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Notes -
Going to jump in with what I want to see discussed:
Police and political leaders in Northern Ireland call for calm after Belfast knife attack.
What we know is that a MENA immigrant has attacked a native in the street, gouged out his eyes, and was attempting to behead him when stopped by passers-by.
Details beyond that seem shaky. I've seen the attacker described as Somali, though Sudanese is more consistent. I've seen the victim described as a man in his 40s, though 15-year old boy is also popular. And I've seen that the victim's life was saved, but also that he's perished in the hospital.
What's certain is that the major concern of the people in charge is, of course, that this is liable to upset the native population.
Perhaps that's more understandable than usual because of where it happened. Belfast! A storied town. Across twitter I see various historically-enemy paramilitary sympathizers calling to set aside their differences and unite against the common enemy; that it doesn't matter who controls Northern Ireland unless there's any such place left to save.
Last I heard, all major transport routes into and out of the city have been shut down, businesses are forced to close at 17:30, and curfews have been established. The place seems to be gearing up for major rioting.
Is it just me or have the straws been landing more heavily, lately, on the camel's back?
And, provided that the historically-armed underground belligerent factions of the area haven't withered into insignificance; provided that they do get serious about uniting and using force; might they serve as a template, or at least an inspiration, for other places?
I believe Kulak once predicted that the flashpoint for organized European resistance would happen in Northern Ireland.
Crime committed by immigrates provides a sharp flashpoint in a way other crime doesn't. The actual scale of the issue doesn't matter. Actual crime rates don't matter. What matters is that it's not priced in.
I can't speak to Northern Ireland, but here in the US, we have a lot of crime and a lot of avoidable death. We are, collectively, shockingly blithe about it - some people even take pride in it. One black man kills another in an argument? Priced in - everyone will just assume they were gang members, and in any event black lives don't matter. Cops make the worst shoot in the history of law enforcement and suffer no consequences? Priced in - nobody's perfect. A psycho shoots up a school, leaving dozens dead? Priced in - a few dead kids is the Price of Freedom^tm. Reckless driving kills more people than ten 9/11s, every single year? You better believe it's priced in. My grandfather didn't storm the beaches in Normandy so I could drive the speed limit (or, god forbid, take a train like some sort of communist).
A immigrant kills a native? Start building the internment camps and spare no thought for human dignity or individuals' rights. Collective punishment is the only solution.
On some level, I understand it. People really do acculturate to certain risks, to the point where they tolerate seemingly unreal levels of damage, and will get viciously defensive at the suggestion we maybe need to recalibrate our tradeoffs. Crime in particular is an emotional subject, since it is liable to be construed as free-standing anti-social behavior and people react more strongly to malice than misfortune (particularly if the motives are exotic and the victim is atypical). But there's a remarkable lack of curiosity about the actual scope of the issue. The preferred angle is lurid anecdotes (hilariously, the same error they tend to castigate CJRers for with respect to police misconduct). And for some reason the logic of collective judgment and punishment only flows one way. No one in the nativist camp thinks we need to carry out a purge of professional athletes just because professional athletics has a cottage industry in sexual assault cases, or that maybe we should . An uncharitable person might think there's some folks just looking for an excuse to do a pogrom.
To be clear, an immigrant gouged out a deaf man's eyes, then tried to behead him.
An uncharitable person might think you're deliberately sanding off the horrific, inhuman corners of this specific crime, then presenting it as "merely" an immigrant attempting to murder a native.
There is no version of this where, in your example, an athlete (?) attempts to gouge out a man's eyes and behead him, and we all go "well, that's part of the plan".
To be clear, when I say "an uncharitable person might think there's some folks just looking for an excuse to do a pogrom" I am engaging in rhetorical understatement - there are people explicitly doing exactly that in this thread.
Horrific murders happen with unfortunate regularity, if for no other reason than there are a lot of people and some of them are pretty fucked up. A few weeks ago some Irish rent-a-cops suffocated a man to death. If you peruse a list of people executed in the United States, you'll find a significant share of them are pretty egregious (as in, above and beyond 'mere' murder). The point of emphasizing the horrific nature of this crime in particular is to try and gin up more violence against other people who didn't commit this crime. This is the purpose of the emotive language - don't think, don't empathize, get revenge (on unrelated people).
This was stupid and they will probably get charged with something, but for context the shoplifter was violent and had just broken a pensioner's ribs.
This part isn't mentioned in some newspapers but the original Irish Times article has it.
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Does the moral status of 'pogroms' change when less-unpleasant approaches have been attempted and failed?
People get arrested over there for expressing concern about it. I don't know what they're supposed to do, exactly.
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My understanding is that the autopsy has yet to determine if that was the cause of death.
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