We cannot afford to ignore police warning on terror
REMEMBER Barcelona? It has been less than a month since 15 people including seven-yearold British boy Julian Cadman were murdered by Islamist terrorists and more than 100 people injured.
For 48 hours the media were encamped in the Spanish city reporting every twist and turn in the operation to hunt down the gang responsible. But a day is a lifetime in our modern news cycle. Three days later we moved on. Three weeks later the victims of Barcelona are all but forgotten.
It was the same after Manchester. Twenty-two people murdered, 250 injured. There was the usual outpouring of grief culminating in that concert at Old Trafford a fortnight later. And now?
It’s the same after every terrorist attack. It was the same after Westminster Bridge and London Bridge. And it was the same after last year’s murders in Brussels, Nice and Berlin. Just as it will be after next year’s, wherever they happen.
See what is going on here? Terrorist attacks are now so frequent that we’ve come to accept them as somehow inevitable. So usual that some receive perfunctory coverage.
Did you know that two people were murdered last month in Helsinki and eight others seriously injured by a man reportedly shouting “Allah akbar”?
The “we” I’m referring to there isn’t the likes of you and me of course. It’s the politicians and “community leaders” who presume to act on our behalf.
THEY tell us that the correct way to respond to terror isn’t to get angry, isn’t to keep remembering but to join together in love and get on with our lives. After the Manchester murders the song Don’t Look Back In Anger even became the anthem that supposedly summed up our reaction.
It’s difficult to think of a more counter-productive response. Because the more we get on with our lives and carry on as if terrorism is just something we have to accept as a price for living in a free society, the more we succumb to Islamists.
We should look back in anger. And we should look forward in anger too: anger at the barbarians who murder innocent