"The 1996 Dunblane massacre and the outcry that followed are held up in the US as a textbook example of how an act of terror mobilised a country to demand effective gun regulation.The atrocity, in which 16 children and their teacher were killed, provoked a wave of national revulsion that, within weeks, led to 750,000 people signing a petition demanding a change to the law. Within a year and a half, new legislation had outlawed the ownership of handguns."
But Carole, we still have gun crime. So really, how effective was it? It stopped some innocent people enjoying a legal hobby, and the thugs and criminals went right on doing what they do...
Almost 30 years on, the horrific violence visited on a dance class in Southport has sparked a very different reaction. A reaction that shocked many in Britain this week but which experts in domestic extremism – and especially those who look at the intersection of violence and technology – say is all too depressingly familiar. And in this, our new age of algorithmic outrage, depressingly inevitable. “We’ve always had radicalisation, but in the past, leaders would be the bridge and bring people together,” said Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist and trenchant tech critic who won the 2021 Nobel peace prize. “That’s impossible to do now, because what used to radicalise extremists and terrorists is now radicalising the public. Because the information ecosystem is designed that way.”
Ah, so now we must ban the Internet? I think that's going to prove a tougher opponent than the target shooting community...
The question is what Keir Starmer will do.
The wrong thing, of course! Since this whole thing started, he's unerringly done that every single step of the way.
Ebner points to the fact that this is no longer about dark corners of the internet: politicians are among those who have been radicalised. “They now say things that they would not have said previously and use dog whistles to the far right, flirting with conspiracy myths that used to belong to fringe far-right movements.”
And now everyone can see that they actually had a point after all and that the conspiracy is out in the open. No wonder people like you, Carole, are shitting themselves at no longer being able to control the narrative...
