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Riot police hold back protesters in Southport (Getty Images)
After an atrocity has been committed, a morbid curiosity often takes hold of online sleuths. As they search for clues of the suspect’s identity, what they really want is to look into the eyes of evil, perhaps believing that they’ll discover some dark wisdom there, or at least some sense of motivation. It is, at heart, an incredibly human impulse: we fear and loathe such monsters, but we’re also fascinated by them in equal measure.
Then there are those who, far from being curious, want to stare into the face of a suspected perpetrator and see their worst enemy projected back at them. Since the Southport knife attack on Monday, it is this tribe that has been most vocal.
Until today, the name of the suspect behind the stabbing rampage was not released; he is 17 and the law prohibits the naming of child suspects in criminal proceedings, except in very rare circumstances. And yet, within hours of the Southport rampage, a number of accounts on X claimed to have seen his name. “He is alleged to be on MI5’s watch list, had ‘mental issues’ and was a Channel migrant,” wrote one conservative “journalist” with more than 200,000 followers. Laurence Fox, meanwhile, blamed the attack on the “national emergency” of uncontrolled immigration. In response, he croaked, “you’re about to see the roar of the British lion”. In the event, that lion turned out to be a tanked-up geezer in a tracksuit, while his roar amounted to hurling wheelie bins and bricks at police.
Within hours, it had become clear that these claims were false. According to Merseyside Police, the suspect was in fact born in Cardiff. We also know that he moved to the Southport area with his Rwandan parents when he was aged six. In other words, he was a second-generation immigrant, not an undocumented migrant who had recently arrived in an illegal boat.
But put this knowledge to one side — should the personal identity of the perpetrator of mass-casualty violence matter? From a human perspective, it shouldn’t; had the suspect of the Southport atrocity been a white teen whose parents were from Reading instead of Rwanda, the horror wouldn’t be any less horrific. Yet even so, it does matter, to the degree that it might shed a light on the motives (if any) of the perpetrator. Atheists called John Smith, for example, are unlikely to carry out acts of jihadist violence, while women don’t commit incel-inspired outrages.
And of course, in today’s atomised world, identity has never commanded such political and existential power. Had the suspect of Monday’s stabbing spree indeed been white, and targeted a Beyoncé-themed event where the victims were predominantly black children, it seems likely that many on social media would condemn Britain’s racist superstructure. Which is to say that politicising massacres isn’t just a vice of the online Right, but is fully alive among online progressives too.
Merseyside Police, for its part, has said that the motivation behind the Southport attack is “unclear”, that it is not being treated as terror-related, and that the suspect acted alone. Two possibilities follow from this. The first is that the suspect had personal reasons for launching his attack, however outrageously shallow, incomprehensible or incoherent they may seem to us. For all we know, he may have wanted Taylor Swift to notice him, much like John Hinckley Jr, who tried to assassinate President Reagan in 1981, wanted Jodie Foster to notice him. As Kat Rosenfield recently observed in a smart piece on Donald Trump’s would-be assassin, “the desperate desire to believe that life-shattering violence must have some kind of deeper meaning”, though understandable, belies the fact that a lot of violence is “not just senseless, but depthless, a lizard-brained impulse in search of an outlet”.
You have intelligently, carefully and considerately covered much but have neglected this:
These were highly targeted pre-pubertal white girls living in a privileged area, signed up to a privileged group (£20 session) for yoga and dance celebrating Taylor Swift, the icon of female freedom and empowerment. Little Swifties.
This is the antithesis is of what we know of the offender, black, 17 year old male, (peak testosterone) angry enough to attempt to slaughter a dozen of them and succeeding to kill three, maim many others and their female teachers. Misogyny hardly touches it.
Of course he won’t explain himself. Of course he’ll allow himself to be declared mentally ill. His hatred, and resentment has been satisfied.
They weren’t all “white girls” – the 9-year old (Alice) and I think the 6-year old (Bebe) who were murdered were not white. Elsie, the 7-year old murdered girl, was.
Wow, why is this comment getting down votes what a bigoted bunch you lot are! Shame on you.
and another person who KNOWS the motivation of the suspect! incredible! 😀
But you know, apparently.
no of course I don’t. that’s the point and the point of the article.
Well they are not actions of love and respect.
S why have a justice system? The judge will never know what is going through the head of the suspect, and often the motivation is unclear. Back to the time when we lived in caves and there were no laws or justice? Incredible!
er. you don’t know how the justice system works?!!? Questioning by police then trial is what is used to ascertain quilt. not random keyboard warriors on social media or UnHerd comments! 😀
“His hatred and resentment has been satisfied”….
And perhaps a perverse sexual pleasure in this mistakenly entitled male triumph also
Erm, don’t assume the gender. This person could be a pansexual for example?
That is a possibility…
Noticceable that some in the Establishment think the suspect is old enough to vote, but not be identified yet in this murder case.
As war will never end, there will always be a supply of ‘culturally displaced people’. If you concede that they pose a risk of violence, why admit them?
There’s a reason you keep your front door locked at night. It’s to protect your family from the people roaming the streets.
Because asylum is an accepted fact in civilised Western Christian countries and has been for millenia. Don’t like that go and live in a closed society somewhere.
Accepted by whom? A small minority of bleeding heart lefties. And Christianity has no such obligation that you spend your existence around non Christians exhibiting satanic behaviours. Quite the opposite. You are welcome to try and help them but not required by doctrine.
Indeed. Have you noticed how the good old “Charity begins at home” is nowhere to be seen/heard any longer? Most probably because this idea runs counter to the leftist narcissistic world view where loud and in-your-face manifestation of ‘kindness’ is at the expense of real caring for those who need and deserve help in the first place.
I am so sick of people who would never help an elderly neighbour, but boast on SM how they participate in glamourised fashionable campaigns, stridently supporting yet another “current thing”…
Edited to add: This comment was removed almost immediately after being uploaded and restored just now, two days (!) after I posted it. UnHerd should very seriously reconsider its moderation policy!
