Van attacks people outside of mosque in London

[Scoobes]

Illusion said:

Hedra42 said:

In isolation, this brings up some salient points. However, they're largely irrelevant to the discussion you replied to about the safety of living in London compared with places where terrorist attacks and/or gun crime are the norm. And while Teeqoz didn't mention other types of violent crime in his argument, he is right that there does need to be a greater sense of perspective when looking at terrorist incidents in the west.

We shouldn't forget that the attention given to this most recent attack in London has enabled far-right elements to celebrate it, and islamists to use it as propaganda to justify their cause. Likewise, it's a reasonable assumption that the intense coverage of the earlier incidents in Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge probably incited this most recent one.

That doesn't mean coverage should be suppressed or the issues ignored. Atrocities need to be reported, and they need to be talked about, don't get me wrong. But blowing it out of proportion only plays into the hands of terrorists on both sides.

I don't pretend to have the answer on how to perform that balancing act, but when I see the latest headlines sometimes, I have to wonder.

For example, this morning, there have been live updates on BBC about a man being tasered for waving a shoehorn about outside a mosque at 1.am. I mean, live updates? For a shoehorn? Really? Would this have even made the news had the van attack not happened? Would it have been covered if the shoehorn had been waved outside a supermarket instead? Would the guy with the shoehorn even have bothered, had he not read about the van attack?

Perspective is important, and is so easy to lose.

The problem is that terrorism is getting so bad that it does actually justify the media coverage that it is recieving, it's just that the media coverage of terrorism refuses to address the route cause, namely: the actions of our corrupt leaders and elites. I have a problem with people acting as though terrorism is just another aspect of living in a big city, like gang violence, domestic abuse, etc... It's not, but those in power want us to think that this is the case.  For the better part of a century our societies were largely free from terror and yet if you look at recent trends, each year terrorism is getting worse and worse:

Err... what?!

Terrorism has been a problem for well over a century. The only difference is the source of the terror and the tactics used (suicide bombing is now far more common). In the UK we've had far worse times during the days of the troubles and the origins of that campaign can be traced back to the 1840s. For the sake of comparison:

The coverage in the Western media really is blown out of proportion when you consider you're still more likely to get killed by a dog than by terrorists (in the West, the Middle East is a different story). Stuff like gang violence and domestic abuse are far bigger and more common social problems but only get reported in the most shocking of circumstances.