Terrorism doesn’t just happen to other people. Strasbourg was my third time
News of the Strasbourg attack broke while Conservative MEPs were at their Christmas party nearby. We followed the awful developments on Twitter as Syed Kamall, the likeable Thatcherite who heads our bloc, led his blues quartet on his bass guitar. Guessing that we wouldn’t be going anywhere that night, we listened to the music with unusual intensity. Those old bluesmen knew a thing or two about suffering, and our awareness of what was happening a few hundred yards away heightened the poetry of their 12-bar threnodies.
Political violence is no longer something that seems to happen only to other people. This is the third time that I have been affected by a jihadist attack – not, thank God, in the sense of being immediately involved, but in the sense of being caught in the lockdown. It has happened to me in Brussels, London (where the police response was outstanding) and, now, Strasbourg.
European terrorism is starting to feel almost routine. Cleverdick columnists – including, I’m ashamed to say, me – used to point out that you were more likely to drown in the bath than be the victim of a terrorist attack, more likely to be killed by a toddler than by a jihadist. But, since 2015, those statistics have shifted. Paris, Brussels, Nice, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Manchester, Barcelona, Strasbourg: each new abomination tilts the odds.
Still, we need to keep a sense of perspective. Political violence in Europe remains rare, both by historical standards (the IRA and ETA were more lethal) and by comparison with other causes of death. You are 200,000 times more likely to die of heart failure than in a terrorist attack. You are 3,400 times more likely to be killed by a non-terrorist driver than by one who is acting from political motives. We all remember that four people were mown down by a car on Westminster Bridge – but a similar number perish unremarked every day on Britain’s roads. Vehicle fatalities don’t get a fraction of the coverage given to terror victims, but the grief of the bereaved is no less raw.
It is that coverage, and the notoriety it brings, that attracts extremists. Chérif Chekatt, the Strasbourg murderer, has traits common to terrorists in every age and nation: young, male, vain, a violent temper, a history of petty crime. Most Westernborn jihadists have similar profiles. A leaked MI6 report noted that few display any signs of conventional religious observance. “They want to find something meaningful for their life,” says Professor John Horgan, who has studied their psychology. “Some are thrill-seeking.”
If we were somehow able to withhold the press coverage, as happens in China, terrorism would become rarer. But that is unthinkable in a free society. And freedom is what is ultimately at stake. You defeat a bad idea with a better idea, and if there is a better idea out there than Western civilisation – parliamentary elections, uncensored newspapers and, yes, the blues – I’d like to hear it. FOLLOW Daniel Hannan on Twitter @DanielJHannan