David Amess killing: suspect referred to Channel counter-terror scheme in 2014 - "The suspect in the killing of the MP David Amess received extensive support under the government’s Channel counter-terrorism programme before his case was closed, the Guardian has learned. Ali Harbi Ali was first referred to Prevent, the early intervention scheme designed to turn people away from the risk of supporting violence, as a teenager in 2014... Ali was referred to the scheme while he was attending an educational establishment in London in 2014 over concerns about him being drawn towards an Islamist ideology... Muslim communities have made a string of criticisms of Prevent, arguing that it unfairly targets them and has encouraged trivial referrals, including against children... a new report from the Henry Jackson Society, a rightwing thinktank, says Prevent and Channel have lost focus on Islamist extremism, which accounted for 22% of Prevent referrals and 30% of Channel cases last year, while 90% of those on MI5’s watchlist of current and former suspects were Islamist. The report’s author, Dr Rakib Ehsan, said there was “an all too real prospect of Islamist extremists who present a significant security risk not being sufficiently monitored by the public authorities”."
I saw some liberals, like clockwork, blaming the "far right" for Amess's death
The left hates Prevent (when it applies to Islamists anyway), so maybe they'll claim Prevent further radicalised Ali while advocating it being expanded to crush the "far right"
Father of suspect in David Amess killing ‘worked on anti-extremism projects’ - "The father of the suspect in the inquiry into David Amess’s killing, was a committed anti-extremist who risked his own life trying to thwart hate groups... Abdirachid Fidow, who works for not-for-profit organisation the Anti-Tribalism Movement, said: “The father worked a lot of anti-terrorism projects in Mogadishu, fighting against al-Shabaab. He was someone who endangered his own life in public service fighting against extremism.”"
PM urged to enact ‘David’s law’ against social media abuse after Amess’s death - "Boris Johnson is facing calls to enact “David’s law” to crack down on social media abuse of public figures and end online anonymity in the wake of the killing of Sir David Amess. Dozens of MPs paid tribute in the House of Commons on Monday to the veteran Conservative backbencher who was stabbed to death on Friday, shedding tears, sharing uproarious anecdotes and venting anger over his death. While police are investigating whether there are any links to Islamist extremism and have not connected the killing to the targeting of MPs online, allies of Amess said he had voiced growing concern about threats and toxicity within public discourse as they demanded a crackdown. Campaigners have warned, however, that ending online anonymity could put whistleblowers and pro-democracy campaigners in authoritarian regimes at risk. Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, told the Commons that “civility in politics matters” but “we must not lose sight of the fact that David’s killing was an [alleged] act of terror on the streets of our country”. Mark Francois, who described Amess as one of his closest friends and his political mentor, vowed he would dedicate his time in parliament to overhauling the rules governing social media."
How convenient - using an MP's death to make political hay while the sun shines. And even the Guardian notes that there're no links to online abuse
Can we now have an honest discussion about Islamist terrorism? - "The police’s decision to treat his murder as a potential terrorist incident, with an Islamist motivation, is likely to shake up how the media elites in particular talk about it. Out will go any implacable political anger and the insistence that we search for the cultural and intellectual influences behind this barbaric act. In their place we’ll see demands for calm. Don’t feel too much fury, we’ll be told. Don’t extrapolate. Don’t blame it on any one faith or ideology. Don’t be Islamophobic. The liberal media will likely stop stirring up passionate feeling about this heinous crime, and instead seek to suppress such emotion. It is always the way when a suspected act of Islamist terror takes place. ‘Don’t look back in anger’ becomes the rallying cry. From the Manchester Arena bombing to the slaughter in London Bridge, Islamist outrages are always followed by a media demand that we don’t politicise them, don’t make them into focal points for national fury or feeling. Feel grief, of course. Lay a flower, sign a book of condolence, post a sad tweet, issue a platitude. ‘We mustn’t let the terrorists divide us’, etc etc. Just don’t dwell for too long on the frequency of such acts – scores of Brits have been killed by radical Islamists over the past five years – and, whatever you do, don’t ask awkward questions about what this violence might say about the divisions and tensions in 21st-century British society. In the haze of the terroristic aftermath, we witness not the promotion of strong political feeling, but the policing of it... It is likely to be treated, not as a symptom of some deeper social rot, or as a manifestation of a broader ideology we should all be concerned about, but rather as a tragic, almost inexplicable event, like a natural disaster. To see how this overt depoliticisation of Islamist attacks works, just think about the stark difference in the way various violent acts have been discussed and memorialised in Britain in recent years. So when a young white man – pathetic incel Jake Davison – murdered five people in Plymouth in August, it was instantly transformed by the chattering classes into an act of terror that confirmed the poisonous nature of ‘toxic masculinity’ and the problematic role of white men in contemporary society. Yet when a radical Islamist stabbed to death three gay men in a park in Reading just over a year earlier – in June 2020 – no such extrapolations were made. No furious political discussion took place. That awful act was seen as symbolic of nothing. Maybe the killer was mad? Soon, the Islamist terror amnesia industry kicked in, in which the shushing of discussion about Islamist attacks becomes so intense that people actually forget they took place, and now I reckon many Brits would struggle to recall the monstrous event that took place in Reading that day. Or consider the speed and intensity with which the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by an extremist right-winger came to be viewed as a violent expression of deep, dark social trends. Especially in relation to Brexit. Her killing was ruthlessly politicised, to the cynical end of political extrapolation, to the cause of demonising Brexit. This contrasts staggeringly with the liberal elite’s response to the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, and to the Islamist rampage in London Bridge in the same year, and to the stabbing in Fishmongers’ Hall in 2019, and to the Reading stabbing in 2020. Those acts were memorialised, yes – briefly. But they were never politicised. Indeed, those who tried to politicise them, and to organise public expressions of anger about them, were written off as racist and Islamophobic. The left is often at the forefront of efforts to deflate anger about Islamist terrorism and to encourage political amnesia towards these terrible acts. This is why leftists in the UK still talk about the murder in Charlottesville in 2017, where one left-wing woman was mown down by a car being driven by a far-right extremist, but say nothing about the killing of 13 people in Barcelona in the same week by an Islamist terrorist using a van as a weapon. The rule seems to be: acts of terrorism carried out by extreme right-wingers and white men must be remembered and protested about; acts of terrorism carried out by Islamists, by people from a Muslim background, must be moved on from as swiftly as possible. ‘Don’t look back in anger.’ Fascism is bad when the white right does it; less so when Islamist extremists do it."
The hate that dare not speak its name - "In the days since the horrific murder of Sir David Amess, Britain seems to have gone mad. Here was a good, much-loved politician allegedly slain by a young man who is currently being held under the Terrorism Act on suspicion of possibly being motivated by the Islamist ideology. And what are we talking about? Tweets. Online anonymity. The rude things members of the public say to politicians. The need to ‘be nice’. It feels increasingly unhinged. It feels like a displacement activity of epic proportions. A possible act of Islamic terrorism takes place, and the chattering classes gab about how horrible Twitterstorms are. What is going on? It feels like the political class is gaslighting the nation. Reading the newspapers has become an entirely disorienting experience. ‘PM faces calls for “David’s law” to halt online abuse’ screams the front page of today’s Guardian. What does this mean? Was Amess subjected to online abuse? There’s no suggestion he was. So why are we talking about this? Why would a man allegedly murdered by someone who the police suspect had radical Islamist beliefs need to be memorialised with a law against saying stupid things online?... Our eyes and ears tell us a possible religious extremist allegedly killed a politician and devout Catholic, and yet the political class tells us the real problem is mean tweets and public ridicule of MPs. Jess Phillips, with her staggering skill of making everything about herself, wrote a piece about Amess and included in it some of the instances of ‘demonisation’ she has faced... It is undeniable now that Britain is in the grip of a pathological unwillingness to confront the problem of radical Islam. Even before this most recent suspected act of Islamist violence, the opinion-forming set regularly engaged in moral contortionism to try to avoid mentioning the i-word. Remember the fury in response to then UKIP leader Paul Nuttall’s use of the phrase ‘Islamist extremist’ in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017? One is reminded, too, of Morrissey’s quip in response to Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s description of the Manchester bomber as an extremist: ‘An extreme what? An extreme rabbit?’ An entire lexicon of condemnation has been created to police and punish too keen a concern about Islamic fundamentalism. ‘Islamophobic’ is the preferred reprimand used by those who want to shush anyone who raises awkward questions about the homegrown religious extremists who have visited so much horror on our fellow citizens... The political elite’s war on ‘hate’ is, at root, an assault on freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Witness how left politicians describe everything from gender-critical feminism to Christian opposition to same-sex marriage as ‘bigotry’, confirming that extent to which perfectly legitmate moral viewpoints can be demonised through association with the ‘culture of hate’. Or witness how leading Tory politicians want to tighten the rules on what can and cannot be said online, ostensibly to tackle ‘hate’, but really to chill the apparently problematic openness of the traditionally unpoliced internet. The phrase ‘hate speech’ now plays the same role as ‘thoughtcrime’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four – it’s an all-encompassing reprimand, as liable to punish political provocation and intellectual dissent as it is to capture genuine expressions of racist or violent intent."