Understand what you’re saying, but you’re massively overstating it – we are deep in completely unprecedented territory now, all across Europe. Thoughtless platitudes aren’t going to cut it.
How long does a society remain civilised, western, or Christian if it accepts a potentially unlimited number of people who are none of those three things?
If everyone in Africa and the Middle East wanted to come to this one small country, how many would you let in?
Asylum can be traced back to Beduin codes of hospitality but one is obliged to follow custom of the tribe. Try saying something of a sexual nature to a woman in a Muslim country and find out what happens. In mixed company it is not acceptable for a man to address directly the wife. A man does not even ask about another man’s family.
Churches provided asylum but it did not one did not give one the right to murder priests and nuns or steal.
You completely ignore the need to assimilate . When foreigners come into Britain they also bring in their conflcits such as Serb/Bosnian Muslin; Sinhalese/Tamil, Muslim/ Jew,
The mistake made was to never consider what practices were acceptable in Britain. I Khan and B Butto were Muslims from Pakistan and came from very wealthy westernised backgrounds . B Butto attended RC Schools in Pakistan.
Benazir Bhutto – Wikipedia
Since 1973 there has been a massive rejection of the emancipation of woman in the Muslim World due to the influence of the MB after defeat of Arabs in the Yom Kippur War. Up to 1973 Muslim women wre seen wearing mini skirts in Cairo, Beirut, even Kabul. Pakistanis who entered Britain up to the late 1960s left a far more westernised country where woman enjoyed far more emanicpation than in the last 20 years.
Coloured people or white people ‘roaming the streets’ D Glover?
Either.
Both. Either.
In the working class street in which I lived as a child, people went to bed with their front door left open on hot humid nights.
“If Southport killer is white = far-Right. If Southport killer isn’t white = mental illness/thoughts and prayers”
The person who wrote this is correct. It’s not inverse victimology. The leftists are terrified of losing narrative control, which is why they do it.
Leftists always seek damage control after anti-white atrocities. They use language like ‘weaponise’ or ‘give ammunition’ to ‘other side’ – the other side being white working class, cultural conservative types, the vast majority of the country.
They are terrified a mass movement will emerge from anti-white atrocities like this, which is why they never join up obvious dots, always label noticers as ‘far-right’, and always seek to criminalise dissent.
An “anti white atrocity”? Really? It may turn out to be but at this stage you have no evidence at all to suggest this is an “anti white” act. By suggesting this you are literally proving the articles point.
Had colours been reversed, or the victims of a different religion, can there be any doubt that every official, or media outlet, the facts, or lack of them, be dammed would have run with a damming verdict, with much abasement and hand wringing ?
No doubt, had the victims been Muslim and riots had taken place, as they surely would, the story today would have been very different, I wouldn’t have even been surprised if the PM himself wouldn’t have made an appearance to bow and scape before the bereaved rioters and their spokesmen.
The silence speaks volumes, not about the identity of the attacker as a rational for what happened but about the bias of those making decisions.
When white children’s lives are valued less than others, the gloves come off.
The perpetrator is black and likely a Muslim. Do you really think he would stab three black Muslim women?
In what way has the tragedy NOT been weaponised? You’ve got people looting and burning things down while chanting “stop the boats” even though the killer didn’t come here on a boat (parents; unsure, but irrelevant). They’re using it as a reason to attack mosques when Rwanda is a majority Christian/Catholic country. Of course it’s possible it might come out that he was converted/radicalised but, in the absence of actually knowing people are jumping to conclusions because it fits a narrative. Still, I’ve seen at least one report based on interviews with neighbours that his father is a Christian.
I’ve also seen comments suggesting that the parents should be deported. Or that they never should’ve been allowed here because, somehow, they were supposed to know that 17 years later their son would commit a horrendous act. White parents give birth to white murderers…how do we preemptively stop that from happening? We don’t hold white parents accountable for the potential sins of their future criminal children, or attribute their criminality TO their whiteness. Brown/black crime is perceived as worse because, in theory, we could remove SOME excess deaths by simply being racist and not letting any of them in, just in case.
Leftists (me) aren’t terrified of ‘losing narrative control’. We’re terrified of the country spiralling into xenophobia, and seeing entirely innocent, hard working, decent families and communities being terrorised because SOME people think that being foreign means you’re innately dangerous and not to be trusted. Trying to characterise them/me as people who want to send ‘thoughts and prayers’ to the killer is arguing with a version of us you’ve invented in your own head. If someone had intervened and taken him out, I wouldn’t be sad. My gut reaction to a person who can do this to three children is the same as yours. I obviously see some utility in understanding why people do these things so we can prevent the crime rather than reacting to it. But it doesn’t mitigate or excuse the cruelty of the act.
The actual topic of immigration, social cohesion, etc. is something else and I’m not hand waving away concerns people have about that. Some of it is valid.
Don’t you think it was foolish of the police not to describe the attacker as black to head off damaging speculation? Onlookers could see clearly that he was black, so the word spread like wildfire. Meanwhile, it looked as if the lack of information on was the police covering something up based on identity politics.
That’s exactly what you’re doing
You have a lot to say about hate, racism, xenophobia, Just tell me, what should be done about anti-white hate?
Since 2005 about 94 people have been murdered in attacks by Muslims and about 3 by Right Wing terrorists. About 1100 have been injured in attacks by Muslims. Many more would have been killed by Islamic Terrorists if not stopped by the Authorities
2006, 10 August: The 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot to blow up 10 planes flying from Heathrow saw the arrest of 24 people from their homes in Britain, chaos at airports as security measures were put in place, and numerous high-level statements from US and UK officials. Eight people were put on trial, and three found guilty of conspiracy to murder. It was shown at their trial how bottles of liquid could be made into effective bombs. Following this incident, carriage of liquids in hand luggage on aircraft was restricted internationally to very small amounts. Rashid Rauf, suspected to have been the link between the UK plotters and Pakistan, escaped to Pakistan, where he was arrested, but escaped again on his way to an extradition hearing. It was reported that he was killed in a US airstrike in North Waziristan in November 2008.[94]
List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain – Wikipedia
I suggest you read about the Muslim Brotherhood, Qutb , O Bin Laden’s reference to Ibn Taymiyyah. The reality is far more Muslims have been killed by Muslim Terrorism than any other religious group. You need to understand by Muslim Terrorists would attack an Ariana Grande concert, a favourite of young girls.
