Labour MP Jo Cox lost her life this week, the victim of one and many killers.
Paranoid fear, delusions of heroism and urges of violence all mingled malignantly in the mind of Thomas Mair before he allegedly journeyed to Cox’s constituency office to shoot her and stab her to death. The police are not looking for an accomplice. As far as anyone can tell, Mair is suspected of ‘acting alone’.
Bullshit.
The phrase ‘lone wolf’ has been invented in order to absolve society of responsibility when honourable women like Jo Cox are murdered by those who threaten the peace that most of us seek out.
By categorising killers as loners, by removing them from the society that inevitably bred them, we convince ourselves that we are utterly unconnected to the atrocity of murder. Nothing we’ve ever said, or ever done, or ever allowed to happen has impacted this unfortunate set of circumstances.
In response to crimes as heinous as this, it is incumbent upon people of influence – like politicians and the media – to respond with strength. To respond with clear condemnation of the act itself, and a careful consideration of how it came to pass.
Nigel Farage, prominent UK politician and leader of UKIP, openly said just one month ago that “I think it’s legitimate to say that if people feel they’ve lost control completely, and we have lost control of our borders completely as members of the European Union, and if people feel that voting doesn’t change anything, then violence is the next step.”
Doesn’t it then seem disingenuous to brand Jo Cox’s murderer with the madman tag when Farage himself thinks it perfectly legitimate for people to turn to violence as long as they buy the very lies he’s pedalling?
https://twitter.com/Liam_O_Hare/status/743777545015951360
In the immediate aftermath, Farage expressed his shock at the attack that left Jo Cox fighting for her life. Why the shock? What right has he to express shock at the very violence he predicts as the legitimate conclusion to the loss of control that he himself tells the British they’ve suffered?
Certain sections of the media have also painted Cox’s alleged killer with the kind of reserved, almost forgiving sort of language that they don’t generally extend to ‘lone wolves’ who profess to be influenced by Islam.
Media Diversified compared the Daily Mail’s attitudes towards Cox’s alleged killer, and the killer of off-duty soldier Lee Rigby – who claimed his act was one of holy war rather than a common crime.
Mair is not portrayed as murderer. He is a timid man, dogged by demons. He’s a victim too. His quietness, his politeness – rather than being seen as integral parts of his menace – are almost offered as mitigation before a trial has even begun.
'Timid' @MailOnline? pic.twitter.com/zCLHHdZXiD
— Media Diversified (@WritersofColour) June 17, 2016
This paragraph, taken from the Guardian, exemplifies mainstream media attitudes towards those who don’t fit the racialised prescription of extremist, or terrorist, or murderer:
“[His neighbours] said he was quiet and polite, volunteering to do their gardens and offering horticultural tips as he passed down Lowood Lane on his regular strolls into Birstall to use the computers at the library.”
If you’re scratching your head and wondering why you’ve been given this uninvited insight into the quaint little life of a suspected murderer, you are not the only one.
As rational beings who care about our safety, we want to know about the motivations and the means that enable murderers to commit the crimes that they do. We do not need to know about their hobbies. We do not need to know about their strolls. We do not need to know that they loved to garden in their downtime between fantasising about killing upstanding women like Jo Cox.
The headline in that same Guardian article profiles Mair as ‘quiet, polite and reserved.’ We know the first is true. He was a quiet ultra-nationalist. He quietly supported the white supremacist group National Alliance, he quietly purchased a guide published by that same organisation on how to make your own firearm.
He quietly paid $620 to the group’s publishing imprint for titles such ‘Chemistry of Powder and Explosives,’ ‘Improvised Munitions Handbook’ and ‘Ich Kampfe’, according to the Southern Poverty Law Centre.
He stopped being quiet, or polite, or reserved when he put the principles of this Neo-Nazi group into practice and assassinated a woman who, by all accounts, had long fought for diversity and a better life for those reviled by people like Mair.
Another quote that has been featured in many editorials about Mair is from his younger brother, Scott, who asserts that his brother has ‘a history of mental illness’ but ‘is not violent and is not all that political.’
This is a time when the speculations of friends and family, neighbours and nosy-parkers, should take a back seat to the actual facts.
Thomas Mair is accused of killing Jo Cox in cold blood.
Witnesses have claimed that Mair raved about “putting Britain first” as he committed the despicable act. Mair has paid hundred of pounds to neo-Nazi groups for brochures and manuals that contained instructions on how to construct lethal weapons.. He was a subscriber to the SA Patriot, a pro-apartheid magazine, based in South Africa.
Nobody should know that Thomas Mair was ‘timid’ before they know he had strong racist ties.
Nobody should know that Mair loved to garden before they know that he loved to read periodicals about white supremacy and making guns.
Nobody should know anything about the strolls he took besides the fateful one he’s accused of taking to the office of Jo Cox.
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