect immigration policies themselves, and instead it's the Conservatives who were in power for much more than a decade). The situation also pretty much requires asking "how well does assimilation work in the UK"? Answering that is pretty much required context if you're going to connect it to immigration, because otherwise the local UK culture is presumably just as much "to blame" as his parent's upbringing.
But yeah, Taylor Swift being repeatedly brought up is a little odd. But if your goal is to create maximum media attention to an act of terror, choosing as your target a bunch of sympathetic young people and even kids at a Taylor Swift event ( a figure who has a ton of built in attention already) is probably close to the "ideal" target. Now, of course, this kind of terrorism is consummately counterproductive, but to the more delusional kind of terrorist (such as a 17 and 19 year old) it might seem attractive.
Replying to both of your comments here--I'm not wed to the word "recent." But the consequences of immigration can surely take decades and even centuries to play out, depending on the details. As I noted to FiveHourMarathon,
As for whether it's really Labour's fault, I'm not sufficiently keyed in to British politics to say much about that. Very generally, I suspect that people who are broadly anti-immigration will often be the sorts of people who also use words like "uniparty" or "globalist" to describe the way that progressive and conservative elites always seem to be able to set aside their differences when it comes time to screw the average nobody.
Immigration has often been recognized as precisely this sort of thing. Bernie Sanders' opposition to immigration is grounded in the idea that it hurts poor Americans, and the people who disagree with his take tend to just be so globalist that they're willing to accept the tradeoff. From the linked article (emphasis added):
Immigration is indeed good for Americans (economically), on average! But if you're one of the millions of Americans for whom it is actually bad, how should that make you feel? Personally, if I were working class, I cannot imagine being happy to hear that, thanks to increased immigration, people already better off than me were going to, on average, benefit more than I was going to suffer.
If someone can't protest the direct result of immigration policy twenty years after the fact (old news! proximate cause!), and can't protest the immigration policy proposed today (racist!), even when the same party is in control today as was in control twenty years ago, then where does that leave them? I am myself somewhat ambivalent about all this; I know enough about economics to know that trade and immigration are big contributors to prosperity in much of the world, but I also try to be empathetic with people who are clearly harmed--whose well being is being consciously sacrificed by government actors for the "greater good." So I've been a little stunned by the apparent absence of anything approaching sympathy in the UK counterprotests, particularly considering, you know, the murdered children.
But yes: the Taylor Swift thing is weird!
EDIT: I forgot to say! There is a joke: what is the difference between Americans and the British? Answer: Americans think 200 years is a long time, and Brits think that 200 miles is a long way. "Recent" immigration could be a hundred years ago, depending on your culture. Americans of European ancestry are sometimes accused of being recent immigrants even if their ancestors arrived on the Mayflower...
Modern western secular humanism is meant to be an anodyne soup appealing to everyone, further diminishing the power of traditional religious and socioeconomic gentry. That the recent immigrants fins secular humanism unappealing and continue finding succour in retrograde political beliefs is inconvenient and ignored by pro migrant class aspirants.
In aggregate, cheaper consumer goods and cheaper services results in net utility increases. That said utility increase is uneven is ignored and the common response from urban professionals is to sneer at the stupid proles who dare display unhappiness with their imported replacements.
Urban professionals have made it clear that importing migrants for their personal comfort matters. So what if tens of thousands of girls are raped or dozens of girls blown up by muslims, or stabbed by imports that never contribute economically. These stupid proles should know their place beneath the benevolent auspices of the professionals, and anyone who objects is a wrongthinker whose throat should be, as white-sounding Ricky Jones said, slit in the name of antifascism.
To the cheers of Free Free Palestine, for good measure. The presence of that damnable slogan with all manner of terrible activities conducted by the protected classes is something to consider too.
I think this is unrealistically conspiratorial. I am an urban professional, and it's clear to me that refugees and anyone coming from say, Haiti is not a net contributor to my or any of my countrymen's comfort [EDIT: on average]. But I don't talk about it often for fear of being fired or ostracised.
I know some definite positive contributors from Haiti. Doesn't mean I'd invite the whole island (or even just the Haitian half) over of course.
Huh?
Edit: see below.
There are, in fact, Haitian immigrants to the US who aren't cannibal gang members, mud-eating Voudon practicitioners, or the like.
I misread your comment as "positive contributions", my bad. I'll also point out that the OP was specifically referring to net contributors.
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