ManchesterArena bombing – Wikipedia
You display the typical arrogance and ignorance of left wing types who fail to make any effort to understand the Muslim Theology which provides justification for Islamic Terrorism.You fail to realise that Britain is one of the most tolerant and welcoming of any country. Imagine if Christians in Pakistan had murdered 94 Muslims?
He came on a metaphorical boat
Thank you. Needed to be said.
“Xenophobia”? As an immigrant myself, give me a break. What you should be terrified is the destruction of liberal democracy as the left has subverted most institutions including the bureaucracy, and the ensuing socio-economic fascism (aka socialism) that will incrementally take over the state.
But when did the left care about democracy?
To have a mass movement, you need to break the back of the media monster and those who control the media through blacklisting publishers for advertisers.
A new comer, an alien, a foreigner, was in past times treated with wander, some times with fear and often with hostility..! The treatment of a single alien or a group (smaller or bigger) of them, would be less or more positive, not only according to the knewbies’ attitude and behavior but very much so, according to the societal health of the receiving community..!
That said, if we think about our modern individual, community and state norms and behavior, health level isn’t at its highest. Following on the article’s hints I believe that the two vocal groups, progressives and conservatives, are trapped in their beliefs systems with virtuous and mischiefs for either side. The progressives are stronger today since their system of ideas is “scientifically” combined in our governing. Their virtue is namely inclusion of all and fair distribution (the later regrettably fading away). In their “fight” though, they destruct communities that won’t follow their doctrine in many nasty ways..! The other side being on the defence as a “backward” way of thinking, very often falls in a battle somewhat lost, trying to hold on or rediscover, those values that make sense and offer to our common leaving a type of shared essence..! Family, faith and homeland, could describe both, the very needed elements for the community, but also the hiding safe of deep anomalies within the same traditional framing..!
I believe that these thoughts, if rephrased in one or another way, are the thoughts of most people who seek the middle ground of understanding. Regrettably, the left is angry and furious while the far right is regressively aggressive. They who “pull the strings” are watering both sides for the benefit of a psychotic ruling class. If this path does not become the one and only way to go, there is hope..!
Anything but wickedness.
Ah, comments have opened ! I was ‘almost’ thinking there was a deliberate conspiracy to silence the plebs by the ‘media’, which seemed a little ironic given the story and the publisher.
Can’t be a second generation migrant – he wasn’t born here.
Born in Cardiff.
The Welsh are quite aggressive though. (Apologies for the stereotyping).
Hang him online.
I was born in Southport and return annually. My friend Father Tom Carpenter has put it best.
I have long preferred to have been born in Birkdale.
The perpetrator is from a Rwandan family, but Hutu or Tutsi?
Or Welsh?
Very good article, and a commendably sane response to an insane situation. But it seems to me that there is a definite disparity in the responses to these regular atrocities that this article skirts around in its efforts to be objective.
Yes, perpetrators are “disproportionately first- or second-generation immigrants”. Yes, “culturally displaced people…are more prone to mental illness”. Yes, immigrants may possess “pathologies of tribal grievance”, etc. The evidence suggests all this is true, whether the authorities would like to admit it or not. The disparity, broadly speaking, is between right-wingers, who respond over-zealously to this horrible situation, and left-wingers, who try to pretend the horrible situation doesn’t exist, and by the way, it’s you that’s the problem for even bringing the subject up, you bigot.
But the horrible situation is still there, and as Simon writes, we need to address it. Before more angry mobs take to the streets and address it with more violence and more insanity. Everyone is getting sick of this. How long until the next one?
I think we need more angry mobs, because there is zero evidence that political leaders and left wing media listen to mere verbal objections
Maybe the situation could be addressed by restricting the importation of people to whom the questions you pose are more likely to have “yes” as an answer. It’s not up to the West to cure the tribal grievances and other issues of the rest of the world.
Yes, Alex it is up to those responsible in the West. It was the Americans and their Western poodles that destabilised the Middle East, Libya and Afghanistan, now Ukraine and Palestine, it is not hard to see this, sorry it doesn’t fit your narrative. Have you considered a role in the BBC?
So when Bashar Assad and Putin killed 400,000 civilians just recently, including Palestinians, the west is now responsible? When the west brings peace and civility and human rights to Afghanis, then the west is responsible for their fear of the Talibans? When a fascist leftwing dictator is toppled in Libya, somehow the west becomes responsible?
Why do leftists hate democracy and freedom?
Less than a month ….
It is not possible to import masses of people whose culture is antithetical to that of a host country and not reap the inevitable. This lunatic either is a genuine lunatic or he has acted against what he considers a cultural or political enemy. If I were a betting person of fluid gender I’d put money on it being Gaza inspired.
“ it requires us to look at the nature of an individual’s encounters with wider British society and how or whether it has failed them in some way. ”
No. Personally I’m sick of our society being blamed for somehow ‘failing’ immigrants who come here of their own accord, disproportionately use our welfare system, don’t integrate and/or commit atrocities.
Oh yes, I am also wary when some rather abstract and (almost) intangible factors are invoked. ‘Society’… What does it mean? All British citizens? Or what?
Whenever there are such “explanations”, it is clear that those who should assume responsibility are shirking it – and blatantly at that.
“Society” for me means all the people who are lawfully living in a country on a longer-term basis at any point. So that would include citizens as well as non-citizens who are entitled to be there for longer than, say, 6 months. It would not include tourists, business travellers or people who are there unlawfully.
So, even though I come from Britain, I am not a part of British society as I do not live there and only return for short periods at a time.
