Libertarian: Time for Anger, Not Just Tears

In the wake of the Manchester terrorist bombing, Brendan O’Neill at Spiked says he has no patience for “the platitudes. And the hashtags. And the candlelit vigils.” Because “vapidity abounds,” and “a shallow fetishization of ‘togetherness’ takes the place of any articulation of what we should be together for — and against.” Fact is, “the top-down promotion of a hollow ‘togetherness’ in response to terrorism is about cultivating passivity” and “suppressing strong public feeling.” Officialdom and the media “prefer us as a lonely crowd of dutiful, disconnected mourners rather than a real collective of citizens demanding to know why our fellow citizens died and how we might prevent others from dying” So, he says, “we should stop playing the role they’ve allotted us.”