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But how did the state favour him at all? If he was white anglo, and killed kids, and white rioters were targeting asylum seekers and burned down a hotel, the state would obviously have denied that he was an asylum seeker at that point to defuse the riot? Or do you mean if he was white anglo, and immigrant rioters had targeted white people, the state would have called him a terrorist rather than a spree killer (I'm not sure to what end)? Or do you mean that Prevent would have intervened successfully if he was white?
Maybe I'm confused but I realise I actually don't know what you're referring to at all.
I don't think the state did favor him as they gave him a very long prison sentence.
But let's be real. If this was a white man who had stabbed 3 black girls in a racially motivated attack, this would have been considered the Crime of the Century™. The government and the media would have shouted the identity of the attacker to the heavens. The resulting riots would have been described as "fiery but mostly peaceful", and all the usual suspects would be calling for a national conversation on white racism.
So while you're right to narrowly question the OP's claims, I think we're still left with a situation in which there is two tier justice system in the UK. In the UK, white lives have less value, and yeah, that happened under the Tories as well.
That's obviously nonsense though because right-wing murders/terror attacks absolutely have happened in the last decade in Britain and they all fell out of the news eventually just like this will. An asylum seeker was stabbed in April last year over the small boats crisis and nobody cared - people even forgot about Jo Cox pretty quickly.
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Maybe it's not fair to bring up a US case, but... Dylan Roof killed nine black people in a racially-motivated attack ten years ago and he is, by and large, forgotten now. I had to do some Googling to even remember his name. It was a big story at the time, but in no way shape or form did it get the sort of reaction that you could characterize as "the Crime of the Century".
Even Breivik, who killed 77 people including a bunch of kids in a politically motivated attack in a very "progressive"-leaning country, is barely remembered now. Ted Kaczynski is better remembered than Breivik, despite having killed many fewer people, simply because Kaczynski wrote a more interesting manifesto and thus it's easier to characterize him as the sort of "intelligent killer" that many people love reading about (see all the crime books and shows about smart killers), rather than just characterizing him as a mentally ill loser. Even Elliot Rodger, a deranged non-entity whose incel spree was stopped by a simple door, is better remembered than either Roof or Breivik, because he happened to write an interesting manifesto and was so socially inept that he became easy comedic material.
A white guy killing 3 black girls for racial reasons is not "Crime of the Century" material. It is more like "media talks about it for a few weeks" material. I think that this is probably nearly as true for the UK as it is for the US.
Remembered a couple weeks ago as unlike the other murders that had their federal death sentences commuted by Biden, he did not.
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The big difference between cases like Roof, Breivik, or the Christchurch guy, is that when it all happened we had all the media authorities wring their hands over how horrible the ideologies that pushed them to this are, and forcing anyone adjacent to them to go through struggle sessions of disavowal. The same thing needs to happen here.
Brenton Tarrant.
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What is the evidence that the Southport killer was driven mainly by ideology, instead of being yet another random nutcase?
If the Al-Qaeda instruction manual doesn't do it for you, I don't understand why you think Roof, Breivik, or the Christchurch guy get to be blamed on an ideology.
Also the assailant being directly motivated by an ideology is not necessary. In some of these cases people were blaming the broader culture of racism and islamophobia. Again, something analogous needs to happen here.
If you want to find out how to commit terrorism, an Al-Qaeda instruction manual seems like a pretty good thing to read. If I for some reason wanted to go commit a terrorist act, I might go read one myself, even though ideologically I have almost nothing in common with Islamists and indeed, Islamic fundamentalism repulses me. Similarly, even though I am not a communist, if I wanted to learn how to wage guerilla war, I might go read something that Mao wrote. I've read Ted Kaczynski's manifesto several times even though I am not an anti-technologist.
I don't know about Roof because I haven't read the details, but Breivik and the Christchurch guy explicitly, repeatedly wrote that their motivations were ideological. Is there anything similar for the Southport killer?
If I didn't see people being associatied with Nazism for making the OK hand sign, I might be willing to consider this argument. The Al-Qaeda manual is a closer connection to radical Islam than all the "dogwhistles" that got people fired from their jobs combined.
Also, I like I said (after editing it in, so no foul), direct inspiration by an ideology is not necessary for the struggle sessions to commence.
Sure, but I disagree both with associating people with Nazism for making the OK sign and with jumping to assume that Rudakubana must necessarily have killed those girls for an ideological motive, simply because he is African and read some Al-Qaeda related material.
I'm against struggle sessions in both cases.