Thank you, I understand what “society” means in principle. My point was rather different: using ‘society’ as a factor to blame for ‘failing’ immigrants is an obvious case of avoiding responsibility on the part of government.
In general, the wider and more abstract terms are used when there is a specific problem to address, the more the chance that those who resort to such terms want to deflect attention from the fact that they are avoiding their, usually very specific responsibility.
That is exactly what I thought. I am an immigrant myself and – while I did not flee from a warzone or come from some drastically different cultural background – I always saw integration as my job and my responsibility, not that of the host country.
I think it is quite common for immigrants to be much tougher and stricter in their expectations of other immigrants’ behaviour than actual natives.
Consequently, I have negligible tolerance for the “what did we do wrong here to make this person behave in such a way?” narrative.
Don’t forget the ‘old’ people, the ones who really do disproportionately use our welfare system! You give populists a bad name…
I would concur in general , but the author has to say that, to a degree, to show some balance but the following is the crux of his argument:
“But it also requires us to explore the pathologies of tribal grievance and cultures of honour, shame and retribution that migrants themselves bring to their host society, and how this in turn shapes their encounters with it. We also need to probe the relationship between migrant populations and mental illness: ”
The above points are almost always left unanswered imho!!
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
There was a lot of heavy lifting done decades ago by MLK and others to eliminate the racist and divisive walls of “Those people” in favour of individual character.
So here we are and those walls of moral relativism have been re-built by agenda-driven activists in the media and our public institutions. We teach our children that these walls are necessary for the greater good. Protect the victims, eliminate the oppressors. “Character, not colour” has been deliberately shamed and cancelled out of much of the gen pop and is now reserved for the exclusive use of sniffing hypocrite activists for those occasions when their moral math doesn’t add up.
This abhorrent incident looks like a classic example of those cases where the incident is so rare and horrific that: (a) absent some other very particular explanation, the perpetrator is likely to be insane, more or less by definition; and yet (b) public opinion will want the perpetrator to be treated as sane for the purpose of trial and of punishment, rather than with the systemic ‘leniency’ granted to the insane. Such cases involve a serious risk of injustice.
How about requiring demonstration of full assimilation into British society before being considered for any kind of permanent residence.
It doesn’t take much for some to pile in with some racist extrapolation from this dreadful crime before they know more of the facts. That says alot about that person’s self awareness and susceptibility to such reflex.
As regards what might trigger such an act – no doubt the investigation into ‘motive’ now underway may uncover something. This person was brought up here so won’t have been exposed to war zone trauma. However they may have seen far more violence on various media than perhaps we appreciate. Is that something we can limit/tackle given the increasing evidence of the impact of smart technology and social media on our young?
One also has to say, the EDF and those who’ve piled in here with a racist reflex seem to have missed doing the same about Lucy Letby. I wonder why?
Why don’t you all read, mark, learn and inwardly digest why Matt Goodwin states Britain’s protests reflect DECADES of elite failure.
There have been dozens of horrid events of murder and rape in the UK over the last years since the doors were opened legally and illegally to immigration and we have tried to sweep them under the “mental health” and “anti-racist carpets” among other left wing contrived threads.
Why are we surprised by the reaction of many uk citizens who protest . Surely there are some vicious criminal thugs among them, but most are outraged citizens of the UK who feel that their country is being destroyed by outsiders.
No Mike, our country has been destroyed by our spineless politicians refusing to stand up to American, capitalist bullies. Corporations love immigration, more people to buy their products!
Stop being xenophobic towards the Americans.
Besides, what is wrong with ownership of the means of production and receiving the fruits of your own labour? In other words, capitalism.
The Caucazoid Neanderthal lynch mobs is alive and well in Jolly old England. The Teddy Boys and Skin heads are back with a bang they were lying low. Where is Connor McGregor with his bull horn when you need him?
I agree this story brings out the worst in some native Brits, however my dad was a Ted and not a racist bone in his body – but handy in a fight. My gen were mainly Skins or punks, i was a punk till punk was dead, now i’m an effing SKINHEAD. (not just by choice – 75% calvo) You can like Toots Hibbert AND the Cockney Rejects, its called pluralism, you conos shoud try it, its good 4 ur ‘Elf.
Just wondering if we should revive the old tradition of riding the marches, anyone not of the parish, bailiwick, stewartry etc OR having lein to be there can be booted to the next parish and so on. Most ended up in Ireland, Cornwall, Wales or the Hebrides. Sure they could do their murderous rampages there but 1. not much choice of victims 2. men of working or fighting age in such communities will rapidly respond to attack. I know well a valley in the Contraviesa, Andalucia, with some 500 souls, 3 hamlets and dozens of scattered farms. If a stranger appears the shepherds, mulateers, grape planters & marijuana farmers see them immediately. Word passes to the cops, the larger farms and the pastor (as in Padre or Priest, not an actual shepherd). If they are not welcome and especially if they denounce our religion they are moved on. Increasingly they push back against being asked to move and many end up food for birds of prey, feral dogs etc. Its harsh terrain and i doubt the average sub-saharan has seen such heat or cold, and that is before the hostile plants and critter get at them. Connor McGregor in the main seems to think as well as or better than he fights, and may well be handy for 2. above. ( Like the rest of us he’s getting older every day) However before we target a 17yo Hutu lets look at the asps who are actually at our collective bosom: Labor, Tories, Limp Dims and their 30m strong retinue of benefit claimers and civil service apparatchiks is one massive hill to climb. Never mind McGregor, where’s Greg Kayabandi when you need him. I don’t think all 30m of these looters need shot, many could be educated out of their predicament, but even allowing for that stat something like WWII is all that can balance the books. Homo, ecce homo.
Have just read that the perpetrator’s name is now made public. So, it was possible all along, apparently. And could have been done much earlier, obviously.
Interesting that no comment made in this article about the fact that all of the targeted victims were female, surely not a coincidence given the latest police report on the epidemic of violence against women and girls
Killing women and girls gets you more coverage.
