[Archive from 2017]
Three dead, twenty nine in hospital, seven in a critical condition. Perhaps pedestrians walking down Westminster bridge on the 22nd of March 2017 had only the most trivial thoughts on their mind, thinking about the deadlines they have to meet for work, or maybe what cafe they’d eat at given the next free opportunity. The peaceful, undisturbed thoughts of the citizens of one of the most successful countries in the world. All forgotten when a black Hyundai 4×4 ploughed it’s way through a crowd of innocent people. A lone attacker emerged from the scene armed with a blade, only to be shot down once he had already stabbed PC Keith Palmer, a police officer with 15 years of service. All across the country, thoughts and respects were given to the victims of this brutal attack. But as videos of the chaos and confusion were transmitted to every television set in the UK, and images of MPs holing themselves up in the safety of parliament were left imprinted on the retina of all of those watching, a niggling thought worked it’s way into the back of the mind of every British citizen: “that could have been me”.
This deep, innate fear of terrorism is the source of it’s very success, and we must question the way in which Europe and the West respond to such events and who it serves in the process.
We owe it to the victims of every single terrorist attack that we examine these events in a way that will allow us to prevent such abhorrent practices from ever happening again, but doing so requires us to breach the very fear that terrorism inspires in us; to look at the world from new perspectives. It is very easy to simply blame it all on religion, that what we’re seeing is an ideological clash of Us vs Them. To some degree this is true, but what role does our very media and government play? I will get you to consider what a friend of mine suggested to me: whilst the entire world was distracted by Trump running around on the grand world stage of the election in his blinding orange tan and his wispy toupee of hair, the Conservative Government passed the Snooper’s Charter, essentially letting them do what the NSA and CIA have been doing for years, but with the balls to actually make it legal. As absurd as it sounds to let the government spy on your every action online, it’s all in the name of name of national security… right?
So why didn’t we detect this. We have three options to consider. A) the government’s terrorist prevention programme has failed us and those thousands of hours of watching middle aged men jack off to Slovakian porno were for nothing, B) the intelligence agencies knew about the attack and did nothing, or C) (fans of Alex Jones and David Icke should get the strawberry lube ready for this one) the government in fact orchestrated the attack for their own agenda. In the end the result is the same. We can say for certain that this attack will be used to promote “British solidarity” and the strengthening of “good old BRITISH values” and so on and so on. Of course I support solidarity. Solidarity between all creeds. We must stand as a nation with the vast majority of those Muslims that are peaceful to say “We will not be divided”. Because that is exactly what both sides want. They want the country divided. The more we outcast certain groups in society to preserve our “solidarity”, the more Muslims will be seen as potential for radicalisation. The more we blame the problem as one of religion, and not of our own failings, the more the British public will blindly support the death and destruction of innocent people in the middle East. The cycle continues.
Why do I say that terrorism is a failure of our ideology and not the religion of Islam? Because very often these people come from our country. Jihadi John is a good example of this. Brought up in a working class family in London, Mohammed Emwazi was apparently a quiet and nervous kid in highschool. He was bullied for his anxious behaviour and had little success with girls as a result. At a school where teachers often racially abused pupils, with no one else to listen to him, Mohammed was the perfect target for radicalisation at his young age. Do not get me wrong, I have no sympathy for a man that has beheaded people on live TV. However, if we are to truly stop terrorism, we must look through the eyes of the terrorist. In his own words in response to the UK’s domestic security strategy since 9/11 “When are we going to finally learn that when we treat people as if they’re outsiders they are going to feel like outsiders and they will look for belonging elsewhere?”. Why do they hate our ideology? Because it has rejected them. This is not a war between different ways of life. If we can learn anything from history, this is a war between people with power, nothing more. True solidarity is saying “No. Enough of this bullshit. Enough of this fake nationalism that drives us apart. Enough fucking Facebook filters that give the most superficial way of forgetting the causes of this terror. We recognise that this is the result of power-hungry men pitting us against each other to receive the full force of the consequences, and we say no longer”. It is not those that order for the bombing of the middle East that get bombed, and it is not those that radicalise British Muslims that do the dirty work. We are but pawns in a world-wide game of chess which started before terrorism was used by it’s perpetrators today. Don’t forget that the US once funded Al Qaeda, whilst we saw the Irish a threat to national security.
Finally, whilst we get so caught up over who’s to blame for this attack and why, a dark presence emerges amidst the chaos to comfort those who’s voice are felt to be unheard. Feeding on the hatred of a way of a life, they seek to bring about the end of all ideologies but their own in the most extremist fashion. These groups dwell within our very midsts, tempting the most vulnerable in our society into their ranks by twisting their hate into something that seems rational. I’m not talking about ISIS, but the countless White Nationalist groups that have appeared in the last few years. If these people saw their end goal achieved, the situation our country would be in would barely be discernible from ISIS controlled areas of Syria. Since 2010, we’ve had almost as many terrorist attacks from right wing extremist groups as Muslim ones, not to mention countless cases of assault on ethnic minorities. This is another group that effectively supports terrorism, as it’s one wish is to see a divided Britain that is easily controlled. In these dangerous times, real solidarity is more important than ever.
The Monkey and The Machine 