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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Some observations:

-The many failings prior to the murders took place under the Tory government

-Prevent is an anti-terror team focused on ideological violence not 'lone spree killing' type violence. However Starmer (who has been in office less than a year) has now changed its remit to include lone spree killing as well. Obviously this killer 'fell through the cracks' as they say (code for 'an overworked team didn't want to help because he was outside their remit') but why did the cracks exist? The previous, Tory government, in power throughout the entirety of the killer's young adult life and his encounters with authorities.

-He came from a Christian family.

-The 'terrorist' material he had in his possession was a CIA agent's commentary about Al Qaeda's methods

-I'm aware of no evidence at all he converted to Islam, but we do know that he was very interested in genocides through history, and in violence and revenge against his bullies.

So I am unsure exactly what your point is. Do you want to claim he was actually a Muslim extremist and Al Qaeda operative? Or that he acted partly or primarily in sympathy with Al Qaeda? Perhaps you could help me understand how any of this supports the two-tier characterisation.

He was the son of two recent african migrants to the UK, and thus absolutely falls into the oppressed side of the oppressed/oppressor dichotomy which the two tier accusation is describing. It is crudely (but correctly) recognised that if he was a white anglo the state would not have reacted in the way it did during the initial time after the killing and during the unrest.

The Tories are not meaningfully different from Labour when it comes to the overarching governance of Britain. Both defacto support growth hindering policies and the vast burdens on state spending. The only meaningful difference is that Labour is the natural home of those who believe in the current view on fairness/equality and the Tories might be the home of those who disagree, but are utterly incapable/uninterested of moving against it.

But how did the state favour him at all? If he was white anglo, and killed kids, and white rioters were targeting asylum seekers and burned down a hotel, the state would obviously have denied that he was an asylum seeker at that point to defuse the riot? Or do you mean if he was white anglo, and immigrant rioters had targeted white people, the state would have called him a terrorist rather than a spree killer (I'm not sure to what end)? Or do you mean that Prevent would have intervened successfully if he was white?

Maybe I'm confused but I realise I actually don't know what you're referring to at all.

I don't think the state did favor him as they gave him a very long prison sentence.

But let's be real. If this was a white man who had stabbed 3 black girls in a racially motivated attack, this would have been considered the Crime of the Centuryâ„¢. The government and the media would have shouted the identity of the attacker to the heavens. The resulting riots would have been described as "fiery but mostly peaceful", and all the usual suspects would be calling for a national conversation on white racism.

So while you're right to narrowly question the OP's claims, I think we're still left with a situation in which there is two tier justice system in the UK. In the UK, white lives have less value, and yeah, that happened under the Tories as well.

Maybe it's not fair to bring up a US case, but... Dylan Roof killed nine black people in a racially-motivated attack ten years ago and he is, by and large, forgotten now. I had to do some Googling to even remember his name. It was a big story at the time, but in no way shape or form did it get the sort of reaction that you could characterize as "the Crime of the Century".

Even Breivik, who killed 77 people including a bunch of kids in a politically motivated attack in a very "progressive"-leaning country, is barely remembered now. Ted Kaczynski is better remembered than Breivik, despite having killed many fewer people, simply because Kaczynski wrote a more interesting manifesto and thus it's easier to characterize him as the sort of "intelligent killer" that many people love reading about (see all the crime books and shows about smart killers), rather than just characterizing him as a mentally ill loser. Even Elliot Rodger, a deranged non-entity whose incel spree was stopped by a simple door, is better remembered than either Roof or Breivik, because he happened to write an interesting manifesto and was so socially inept that he became easy comedic material.

A white guy killing 3 black girls for racial reasons is not "Crime of the Century" material. It is more like "media talks about it for a few weeks" material. I think that this is probably nearly as true for the UK as it is for the US.

The big difference between cases like Roof, Breivik, or the Christchurch guy, is that when it all happened we had all the media authorities wring their hands over how horrible the ideologies that pushed them to this are, and forcing anyone adjacent to them to go through struggle sessions of disavowal. The same thing needs to happen here.

What is the evidence that the Southport killer was driven mainly by ideology, instead of being yet another random nutcase?

If the Al-Qaeda instruction manual doesn't do it for you, I don't understand why you think Roof, Breivik, or the Christchurch guy get to be blamed on an ideology.

Also the assailant being directly motivated by an ideology is not necessary. In some of these cases people were blaming the broader culture of racism and islamophobia. Again, something analogous needs to happen here.

If you want to find out how to commit terrorism, an Al-Qaeda instruction manual seems like a pretty good thing to read. If I for some reason wanted to go commit a terrorist act, I might go read one myself, even though ideologically I have almost nothing in common with Islamists and indeed, Islamic fundamentalism repulses me. Similarly, even though I am not a communist, if I wanted to learn how to wage guerilla war, I might go read something that Mao wrote. I've read Ted Kaczynski's manifesto several times even though I am not an anti-technologist.

I don't know about Roof because I haven't read the details, but Breivik and the Christchurch guy explicitly, repeatedly wrote that their motivations were ideological. Is there anything similar for the Southport killer?

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