Don’t assume their gender. They can be pansexual or bi.
Obvs the guys a wacko regardless of identity. Since being a murderous loony isn’t predicated by ethnic, religious or sexual identities he clearly fell through the net in terms of mental health services, which is simply a matter of chance: May have ability to “play” MH (‘elf) pros, maybe he was a very secretive mass killer, may have self medicated and because he was always getting whacked on something that made him feel good, no-one saw the dark side, until he ran out of that something? Ofc he may be a Labour, Tory or EDL/HAMAS donor. BUT if we had a legal, civil society like say Spain or Germany it’d be Snr JJM or Frau H and that’s all the journo ghouls would know. On the plus side having an extractive criminal state like UK is handy if you run a business, aside from the govt not distinguishing between a legal biz, say a Consulting Engineers, and an illegal one – say extortion, drugs or whores. On the minus side? Where to start?Manchester airport probably, or Lucy Letby be it true or fake, COVId, Fujitsu/ICL incessantemente.
It isn’t racist surely to start listing the perpetrators of the crimes against our women and children and to note against their names, their ethnicity, religion and other social characteristics. 100% for example are male and it doesn’t make us anti-male to say so, but informs us as to where to focus efforts towards prevention. Two students and a caretaker murdered in Nottingham, school boy murdered on his way to school and a police woman had her hand sliced off in the same rampage, woman and child attacked with acid…just a few that come to mind before this, not to mention attacks not focussed on women such as the soldier attacked with a kitchen knife or the police at Machester airport clobbered and sent to hospital. We won’t even go on to list the child sexual exploitation by gangs or the murder of innocents in terrorist attacks such as London Brdige or the Manchester Arena. The point is that the list draws a pretty consistent picture. The gaslighting comes from not explicitly saying that we have a problem with immigrants and their offspring. Poor mental health is a given… Someone with good mental health doesn’t senselessly murder. So, let’s start testing immigrants and their children more closely for mental health issues and dealing with the problem.
That makes way too much sense for today’s managerial class. It’s better to obfuscate the issue in order to get more clicks. As I’ve often said to myself, if one enjoys hiking in the mountains, but gets confronted by a grizzly bear each and every time, does it make them a racist if they become cautious the next time they take that hike?
No – let’s have a moratorium on immigration and 20 years of coercive (if necessary) assimilation and integration, and rebuild a cohesive shared culture
Part of the reason why this has been happening is that the cohesive shared culture and its foundation is disappearing. People no longer believe in it.
What a strange time to live in – when the facts contradict the preferred narrative, the media can be counted on to downplay the facts.
So if particular religions routinely instill “mental health problems’ in certain groups, are we allowed to curtail their activities ?
I would add: in FRD or Esp any ghoul, troll or mediahadjeen breaking the privacy rule of innocent until proven guilty could end up sharing a peter with the person(s) whose rights they trampled for clicks, kicks, cash or kudos. Be careful Unherd cos u 2 are media.
Cottee’s weighing of the issues here is thoughtful—at least in terms of his analysis of the inevitable “making hay” on all sides. Only thing that really rang false for me was “it requires us to look at the nature of an individual’s encounters with wider British society and how or whether it has failed them in some way.”
Is it possible for the immigrant to fail British society? Seems it should be equally possible, and that such failures need also be part of discussion.
Much of the article is so far behind the times as to suggest the author has woken from a coma:
“Which is to say that politicising massacres isn’t just a vice of the online Right, but is fully alive among online progressives too.”
But left politicising bad things done is not “online” it is main stream, dominant cultural expression, far beyond anything which the right can achieve.
Also outdated:
If this formulation has a familiar ring to it, it is because it is an exact inversion of a particular brand of Muslim victimology which holds that, if the perpetrator of lethal violence is Muslim, he is automatically branded as a terrorist by the media, whereas if he is white, he is portrayed as a lone wolf with mental health problems.
it must be obvious that in 2024, if the police had kicked an England football thug in the head in a Manchester Airport, he would have attracted zero sympathy from any quarter – even the right.
The plebs are becoming tired, and restless, with being ‘gaslit’ by the media and officialdom.
By way of example: Radio Scotland, Lunchtime Live, covered two subject today, back to back. The first Rural theft. Organised crime was stealing ‘kit’ to order, and smuggling it across the border, those dastardly English, robbing their Scots fellow farmers. The NFU spokesperson colluded in this fiction, or more accurately, half truth. A disgrace. The second item talked of an Italian female boxer withdrawing from the Olympics, BECAUSE her opponent had simply ‘failed’ a tetesterone test the previous year. A travesty of journalism and truth telling.
If the PM wants to look into disinformation on social media, maybe he should start with the mainstream media.
‘if culturally displaced people, particularly those who have fled war zones, are more prone to mental health problems, how can we better treat them to manage their risk to others and to themselves?’ Entirely the wrong question. If culturally displaced people, particularly those who have fled war zones, are more prone to mental health problems, all the more reason to avoid overburdening our already struggling health systems by refusing them entry. This would also serve to manage the risk to ourselves.
Simon, you don’t seem to get it. We’re not projecting demons. The demons are there. The situation with immigration and culture cohesion is near an irreversible tipping point. The political impact of that is reaching boiling point. There are instances and symptoms every day, in every context. Whether this one is contextually different, or completely different. Doesn’t matter at all. It’s like arguing whether some squaddie in Normandy was killed by friendly fire or a German MG 42. When you say: ‘And, almost certainly, it won’t help to prevent similar tragedies in the future’ – you’re missing the point. This tragedy was /is terrible. But it’s not the one that is causing people to riot. What is causing people to riot is the tragedy of a cultural identity and collective meaning being deliberately torched by liberal cosmopolitan politicians from both parties for two decades and the criminalization, demonisation and persecution of working class people and who dare to object. The first step is for YOU to stop using the term ‘far right’
When you say” ‘For those seeking to make political hay out of the Southport massacre’ – noone is making hay. The hay is all around. It’s on fire! You just refuse to talk about it and concede that there is a problem, and that fire-engines are required….not policy groups and academic seminars on anti-fire bigotry, or the cultural contributions of ash. In short, go and write for the Guardian where they care for this stuff
Hard to argue with anything you say there except perhaps on the irreversible tipping point, which I suspect with hindsight will prove to have been 10 years or more ago.