Nasty tweets did not kill David Amess - "The Observer’s editorial today took a swipe at those who will dare to focus on the fact that this is being treated as a terrorist incident with a suspected Islamist motivation: ‘There will be those who seek to deploy these scant details in service of their political agendas; to politicise this tragedy in such a way is abhorrent.’ Imagine if in the wake of Jo Cox’s murder in 2016 someone tried to suggest that the fact her killer had far-right links and shouted ‘Britain first’ as he killed her were ‘scant details’, things only a wrong-un would dare to focus on. Just imagine that. Alongside distorting the debate we need to have, all this also risks chilling debate in general. No one is against people being nice to one another. But a crusade for civility in politics can easily morph into a crusade for political censorship. Plus, while social media have certainly made it a lot easier for people to abuse their MPs, it stretches credibility to suggest that politics today is somehow more tense and toxic than ever before – as if the Miners’ Strike was settled over a gentlemanly, Oxford Union-style to and fro. As for online anonymity, it does regrettably empower losers and bigots who take pleasure in making someone’s life a misery. But it is also essential for dissidents around the world. Even here in the UK people have been sacked for expressing pretty mainstream views on sex and gender, meaning anonymity is becoming increasingly, depressingly essential for some"
DAN WOOTTON: Almost everything our politicians have said since David Amess' murder is misdirection - "I can think of a multitude of questions more important at this moment that need urgent investigation than the toxicity of social media. Why isn't the Prevent programme working and how can it be prioritised so the young people being radicalised can be stopped before it's too late? How can we get to young men who have spent a large proportion of the past 20 months locked in their bedrooms being influenced by radical preachers? And, if we're talking about social media, why do the big tech giants continue to allow a platform for hate preachers like Choudary specifically designed to create young British terrorists? It's been well over four years since YouTube and Facebook were shamed for continuing to host videos about how to make suicide bombs and yet here we are. But asking those questions in 2021 runs the risk of going against the woke orthodoxy and being accused of Islamophobia. That creates the most bizarre tone of debate, with an almost wilful blindness about what probably occurred. Consider London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who initially said Amess had 'passed away', as if he had been lost to the world from natural causes rather than brutally killed in a likely terrorist attack. Labour's Shadow Culture Minister Alison McGovern wrote a lengthy column for The Guardian headlined: 'Political debate has coarsened. We MPs can take the lead in restoring calm and respect.' In 883 heartfelt words there were criticisms of the 'tone' of the political media, politicians being 'forever at war' with themselves, 'security consequences' and 'social media norms' needing to change. But there was not one word about terrorism or the Islamic extremist ideology that continues to be a serious threat. Homegrown Islamist terrorism has been responsible for a host of attacks in the past two decades, from 7/7 to the Manchester Arena atrocity, claiming 20 lives in the last five years alone. And we know that last year the MI5 was investigating 3,000 extremists, with another pool of 40,000 potential radicals. Far from this being an isolated incident, 31 planned terrorist attacks have been stopped by authorities in the past four years."
