CHLOROFORM WORDS

The other day I watched the BBC Parliament channel coverage of the London Assembly and listened to Joanne McCartney, the Chair of the Police and Crime Committee, opening the proceedings. After referring to the "appalling murder murder of Lee Rigby,"  she engaged in the following exchange:-

“…What was the Met's assessment of the scale of racially motivated hate crime that has occurred since this appalling tragedy?”

The Deputy Commissioner of the Met responded by stating:-

 “We all had been touched and affected by that tragedy. Increases in overall 'hate crime' after that"[the murder of Lee Rigby] "and low level harassment and name calling had increased, though now have resumed to more normal levels."

Ms McCartney was concerned at the use of the word low level, did this not diminish the impact on victims?

At this point I had to pause, take breath, and reflect upon the facts.

A British soldier is murdered on the streets of London, the murderers inspired by religious fanaticism, and this is called a tragedy, whilst name calling and harassment, -let it be understood unpleasant enough phenomenon, - deserves the category ‘hate crime.’ 
I would think that the pre-planned murder of a British soldier, -any British soldier will do you understand, -in which he was rammed with a car and set about with machete’s, an attempt being made to cut off his head, might involve a fair amount of hate. Though to call this a hate crime or suggest that it was ideologically and religiously motivated, which it clearly was, might offend certain sensibilities.

You also might just think that after such an incredibly brutal murder the first question to the Deputy Commissioner might be what steps he was taking to better ensure the security of off duty British soldiers, or to monitor Islamist groups?  

Now I suppose the moment comes for the obligatory throat clearing. I deplore people being harassed or abused in the street,[1]attacks on mosque’s or community centres strike me as being an assault on civil society itself. Freedom of speech does not extend to painting swastikas or EDL on the side of mosques or community centres. It is consequently appropriate that politicians should be concerned that police carry out their responsibility to protect all citizens,and pursue those committing such crimes; particularly given that one of the aims of Islamist groups, certainly a motive behind the slaughter of Lee Rigby, is to provoke a backlash and separate the Muslim community from mainstream British life.

But is it not perverse that after such a horrific murder political attention immediately turns, not on those who provided support for  the murderers, but almost exclusively on the far right EDL? Which is now being presented as the greater threat. 

A language which describes the planned ritualistic slaughter of Rigby merely as a ‘tragedy,’ and graffiti on mosques as ‘hate crime,’* represents a form of verbal chloroform, designed to muffle reality and has the effect of concealing the seriousness of the threat that we face. The kind of liberal mindset revealed by this kind of language exposes a worldview simply incapable of grasping the threat presented by Islamism or indeed of the far right EDL, who rush into the vacuum created by liberal squeamishness and the failure of the body politic to uphold the secular values now threatened by militant Islam.   
*If we must adopt this terminology let us at least admit that both crimes are motivated by hate, and have the moral clarity to see which is the more serious.
[1] I am not sure that it is worse to be the victim of an assault, - I have painful personal experience in this area, - because of what you believe rather than merely on a whim. In fact it could be argued that being attacked for what you believe can be viewed as a test of one’s faith, even as a badge of honour. Certainly the Christian’s traditionally took this view.I am agnostic on this, though an assault is an assault no matter what the motive.  I think the whole notion of ‘hate crime’  is highly suspect.


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