The despicable knife attack in Southport and the unjustifiable responses to it.

In defence of not smashing shit up.

The UK is currently in a state of shock and anger over a brutal knife attack that was carried out in Southport. At the time of writing, three children are confirmed to have been killed and a number of people remain in hospital due to serious injuries. The suspect is a 17 year old male who appears to have acted alone. He was arrested at the scene and a police investigation has begun.

At this moment in time, there is much we simply cannot know about this suspect and his motivations and given that legal proceedings are now active, it would be unwise to speculate. Until we have enough information to do the necessary accounting, it may be worth taking a look at some of the obnoxious and counter-productive ways bad actors have responded to this despicable crime.

Much is being made of the fact that the suspect’s name has not been publicly released. The implication being that the authorities are involved in a conspiracy to purposely withhold this information in order to conceal the attacker’s religion or ethnicity—and in turn, shield those things from scrutiny.

This is all complete nonsense of course. The real reason the suspect’s name has not been released to the public is solely due to the fact that he is 17 years old. The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 stipulates that ‘The identity of a child aged between 10 and 17 charged with a crime will not be disclosed outside the court’.

The suspect’s name will remain undisclosed throughout legal proceedings. Once legal proceedings have concluded, this may be challenged (usually by news media), however there is no guarantee that any such challenge would be successful.

Given the understandable desire for information coupled with the fact authorities must follow the law, being extremely careful about what information they release during active proceedings, many turned to social media for ‘answers’.

On social media they were then met with one of the most obnoxious staples of our digital age: the self-serving aspiration to simply be ‘first’. This is invariably inspired by a desire for attention, revenue or both. It begins with a cycle of simply ‘making stuff up’ which will then be uncritically shared far and wide by those incapable of waiting for confirmed facts. Then there are the people that simply will not waste a good tragedy to clumsily shoehorn in their pet political obsessions.

There’s a saying that predates social media by hundreds of years, but it may as well have been coined in tribute to it: ‘A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on’.

We saw this in practice mere hours after news of the Southport attack broke when very specific claims about the attacker’s identity and motivations were made online. They appear to have been completely plucked from thin air however and then ‘reported’ as fact. These claims ranged from the suspect being identified as ‘Ali al Shakati’ (this person doesn’t even appear to exist), to specific–and often contradictory–claims about the attacker’s religion, nationality and immigration status. 

And in entirely predictable fashion, many took to the streets of Southport causing destruction and violence, after being enraged by the false claims and speculation they had consumed online. It was reported that 50 police officers were injured in what has been described as “sickening violence” by the police which they directly linked to false speculation about the suspect. A mosque was attacked, police vehicles were set on fire and 6 people were arrested.

Chief Constable Alex Goss said: "There has been much speculation and hypothesis around the status of a 17-year-old male who is currently in police custody, and some individuals are using this to bring violence and disorder to our streets. "We have already said that the person arrested was born in the UK and speculation helps nobody at this time."

I would suspect many amongst the rioting mob in Southport would rightly take a dim view of ‘Black Lives Matter’ or Antifa behaving in similar fashion. Of course, it would be unfair to suggest everyone involved was ‘far-right’ or engaging in thuggery, but it would certainly be ridiculous to describe it as “mostly peaceful”, would it not?

A video via ‘Good Morning Britain’ documents the morning aftermath:

There also appears to be competing and mutually exclusive conspiracy theories on the left and the right where claims of ‘mental health’ are concerned. The right is utterly convinced that acts of Islamic terror are being covered up under the smokescreen of “mental health issues”. And the left is utterly convinced that any ‘brown skinned’ suspect is automatically described as a ‘terrorist’ and white suspects are automatically considered to have “mental health issues”.

Both of these conspiracy theories cannot be true—but they can both be false. And they are. I made a video debunking the latter claim several years ago:

People outraged about the ‘lack of transparency’ surrounding the unthinkable attack in Southport don’t appear to understand what they mean by ‘transparency’. What exactly are they demanding here? Vigilante justice? That would be a crime. Are they asking for the name of the suspect to be released? That would also be a crime. How about speculation about the motivation of the attack during the early stages of legal proceedings? Also, a potential crime.

So, if that’s what you are asking for, just be honest and say that you think your need to know everything right this second is more important than ensuring a thorough and responsible investigation that abides by laws specifically designed to avoid jeopardising an active investigation concerning the murder of children.

Rattling the sabre in service of misinformation and self-serving rioting achieves nothing more than hurting a Southport community that is already suffering.

Anyone that’s followed my reporting over the last decade or so will have noticed I’ve hardly shut up about the dangers of fundamentalist Islam and the failure of our government, society and institutions to recognise this problem—and worse, denigrate anyone that does.

However, rattling the sabre of misinformation and thuggish rioting achieves nothing more than hurting a Southport community that is already suffering. Southport is a town currently in a state of shock and grief over this unthinkable crime—many of its residents utterly traumatised by what they have witnessed. And now they have to deal with the insult and dangers of having their community smashed up by moronic agitators.

This also provides a gift to those already committed to dismissing the issue of Islamic fundamentalism and mass-immigration—as they now get to point at the rioting in Southport and say “these are the types of people that care about these issues: gullible, misinformed thugs”.

This is all a secondary problem when contrasted with the unforgivable murder of children of course. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that those committing acts of violence on our streets in response have somehow managed to make an unimaginable situation even worse.