David Amess and the terrorism amnesia industry - "We now have a perverse situation where, thanks to the phoney politicisation of the Amess killing as a problem of online culture, and as a result of the raising once again of the ‘Islamophobia’ problem, there has been more discussion about right-wing violence than there has been about radical Islam since Amess was killed. The liberal media chastise too keen a focus on the Islamist issue while flagging up the potential for a right-wing backlash against the Muslim community. For two weeks now, we have been instructed, time and again, to think less about the problem of radical Islam and more about the alleged scourge of rude online trolls and about a possibly emerging anti-Muslim mob. It has all been a classic example of the Islamist terrorism amnesia industry getting to work: ‘Don’t focus on the ideology that is suspected to be behind this attack – focus on anything else instead.’ The false equivalence that is made between Islamist terror and far-right extremism needs to be called out. More pointedly, the perverse equivalence that is made, at least in terms of the size of liberal media commentary, between acts of Islamist violence and their potentially Islamophobic aftermath, between the barbarism of something like the Manchester Arena bombing and the allegedly destabilising consequences of talking about such a horror too frankly and passionately, needs to be firmly challenged. The Independent was entirely wrong to report, following the conviction of Mair in 2016, that far-right extremism is ‘much more lethal’ than Islamic extremism. More than 90 people have been killed in the UK by Islamic extremists over the past 16 years; only three people have been killed by far-right extremists. The elites’ pathological obsession with downplaying the Islamist scourge – with continually deflating the problem, distracting from the problem, defusing the problem – is an Orwellian strategy designed to gaslight the public into believing that it is us who are hateful for worrying about the Islamist ideology... At root, they want to protect their ideology of multiculturalism from serious democratic interrogation. And thus they must quell, with distraction and dire warnings, any kind of public scrutiny of how divided and tense Britain has become under this system of cultural and ethnic separatism, to such an extent that religious violence is now a fairly regular occurrence in our society. Shush. Forget about it. Don’t look back in anger."
Progressives are a gift to Islamism - "there is an implicit message in our reluctance to dwell on Amess’s death: we are content to accept that, despite the horror that follows every attack, Islamist terrorism, if indeed that is what it is, is a fact of life... for the past three decades, the West’s response has been one of cowardice masked by arrogance. We needn’t fight back; it’s much better, we’re told, to stay quiet in the hope that, one day, those who hold competing ideologies will come through and see things from our side. Evidently, it is not working. More concerning, though, is the rise of a new type of defeatism — this time disguised as a progressive form of self-flagellation. Imagine you are a young British Muslim. At school and university, you’re repeatedly warned about Britain’s colonial roots; that the country your parents fled to, in the hope of escaping persecution and anarchy, is the cause of it all. And then you’re told: don’t worry, it’s not your fault. You are merely a victim; evil white people are all to blame. This dispiriting approach to education, which has taken hold on both sides of the Atlantic, is often justified using the rhetoric of “equality” and “diversity”. In practice, however, I suspect it is more helpful to view it in the context of something called “dawa”. In Arabic, the term simply denotes a centuries-old, non-violent call to Islam — though in practice, it has become a tool used by Islamists to encourage Muslims to embrace their extreme ideology and disavow the West. More often than not, this is achieved by branding Western society as ungodly and sinful, as something that needs to be either reformed or destroyed. In other words, you have two choices: either come and join us, or we’ll need to wage a holy war. Whether they realise it or not, progressives are saying something strikingly similar. In their eyes, too, the West is evil, home to foundational structures that serve only the white, heterosexual, male oppressor. So when the Islamists come along and say that Allah has given you a higher purpose, one that will culminate with ending the wickedness of the West, young British Muslims are already half-way there. Hatred for their country is all they know... liberalism needs to shake off its defeatist malaise and learn to compete with those ideologies that would see it destroyed. To new immigrants, as well as to our own schoolchildren, we need to teach the incredible success story of our way of life. We need to remind our younger generations why it’s better to live in Britain than, say, Somalia. The answer isn’t mysterious. I certainly feel no shame in saying it: there, women are treated as second-class citizens, and barbarity seeps into every aspect of your life. There, you have no liberty or rule of law... Until we decide that the West is worth defending, Islamism will not be defeated — and innocent people will continue to be killed."
