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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.
After the expulsion for violence isn't some compulsory mental health follow-up and involuntary admission appropriate?
I know this can be challenging in the US since the 60's and 70's for civil liberties reasons but if this is the alternative I'm unconvinced.
The thing it's easy to miss when you read about eye-popping crimes in the news every few days is they're still very rare. Disaffected youth who've been expelled, people who've posted online that they kind of want to shoot up school/congress/whatever else, outnumber people who'll actually do that by like a thousand to one (I don't have a legible source for this, but I think it's intuitive). This isn't like shoplifting or selling drugs, where most of the crimes are committed by people who commit many crimes, and 'round them all up' is an effective approach - to actually prevent random incidents like this, you'd have to involuntarily commit a lot of people. And I don't think the tradeoff is worth it, especially since dying from terrorism-ish homicide or school shooting is much rarer than "normal" homicide, or getting hit by a car, or the many other reasons people die.
His behavior from 13 - 17 is the concern, not internet posting or reading material.
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