Meanwhile the government’s answer is a violent disorder unit… they’re doubling down on the far right narrative. The road ahead looks messy indeed, for a country where you can already be sent to prison for printing stickers.
You’re not wrong. I can’t get myself to concede this emotionally. However as a Catholic convert, I know that there is a form of internationalism that can forge a cohesive shared culture that would be continuous with 1500 years of British and Irish history…albeit with a rather large and indigestible hiccup. A Christian civic national culture can accommodate people regardless of ethnicity – but not regardless of culture. So things might get bad – certainly will. But in that case we are simply to retread the footsteps of Saint and King Oswald when he returned from Iona to take back the Kingdom of Northumbria, and defeated pagan Cadwallon at Heavenfield, for Christ. Those who are deeply concerned about mass migration and the destruction of a shared culture, and of the Islamization of the inner-cities – people like Carl Benjamin, the Triggernometry boys, Matt Goodwin, people on this thread – only have viable option. Go back to Church. Get married. Have children – lots of them. Engage with other Christians of all backgrounds, races and ethnicities…..create youth clubs, socialize …and fight what Gramsci called a ‘war of position’ – the long march back through the institutions. There is no gentle Enlightened liberal middle ground between Christendom and a modern, transhumanist, woke and weirdly Islamic hell. That turned out to be a mirage. A false haven, floating on idolatry. Modernity has given us a great deal. We will only hang on to it if we recreate a new version of Christendom, a new Jerusalem …However unlikely, unpopular and uncool it is – get back to church.
Surely it is a public health emergency
should the personal identity of the perpetrator of mass-casualty violence matter?
Of course, it should. How is this even a question? Oh, wait; the story is preceded by one of those “both sides are projecting” qualifiers that never, ever, ever comes when an assailant is white or male or Christian, or g*d forbid, all three. The question only arises when a particular demographic is involved. In the US, this extends to a second demographic, but the point remains the same.
if culturally displaced people, particularly those who have fled war zones, are more prone to mental health problems, how can we better treat them to manage their risk to others and to themselves?
Why are people from dysfunctional cultures always ours in the West to treat? Why? A govt’s first responsibility is to its own citizens, not to people from other places. Because when you get enough people from over there over here, over here starts to look a lot like over there.
Spot on. The public has a right to know what drove the 17 year old to commit the atrocity. Was he groomed online ? If so let’s use our surveillance technology more to identify threats before they materialise. Does he suffer from schizophrenia? Maybe our identifying and treating the illness of sufferers has been neglected. Often the identifying of societies’ problems comes from unsavoury characters and they are attacked as ‘far right’ in order to dismiss embarrassing truth instead of confronting it, i.e. “shoot the messenger” using the excuse they’re a ‘bad person’. The riots are stupid and over issues that may have nothing to do with this tragedy however, it is time to stop “far right vs. far left” rhetoric and have meaningful discourse over public safety, policing, controlled immigration and suchlike.
‘the claim that black or Muslim people are intrinsically violent or terror-prone is, undoubtedly, grossly racist.’ This is undoubtedly nonsense. If the data indicates that black people and/or Muslims are disproportionately the perpetrators of violence, then they are ‘violence or terror prone’. And Islam is NOT a race, it’s a belief system, a matter of choice.
Islam is not a choice when leaving it brings a death sentence.
In other words, a Balkanised society is likely to have many incompatibilities and inconsistencies that may at any time generate the friction of misunderstanding and, well, ‘divergent’ behaviour. And in the age of mass migration some of these will have their origins in a variety different climes.
Among his many observations, expressed sometimes sardonically, sometimes half-mockingly, George Santayana wrote, “(The Englishman) carries his English weather with him wherever he goes, and it becomes a cool spot in the desert, and a steady and sane oracle amongst all the deliriums of mankind”.
From what has neurodivergence diverged? From what standard is the divergence? And who decides what each is? Or are we all neurodivergent now? And after starting at absolute diversity, does everyone eventually arrive at absolute uniformity?
The configuring of society as a mental health facility where ‘probes’ are made into the causes of violent crime and, necessarily, into all the ‘deliriums’ of mankind that have now washed up on its shores like flotsam and jetsam, is an innovative development in civilisation.
A society like one of those advanced Victorian sanatoriums for the middle classes, such as the one at Virginia Water created by the entrepreneur Thomas Holloway; a place with cool, hospitable gardens over which a desert wind cannot blow unkind, and where no suggestion that human wickedness is the cause of crime can disturb the certainty of the ‘innovative therapies’.
Don’t make this a race issue. Also has nothing to do with immigration.
I guess the inputs from age 0-5 in Rwanda are so very different from anything the UK has to offer that migration is an issue in so far as if we bring these fols in we need to be aware of their past, its trauma, and how that may play out in their futures.
its a cultural issue. Does that make you feel any better?
“Nothing to do with race and immigration”.
Jeez, what a relief to hear from the PM, now we can all contentedly take the cool-aid and parrot the mindless mantra that diversity is “our greatest strength”..!
I think the main grievance from the right is that if the violence was committed by a migant, muslim, ethnic etc, it will be covered up, played down or explained away by the police, politicians and most of the media. This is not an irrational grievance.
The irrationality is in the assumption that it was commited by a migrant, muslim etc etc Mass murder in the UK is statistically not related to ethnicity indeed if anything is commited by white people. Always men of course.
One of the aspects of this and of other atrocities that attracts my attention and that of others, some of whom have commented on this article and on others in UnHerd and elsewhere, is that while so many of the perpetrators have been born in this country, they are the children of immigrants.