Of course, it's a myth that liberals hate their countries
Five ways we can turn the tide against murderous terrorist ideologies - "Fundamentally, we need a step change in efforts to stem the flow of new terrorists that recognises the very different threat presented by those driven by murderous ideologies, compared with other types of crime. This is most difficult with Islamist ideologies, which comprise the majority of the terror threats, because of a lack of confidence in distinguishing between Islam and Islamist extremism. Indeed, I have lost count of the number of times senior police from Muslim countries have told me of their bewilderment at what terrorist-sympathising ideologues get away with in the UK. In particular, they are shocked at the hateful rhetoric and glorification of terrorist violence we allow to undermine us. So, working upstream of the threat, here are five steps to turn the tide, which are equally applicable to the lesser threat of extreme Right-wing terrorism as they are the greater threat:
1. Change the law
First, our laws are out of date, giving violent extremists room to peddle their ideology to such an extent that, for example, 15 per cent of young people (the same age group who take the majority of their news from non-mainstream news-media ) now believe that the official account of the Nazi Holocaust is a lie!...
2. Intervene on social media...
We must intervene to stop the magnification of murderous ideologies via anonymous use of social media which has driven the acceleration of the terrorist threat. The term “lone wolf” is a nonsense, as every offender has been inspired by the sea of vile material they are fed or find online...
3. Reform the Prevent programme
Third, the Prevent programme needs reform to become more expert, assertive, and prepared to confront violent ideologies. This is especially true with Islamist extremists, where naive cultural sensitivity and, in some cases, infiltration of Prevent by highly questionable groups, creates undue caution in some areas. Islamist extremists have no sympathy from the vast majority of Muslims...
4. Improve the justice system
Fourth, while the new tougher sentences and pre-release lie-detectors are a good start, preventing those caught from repeating their crimes upon leaving prison requires a justice system that understands that ideologically-driven threat cannot be treated like conventional crimes...
5. Increase social integration - and tighten protection"
Meme - Elizabeth Drew @ElizabethDrewOH: "A perfect last name for a pol who's stabbed at a town meeting.
British lawmaker dies after being stabbed multiple times while meeting with constituents, police say David Amess"
Elizabeth Drew @ElizabethDrewOH: "If anyone was still wondering what kind of person @realDonaldTrump (revealing avatar) is, his behavior upon the death of someone the admiration of whom he'd kill to have tells all."
Sir David Amess murder: Terrorist Ali Harbi Ali ‘cool, calm and collected’ while describing brutal killing - "During hours of police interviews following the terror attack on 15 October, Ali chuckled at points and seemed completely relaxed while recounting years of preparations to murder MPs who had voted for airstrikes against Isis. The terrorist, who at one point was on course to become a doctor, appeared completely detached as he discussed stabbing Sir David multiple times and aiming for specific blood vessels. “He just kept on saying, ‘No, no, no, no…’ constantly,” he said. “I had his blood in my fingernails, like, for hours … it’s weird. Obviously I’ve killed someone, there’s no doubt about that, but it still doesn’t really feel like it. Maybe it’s because I feel justified in what I’ve done, y’know?”... Sir David was suspicious that Ali was recording, having been once been spoofed by Brass Eye, and explained that the purpose of the surgery was to discuss particular problems and not politics in general. Ali then started talking about the Iraq war and his phone started ringing, at which point he stood up, said “sorry”, produced a large knife and launched the attack. Witnesses described how in the moments after the murder, as Ali still held his bloody knife, he had a look of “self-satisfaction” and “wasn’t remorseful”. Ali told police that as he was being taken away from Belfairs Methodist Church by police he heard a staff member saying “aww, he seemed like such a nice boy”, adding: “Imagine how weird it was for them.” On his arrival in custody, he told a police officer how to spell Sir David’s name and that the nature of the crime was “terror”. He later mused to officers: “I think the definition there probably correlates with that. Well, maybe actually it doesn’t because I don’t know if it was an act to influence politicians or intimidate the public. I guess we’ll get onto it later on.” The lengthy interview saw Ali launch into soliloquies on his view of the Syrian civil war, Isis, the nature of jihad and martyrdom. He repeatedly claimed the murder of Sir David was justified, telling officers: “If I didn’t believe it was a good deed, I wouldn’t do it.”... At points he took on the tone of an expert giving evidence in the witness box, telling the jury about the sequence of events in the Arab Spring and describing the meaning of different Arabic terms. Asked by prosecutor Tom Little QC if he regretted anything he did, he replied “nothing” and said that Sir David deserved to die."
We may never know why he did it
Carl Benjamin - Posts | Facebook - "The comments on the Novara Media stream covering the murder of Sir Davis Amess are not surprising at all."