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I disagree strongly with this. You might be correct that many Americans would struggle to recall his name, but that’s because normal people are terrible in general at remembering names. In progressive circles, though, Roof is still routinely brought up all the time in discussions of race and policing. “If you’re a black man in America, police can murder you for minor infractions, or even for just disrespecting them. Meanwhile, if you’re a white guy who murders a bunch of black churchgoers, the police will non-violently arrest you and buy you Burger King.” Roughly a decade ago I performed the lead role in a play inspired directly by Roof — oddly, a humanizing account showing how a dumb and impressionable young kid from a broken home could be lured into extremist beliefs by a makeshift father figure showing him love and acceptance for the first time in his life. (Leave aside the fact that this doesn’t, as far as I’m aware, accurately describe Roof’s actual life or the manner of his radicalization.) So, I do think that Roof has made a lasting impact on public consciousness.
I think that if Breivik did what he did in America, rather than in Norway, he would be far more remember and talked about here. I don’t know to what extent Breivik is still discussed in Europe, but given how American media drives so much of the political discussion worldwide, I have to wonder whether Breivik would even be more remembered in Europe had he done the same crime, but in America. (The same is true of Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch mosque shooter in New Zealand.)
Don't forget setting off a hyperstitious cascade against Confederate symbols....
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I see your point that in progressive circles, Roof is frequently brought up. However, progressive circles are a small subset of the West's population. I have literally never heard anyone bring Roof's name up in conversation, not even ten years ago right after he killed those people. And it's not like I interact entirely with politically apathetic people or with right-wingers or something. I've interacted with plenty of progressives in the last ten years, and those murders just never came up.
You are, from what I recall you writing before, someone whose social circle is pretty hardcore progressive. The thing is, this actually makes you pretty atypical for a denizen of the West. Or anywhere in the world, for that matter. Progressives are highly represented online, but offline, even in cities where people vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, few people go around talking like the stereotypical Redditor.
I actually agree that Breivik would likely have been more remembered if he had done his murders in America, not just because America is the entire world's media focus, but also because for historical and social reasons, Europe is probably more used to the idea of a militant far-right existing than America is. In America, the idea of there actually being an effective nativist far-right killer is something from TV shows or the wild dreams of Redditors, but we haven't really had one in as long as I can remember. Some people might bring up Timothy McVeigh, but he was more of a libertarian-right mass killer, not a Breivik-style explicitly nativist one.
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Regarding the Southport killing, do you know the details? Because it is sick. This is not something that would be forgotten, for the sheer brutality if nothing else.
But, yeah, it's hard to predict what will go viral. The current Crime of the Century involved the death of a violent felon who was high on Fent and Meth at the time of his death.
I don't know the details, but I doubt anything there would make it Crime of the Century material. Maybe if there was a video, it would be. The 2020 events were, I assume, largely triggered by the existence of a video. If there had not been a video, it would probably have been little remarked on.
That's part of my point, really. It's not so much the violent events themselves that make people remember them, unless it's something really unprecedented like 9/11 (I mean unprecedented in the "using planes to collapse skyscrapers" sense, not in the death toll sense, since of course plenty of other events have had higher death tolls). It's other things like videos, manifestos, lurid appeal of the mental illness of the perpetrators, or perhaps a politically divisive motivation like in the case of Luigi Mangione (and even he is being forgotten now after having had a brief few weeks of fame). And even 9/11 would have been much less shocking to the masses without all the videos. Even the Las Vegas shooter is probably better remembered nowadays than Dylan Roof is, despite having had no political motive as far as we know, and it's not just because he killed more people, it's because of the gruesomely cinematic way in which he did it. Breivik would be much more remembered nowadays if he had livestreamed his video like the New Zealand shooter (and I don't even remember the New Zealand shooter's name, which is more evidence for my point) or if he had written an interesting manifesto. But even then it wouldn't really be Crime of the Century material, probably.
The threshold to achieve the Crime of the Century is really high. You might have to do something like kill a bunch of rich people or politicians while livestreaming it, and write a really interesting manifesto, in order to actually get there.
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Arguing from counterfactuals like this is a bit tricky. I guess it can maybe work to make one reflect, but in this case I don't think my intuitions match yours. It seems to me this crime was massively reported on and is regarded as one of the worst crimes in recent memory – just look at all the papers at the moment. I don't think the exact same crime with a race swap would have been seen as more outrageous or less.
Actually, a killer who stabbed a random immigrant and said he wanted to exterminate all asylum seekers was sentenced just last week and has attracted no press attention at all as far as I am aware: https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/neo-nazi-who-stabbed-victim-twice-jailed-life
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