EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK
“London Attacks:
Terrorism 'Becoming a Routine' EU Countries Are Getting Used to”
I am rather a contrarian on such matters, and I do wish
there were more like me.
A man running around stabbing people is, of course, horrible,
but it is not necessarily terror.
We have had severely mentally ill people doing such things
for all of history.
Remember Norway’s Anders Breivik killing 77 people, mostly
children?
Remember Marc Lépine at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique
killing 14 women?
Remember the sick boys of America’s Columbine High School
killing 13 people and hoping to kill a lot more?
Remember the “Manson Family” murders?
If we wanted to recall all the examples in just fairly recent
history, the list would be gigantic, and not one of the killers could truly be
called a “terrorist,” unless you really stretch the meaning of the world beyond
recognition. People with dangerously fevered minds are just an unfortunate part
of our human condition.
All of these people undoubtedly had some political or
religious beliefs, to which, if we wanted, we could attribute their acts, but
historically we do not do that.
It is in the era of the so-called war on terror and the
Neocon Wars (all of which can most accurately be consolidated under a heading
of “America’s campaign to bomb the world into a shape it likes”) that each time
some sick person kills someone, he almost instantly becomes a terrorist,
especially of course if he happened to be Muslim.
Even if the claims about the killer made in the immediate
aftermath prove completely wrong, the headlines and speeches will have been
made and the desired effect achieved.
Western governments grossly exploit such events to fit political
agendas. Theresa May’s statement about the London killings was actually quite
appalling. May said the killers “struck at values of liberty, democracy and
freedom of speech.” Absolute rubbish.
She was manipulating a horrible human situation for political
gain. Some of her words reminded me of George Bush’s contemptible words about
9/11, attributing hatred of American freedom as a motive, as though he had the
least idea of what dead perpetrators thought. But Bush’s pathetic thought was
sufficient reason for America to invade two countries to no purpose and to
begin systematically destroying the rights Americans thought were
‘inalienable.’
But May is doing more than just that cheap trick. She is
promoting the fear governments have used now for fifteen years to keep the
public supporting all their dark, violent, unexplained activities abroad, many
of which are indeed genuine terror because they kill and destroy on a large
scale for political gain.
Britain has long been involved in America’s horrors in the
Middle East, always publicly pretending to be fighting something called
“terror” while actually itself practicing genuine state terror, using
destruction to get its way in other lands.
We also had in today’s news the fact that at least 200
people were killed, mostly civilians, in American air strikes on Mosul, Iraq.
Now, that's real terror, although only on a miniscule scale compared
to the original invasion of Iraq, the combined handiwork of America and
Britain, which took a million lives, destroyed a society, and created some of the
very groups whose names are now waved in front of our faces to frighten us into
supporting still more death abroad and more state suppression of our freedoms.
Final note: I’ve just come across the latest information on
this “terrorist.” He had several past convictions for violence and once stabbed
a man in the face. Here is a classic example not of a terrorist or any other
kind of politically-motivated actor, but of a seriously unstable man, perhaps a
paranoid schizophrenic or a severe manic-depressive. His acts have no more to
do with terror than all the violent criminals in all jails and mental asylums
of the country.