I spent most of my life in the Republic of Ireland, from 1979 to 2017. I encountered a number of families who had moved from Great Britain (I exclude Northern Ireland from this, for many reasons), and especially from England. A number of these families brought up their children to think of England as “home”; and along with that were all too ready to criticise Ireland and the Irish. The result from several of these families was that the children could not wait to get out of the country in which they had been born, and did so. Moreover, in two cases that I came to know closely — knowing the families concerned, and the children since they were infants — that dis-association with the society into which the children had been born led to serious problems including criminal behaviour; and in one case that behaviour was of the most depraved, sexually deviant kind.
Of course, it is impossible for me to know if those children would have behaved differently had they been brought up in the England to which their parents always negatively, and most irresponsibly, compared Ireland. However, what was obvious from all those children I knew from their infancy was their sense of disassociation from the culture in which they lived from day to day. It was an awareness of such dangers that led my wife and I to raise our four children as fully Irish, and with England as that “other place”. Those children are now in their thirties and forties and fully integrated into the places they’ve ended up living in — Ireland, England, Finland and New Zealand.
So I keep wondering about how the parents of these “born-in the-UK” children spoke about the country into which their children had been born. And that makes me admire, all the more, a story I read recently of an elderly man who remembered his Russian grandparents. They fled Tsarist Russia and its anti-Jewish progems; and they told their children that even in their own home, the children must speak English because “now you are in England.” Food for thought! And a counterblast to the presuppositions of multi-culturalism.
Excellent article. A Grandfather was an immigrant and did not teach his children his native tongue, took up boxing and running as a teenager to strengthen his constitution, changed his name to an English one, learnt the history of this country, fought in the trenches and then volunteered to fly in the RFC in WW1. His hobby was fishing and he loved to fish for salmon.
I do not condone the riots. Stop it people. Get the facts first, and if you’re protesting against it, do it peacefully and calmly. Don’t use violence, or you’re no better.
However, I don’t consider it racist to look at statistics which may show characteristics or backgrounds about majority perpetrators of certain crimes, for example, knife crime. We must face up to, and discuss, cultural issues which make these crimes more likely. If we don’t how can we reduce them?
I’m of the school which considers that mental health issues cause a lot of crime and substance addiction, including extremism.
What we can do about that is another matter, and extremely complex. I don’t see any Western governments having the wherewithal to do it any time soon.
Mirrors my thoughts exactly.
After being elected in the most mindless of elections (until the US one) Starmer’s response is to ignore the underlying issues.
All our millions of projectiles, bullets, shells, rockets, mortars, grenades, missiles, torpedos, drones and bombs are carefully designed for mass killing because we are better and have used them to preserve our cultural superiority …. or I could be wrong.
Here is a shorter and far better version of this article (as reading it wastes much less time):
“Whenever there is a horrific atrocity committed, politically minded people online often rush in before sufficient information is available with a version of the story that fits their preferred narrative. This is bad and should not be done. The proper response is to take the time to understand things fully and then endeavor toward proper and sensible solutions.”
Nobody died in those riots. Three little girls at a dance party were stabbed to death. All we are hearing about now is the far right rather than an angry mob. The press has lost its perspective and is reporting whatever it wants, blatantly twisting the narrative.
The statistics don’t lie. This article lists a frightening number of recent atrocities perpetrated by Muslim immigrants:
Southport and the inescapability of politics | Ben Sixsmith | The Critic Magazine
It even leaves out some, such as the murder on a Bournemouth beach in May Man, 20, charged with Bournemouth beach murder to face trial in November | UK News | Sky News and the attempted murder on a Tube platform last February Tube pusher found guilty of attempted murder – BBC News .
The Southport murders may turn out to be of a different nature but you can’t ignore the facts. Being foreign doesn’t mean an individual is innately dangerous but the arrival over Kentish beaches of 100,000 uninvited, single young men of unknown provenance (they destroy their papers, so the authorities just have to believe whatever they say) in recent years does mean it’s sensible to be cautious.
“What isn’t racist, however, is to sensitively explore the economic, social and cultural circumstances in which individuals and groups act, and investigate how those circumstances may allow malevolent impulses to flourish.”
Yes. Let’s spend ages and ages going over the same old ground.
Or how about we state the obvious.
Human beings generally prefer an environment where the people around them are similar. That’s how and why communities develop.
Could it be that people feel alienated in an environment where they are the anomaly? I suspect so. Is it racism that makes them feel like that. No.
If I was dropped into Rwanda I would no doubt feel very much a fish out of water. Why do we think it any different if the tables are turned.
There is so much hand wringing and self hating regarding the integration of people into the Uk it’s ridiculous. Enough.
If you decide to reside in a new nation you best adapt to its customs. And let’s stop feeling like we have to do more.
bonjour,
i m going to write in french it will be easier for me and more respectuous!
il ne s’agit plus de savoir si c’est un acte anti blanc ou pas …la question est: jusqu’à quand allons nous supporter des actes d’une telle violence commis par des personnes qui bien que présentes sur notre sol depuis longtemps, n’ont toujours pas réussi à intégrer nos codes …la population ne peut plus pardonner …comme en France, vous saturez ….régulièrement nous avons des attaques au couteau et les journalistes ” mainstream” nous expliquent que la personne est aliénée et sous OQTF ( ordre de quitter le territoire ).
alors c’est simple pourquoi autant d’aliénés en provenance d’Afrique ou des 3 pays du Maghreb sont ils chez nous ?
Exactement!
Bien dit!
Pretentious n’est pas?
*n’est-ce pas
You are welcome
(FR: Bienvenue)
Easier for you, what about the readers here? How arrogant of you.
If you can’t write in English put it thru a translator and then post it.
You might even have learnt the correct spelling of respectuous (sic)..!
Bonsoir to you too Claude..!
Spelling….thru.? Through.
The whole notion of anonymity for suspects is foolish. I have never understood the philosophical basis for withholding information from the public. If, for example, a bystander knew and recognized the perpetrator, why should he not be allowed to say so?
