[Safe_Timber_Man]

Anyone else get a sinking feeling that it's only a matter of time before the Mail and/or Sun start attacking and smearing the father of Jack Merritt? He's being very vocal in his condemnation of them and of their politics in general. I'd like to think they wouldn't dare but you just never know anymore. I've noticed the coverage of it has dropped way down the Mail Online already compared to previous attacks.



'Jack would be livid his death has been used to further an agenda of hate': Father of London Bridge terror victim hits out at 'political elite' for fostering views he stood against as his girlfriend pays tribute to 'phenomenal' man
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... s-out.html






The Mailites have of course already started to show discontent with the fathers comments:

jontootwo, England, United Kingdom, 2 hours ago
It is not about your son, it is about the safety of the public at large. I am appalled that do gooders have infected the whole justice system and put us all at risk.
+1030 -46

Major Hindsight, UK, United Kingdom, 2 hours ago
I think, to be honest, this nice lad, would be asking "why?". "How could this happen?"
+525 -18

One of the worst rated comments:

Ponteelcinturon, Valencia, Spain, 2 hours ago
Well said, Mr Merritt. And well done for raising such a wonderful son.
+30 -311

[Daley Mayle]

Julia Hartley-Brewer: "Jack Merritt's family have their own political views and others will have theirs. But that isn't politicising a tragic death and it's not, in the words of Jack's father, 'vile'."

[Safe_Timber_Man]

Yeah the fringe loons are already piping up. Bloom, Hartley-Brewer etc. Just wondering if that's going to go mainstream and end up in the Mail. If it does, I suspect maybe it'll be Vine who'll be given the orders.

I imagine they'll try and tread carefully and stay just outside the 'outrageously vile' territory and just leave it to their obedient readers to do the name calling and slagging off of a grieving father.

[MisterMuncher]

It's only a matter of time until these eejits start demanding internment. And there's strong odds that there will be a government exactly bovine enough to do it. So that'll be great.

[Watchman]

Am I alone in thinking, that this was not an act of terrorism, but an act carried out by someone who had previously served a prison sentence for what was deemed a terrorist crime

[Kreuzberger]

I think that randomly knifing people and wearing a suicide vest, fake or otherwise, kinda moves him in to a certain category of criminal.

[Watchman]

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to diminish what has happened, just trying to get my head round all the associated noise.

I understand what your saying, but it was a fake vest, it seemed the wrong environment to have the desired effect of a terrorist attack; it just didn't seem organized to me with no specific target or cause

[Kreuzberger]

I don't disagree entirely. It would probably be premature to discount deep psychological issues which were coloured and exacerbated by the glamour he might have associated with radical martyrdom.

I would press a point that radical martyrdom is not possible without psychological disturbance on an epic scale but we are discussing the action and the underlying motive. Perhaps @Andy McDandy could offer an informed perspective as someone who has at least had a professional association with Prevent.

[Andy McDandy]

Show me a terrorist who doesn't have issues.

If he's wearing what looks to be a device, I'd guess that he wanted to die. He wanted to take people with him, and for the police to kill him. He likely felt that he was outside of society, and that there was no option left to him but death. The lack of reports of him shouting any slogans suggests that this was a very fucked up guy going for suicide by cop.

[Safe_Timber_Man]

I think he is absolutely, by definition, a terrorist. His actions were carried out for the sole purpose to cause terror and, from what we can garner from the reports and the company he kept, he was driven by ideology. Definitely an act of terrorism.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Show me a terrorist who doesn't have issues.

If he's wearing what looks to be a device, I'd guess that he wanted to die. He wanted to take people with him, and for the police to kill him. He likely felt that he was outside of society, and that there was no option left to him but death. The lack of reports of him shouting any slogans suggests that this was a very fucked up guy going for suicide by cop.

That seems to fit the available facts, especially that he started his attacks inside the venue - so not at all random.

[Kreuzberger]

Forgive me. I am getting to this slowly and thanks to @Watchman for the provocation.

You don't have to be an habitual terrorist to commit an act of terrorism, any more than I am a reckless driver when I run perhaps only 1:10,000 red lights where (and I am not sure if this is relevant) an equal number of deaths could be a direct consequence.

Boosh! I am slowly getting there and shoot me down if I am talking bollocks. Within Asian communities, especially in men and the assumed patriarchy, mental health issues are absolutely taboo. Feelings of isolation, needing to belong, conformity, homosexuality - none of these can be adequately addressed within a culture that deems them to be weaknesses and thereby allows them to fester like running sores. Propagates them, even.

So, and to put it crudely, it would be negligent not to trawl back a dozen years or more to find out whether Khan was always a fucked up kid who eventually and tragically was destined to graduate.

In the current febrile atmosphere, that ain't going to happen.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Largely agree with that. There may have been other agencies involved, but it could be societal pressures affecting a vulnerable man.

There must have been studies on this, but I've never seen one referenced.

[Samanfur]

There's a very interesting chapter in It's Not About the Burqa on attitudes to mental health problems within the Muslim community.

Whilst it's a female-focused perspective within that particular book, the points on how a religious community can make a mental health problem worse most likely transcend both gender and religion.

(And for the record, in my line of work, we have to retake the Prevent course every two years.)

Suicide by cop was also something I thought as soon as I heard that Khan'd attacked where he'd attacked. Even without the fact that he didn't seem to be shouting any slogans or leave any sort of manifesto, if you attack somewhere in London that's already had fatalities before, you probably know that it's crawling with armed police, and you won't get much chance to say anything before they catch you. Especially if you're wearing a vest.

[Bones McCoy]

Yeah the fringe loons are already piping up. Bloom, Hartley-Brewer etc. Just wondering if that's going to go mainstream and end up in the Mail. If it does, I suspect maybe it'll be Vine who'll be given the orders.

I imagine they'll try and tread carefully and stay just outside the 'outrageously vile' territory and just leave it to their obedient readers to do the name calling and slagging off of a grieving father.

When Lee Rigby died in a terror attack, only the absolute nutters (Hopkins and Yaxley-Lennon) came out with this sort of stuff.
There's a measure of how far we've slid.