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Notes -
The man who murdered 3 girls and wounded countless others at a dance class in the UK, triggering the riots last summer has been jailed for 52 years.
The backstory, having been previously been withheld by government diktat (I wonder how many months the papers were collectively sitting on that mugshot, itching for the chance to print it) has now been published and we have learned some very interesting things, namely that:
Despite suggestions the contrary, he had been defacto known to the authorities and was referred to Prevent several times. For reference, Nigel Farage was reprimanded for hinting in the months after the incident. *
He had been caught with knives on 10 separate occasions.
He had previously been expelled by his school for violent behaviour, but later attempted to return to commit a rampage with a knife about 3 weeks before he would commit the atrocity described above. He was indirectly stopped by his father, who pleaded with the taxi not to take him to his destination. His father then seemingly took no action after this.
He had obtained the materials required to make ricin and terrorist literature from organisations from Al-Qaeda.
However, no terror related charges were passed against him. Upon conclusion of the trial, the immediate reaction from the government once this information has come out has been to redirect heat away from the government. Instead, the public is now to think of terrorists as "loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom" and to pass judgement against Amazon, so mentioned because he bought the knife used to commit the deed from Amazon.
I think this particular arc has come to its resolution, but the effects on the culture will be long lasting - the phrase "two tier" is now embedded in the public conscious, and the man in the street now has the perfect phrase to describe the observed worldview of the centre and left of centre (the Oppressed/Oppressor dichotomy) and their handling of disputes.
Co-incidentally, the man who called for "the throats of protestors to be slit", has had his trial delayed until later this year.
*Your definition of "known to the security services" may vary!
I mean, I acknowledge that the optics of this are bad. But Britain is still a liberal society with rule of law, where even obvious ne'er do wells have rights. You can't just grab people off the streets because they're sketchy.
There was a case in America where a school shooter's parents were charged and imprisoned for not stopping him. I suppose that rule should apply here, but at the end of the day, I don't want to live in the society where people are scooped up for being concerning. I suspect you don't either. Britain will instead make noises about banning knives because it's Britain.
I always thought sicking the police on people for "hate speech" goes against liberal principles, so I think it's only the "rule of law" bit that they can possibly lay claim to. And I'm not sure I believe that claim either.
Britain has some very dystopian speech laws from what I understand, but it's still a very liberal society compared to Russia or, going more extreme, North Korea. Maybe this is damning with faint praise, but it's true. There are plenty of places in the world where free speech is more dangerous than it is in Britain. I wish that Britain adopted more US-like attitudes to free speech, but I don't think it's fair to claim that Britain has virtually no liberal rule of law.
Russia arrests less people for speech on the Internet than UK.
How many North Koreans do you think get arrested for speech?
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