If immigrants from war zones and countries whose cultures are incompatible or difficult to reconcile with our own Western culture are prone to mental illnesses that can result in the kinds of atrocities we have witnessed recently and which cause people already here to lose faith in society; then perhaps the very notion of bringing over and settling these wretched people needs to be re-examined.
“Had the suspect of Monday’s stabbing spree indeed been white, and targeted a Beyoncé-themed event where the victims were predominantly black children, it seems likely that many on social media would condemn Britain’s racist superstructure.”
Not the point. There would have been riots in every British town and city with the police standing by, and Kier Stasi would no doubt take the knee again while banging on about understanding the anger against white oppressors
Isn’t this the age-old rationalization from the left that holds that “society is to blame”? For everything. That turns out to mean no one is to blame for anything. The result is a further increase in social programs and bureaucracies.
If the writer were not a lecturer in criminology I would dismiss this whole article, especially the barrage of questions left hanging. My first thoughts were, could the girls have been Jewish? In which case as likely far-right motivation. Then, dismissing that, an act justified by identification with children killed in Gaza, the last reported attack on Sunday, the day before the stabbing. Just an hypothesis. Probably worthless, but probably as good or bad as any, given that every time something happens it seems to be a total surprise.
You write;
Do the far-right often kill Jewish children in the UK? Can you provide a single instance, ever?
The guy was a black racist who hated whites. Why is that hard to understand?
But..but, surely only white ppl can be racist?
Keep with the leftist narrative and multi-culti agenda..!
Who said a multiracial society should work? That’s an enlightenment mistake of universal brotherhood. Cheap labor industrialists want a fractured, multi-racial society so they could get compliant, non-union workers.
Yet another journalist who has considered all but the most glaring explanation: the killer targeted girls & women. Just last week the government told us that there’s is a national emergency of male violence against women & girls, but all the reporting of the Southport attack says the victims were adults and children.
Yes, one man was injured, but like the shopping mall massacre of women (in Australia), he came to the rescue – he wasn’t the target. Girls were the target.
The government and journalists are gaslighting us by deliberately excluding this potential motive. How come it’s ok to consider race-related explanations, but not misogynist ones?
For those asking how I know it was girls; how many boys would the killer expect to find at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class?
No-one seems to have suggested the risk to the family in revealing the perp’s identity.
Why has everything gotten so much worse politically and judicially since the Bulger murder?
I suspect he’s a loner, an only child, feeling isolated and not ‘fitting in’. If so, his background as a second generation immigrant and black skin colour may or may not be relevant.
I know we have been implored not to “speculate” about this incident but those of us who have forbidden knowledge of the multitude of (always under-reported) black-on-white atrocities should be allowed to make certain assumptions about this incident and the supposedly “unknown motive” of the baby-faced executioner. It is very possible – if not highly probable – that this supposed “child” (who, like others of his ethnicity, probably passed puberty at age 12 if not before) had been trying for years to pull a white girlfriend and been repeatedly rejected, obviously because of “racism”. So he decided to take revenge on white people and chose to attack the easiest and weakest victims he could find in order to maximise his body count.
So will the police rake through his social media with a fine tooth comb to discover if he has ever said anything “racist” and hateful against white ppl, as they most certainly would do if the perp was a white “far-rightist” who maliciously killed black ppl? I suspect not, but if they do find any hint of that nature I am sure they will quickly sweep it under the carpet, lest they be accused of “institutional racism”. Oh, but wait, didn’t the slanderous McPherson report make that allegation decades ago, and haven’t the plods since then tried everything – including lowering the entry standards to create a much more “diverse” police FARCE, since “police who look like the ppl they are policing” are expected to go soft on young blacks behaving badly?
Meanwhile, for the umpteenth time, white ppl are constantly reminded of the evil racist seed that apparently lurks within all of us. On the BBC news banner just yesterday was this snippet – “30 years after his RACIST killing Steven Lawrence’s body is to be repatriated from Jamaica (no doubt at public expense) back to Britain” ..!
Be thankful for that good news..!
Well we all knew he would turn out to be non-White, didn’t we.
Maybe ‘we’ refers to UnHerd commentariat and in which case you may well be right, but usually these cases in the UK are white people: John Hunt’s family murdered, no riots over that, and of course Dunblane and Hungerford. The same in the UK: mass murder is mainly a white thing.
The UK has added 10m people to its population in the last 25 years, and we have a housing emergency. We simply can’t carry on being a dumping ground for young men from alien cultures who don’t share our values and won’t assimilate.
The name suggests the Rwandan may be a Tutsi. In which case is it odd that the family leaves Rwanda for better opportunities?
Behold a far-left progressive trying, and failing, to write a balanced article.
After thousands of years of exploring and expanding our world, and theorizing about the civilization that resulted, the two strongest forces on Earth are ethnicity and religion. This will change only when both are obliterated. And some actually believe that would be good — destroying humanity in order to save it. I think not.
Almost a good article. We want to know the identity of the assailant because we want to know his motive. We want to know his identity and motive because we want to keep our eyes peeled for others with similar cultural attributes who might have similar evil intent. When we discovered that assailant is of Somalian heritage we thought, rightly, that he is from a Muslim family and that that may be a factor in his desire to attack white, non-Muslim children. None of this is complicated. It could turn out to be that he is mentally ill or that he is mentally ill AND a radicalized jihadist.
The first reason presented here would only make sense as part of the second reason. These are not separate reasons, in these specific circumstances. The ‘personal grievance’ reason makes no sense against 3 little girls unless accompanied by a mental health cause. It makes sense where motivation for excessive grievance exists (betrayal, infedility etc).
The massive glaring and quite frankly disturbing omission is the real ‘other’ reason. Radicalisation online. It is this which makes the ‘reason’ important to understand. I think it would be very helpful if we were able to discount this reason. It would be exceedingly uncomfortable for everyone in authority if we were not able to. I think it is one of the main theories everyone has nowadays when there is a senseless killing of innocent people (until Mental health is considered the explanation).
Third reason, completely ignored by the article, is radicalisation online.