[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

No, normal people don't just go around killing people, but generally for a murder to occur you need two things unless you're dealing with a complete psychopath. Those two things being a precondition, and a trigger. In this case, it seems fairly evident that there are two preconditions at play... a steady underlying general level of violence in that individual, and an escalating level of casual racism. The trigger being the actual events of the day. The concern is the escalating casual racism though, and anyone who acts like this isn't "a thing" in this country at the moment is walking around with their eyes shut. The media, and society in general, is desperately clawing to make it more and more acceptable to hold racial prejudices and to express them. This is a FACT. People with underlying prejudice are starting to feel more and more comfortable expressing them - and using them as an excuse. This has a snowball effect. The more people do it, the more it becomes acceptable, and the more people do it... and so on and so on.

The main problem there, is that the more people talk about and share these prejudices with other like-minded individuals, the further they are reinforced and the more "wound up" about it that person becomes, until (in cases like this, with other triggers and a general violent precondition) it ends up being used as a subconscious justification for doing something awful. It scrubs away empathy. After all, it's "just a p**i", not "someone like them".



It is there though Ammi, I don't really know how you haven't seen it. To use an example - I've now had 4 or 5 incidents in the last 2 years of people having to be barred completely from my shop for racist outbursts. Most of them totally unprovoked. I've been in the same job 6 years... in the 4 preceeding years there were zero such incidents. Were there still racist individuals? Of course there were. They would whisper their jokes and chuckle. One old man once gave me a home-printed pamphlet about Muslims taking over the world. But they didn't start shouting it at the top of their voice proudly - and they didn't start verbally attacking other individuals openly. People do that now. They think it's acceptable, that they're "only saying what everyone's thinking".

It's slowly, but quite obviously, becoming more socially (and in many people's opinion, morally) acceptable to violently express dislike of foreigners in various ways. Obviously, physical violence is an extreme example of this, but it *absolutely is* a factor. Ignoring that, or making excuses that it's "probably other unrelated things" is the absolute worst thing we can do.

I obviously don't think it's right to see any attack by a person of one race on a person of another and automatically assume racism when there's no other evidence of that person being racist. However, In this case, there is clear evidence that this individual IS racist and WAS openly expressing racist views at various times, even escalating in the lead up to the attack. He then violently attacked a non-white-English person. It would be massively naive to assume that that's purely coincidence. In my opinion.

..(you don't have to put the 'in my opinion every time....)...but yes, I can see that they were obviously racist and the level of their prejudice, 'hate' escalated by other factors that day as well and resulting in them brutally murdering Mushnin..but there is still no correlation between that day/their hate actions and any other world events as being the case...

[user104658]

Originally Posted by Ammi

..(you don't have to put the 'in my opinion every time....)...but yes, I can see that they were obviously racist and the level of their prejudice, 'hate' escalated by other factors that day as well and resulting in them brutally murdering Mushnin..but there is still no correlation between that day/their hate actions and any other world events as being the case...

I don't know the stats (other than personal experience of verbal outbursts) so I can't really dispute that but I would guess that there probably is an upwards trend in the number of attacks on ethnic minorities at the moment. I suspect it's a trend that will only get steeper and steeper in the coming years... especially if it isn't addressed early. Like I said it's not always that is has to be the motive or the trigger. It might be someone blocking someone elses' driveway with their van, or letting a door swing back on them by accident, or any number of things that could trigger the actual attack. The problem is the developing "Us and Them" mentality that makes the difference between acting and not. It's a subtle subconscious feeling that can make the tiny difference tipping the scales between someone being willing to actually give in to their anger and attack someone, and not.

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I don't know the stats (other than personal experience of verbal outbursts) so I can't really dispute that but I would guess that there probably is an upwards trend in the number of attacks on ethnic minorities at the moment. I suspect it's a trend that will only get steeper and steeper in the coming years... especially if it isn't addressed early. Like I said it's not always that is has to be the motive or the trigger. It might be someone blocking someone elses' driveway with their van, or letting a door swing back on them by accident, or any number of things that could trigger the actual attack. The problem is the developing "Us and Them" mentality that makes the difference between acting and not. It's a subtle subconscious feeling that can make the tiny difference tipping the scales between someone being willing to actually give in to their anger and attack someone, and not.

..if we..(the public..)..say trend/think trend is there not a danger of making it one though/if those are our thoughts..but this is being addressed, these men are fully answering to the justice system for their hate, nothing else can be done to address what they did, other than they be killed as well..?..and 'us and them' can only be created by two opposing sides or people..if we think there is a 'them' then there must be an 'us' also because 'we're not them'...

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Ammi

..(you don't have to put the 'in my opinion every time....)...but yes, I can see that they were obviously racist and the level of their prejudice, 'hate' escalated by other factors that day as well and resulting in them brutally murdering Mushnin..but there is still no correlation between that day/their hate actions and any other world events as being the case...

...In your opinion. It seems by the explosion of racially motivated attacks this is more likely than not, Therefore I'd say the OP reaction is less knee jerk and more cautionary.