Politicising a death in Brexistential Breakdowns

Go read my previous entry if you haven’t already.

In the days since, a lot of people have criticised members of the Remain campaign for “politicising” the death of Jo Cox, and it’s fucking outrageous that anyone can claim that asking whether the media’s influence over our cultural climate contributed in any way to her death is anywhere close to “politicising” her death.

Jo Cox was a passionate humanitarian who advocated for Syrian Refugees in parliament, and she was so known for this that her family actually received condolences from Syrian activists inside Syria when her death was announced. She was also a very active campaigner for the Remain side of the EU debate; the last article she wrote was pro-Remain, the day before she was assassinated she took part in the counter-flotilla (I am not making this up) against the Leave campaign’s frankly ludicrous publicity stunt, and even the last tweet she ever sent had #StrongerIn and #Remain. She had also been working on a parliamentary report on far-right groups and the rise of Islamophobia in Britain.

She was killed by a man who witnesses claim shouted “Britain First” as he stabbed and shot her, a man who is a long-time subscriber to pro-apartheid and white supremacy mailing lists, one of which has campaigned for years for Britain to leave the EU, a man in whose house was found Nazi memorabilia along with that literature, a man who gave his name to the courts as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain”, a man who had deliberately targeted her…

How can her death be anything other than a political one? And yet, should you happen to ask the question “what caused this?” you’re “politicising her death”. To ask how did the social climate of this country end up in such a state that a man who unquestionably holds far-right views can assassinate an MP in the street is “politicising her death”. To even consider looking at the root causes of the phenomenon that lead to the environment in which this happened is “politicising her death”.

And I’ve heard this all before.

In America, after every mass shooting or racially-charged death.

From the anti-Gun Control crowd.

And do you know what other argument they hide behind after every mass shooting or racially-charged death in America? The shooter’s mental health.

Naturally, that’s happening over here as well, in the Sun, the Express, and the Mail, absolutely none of which I’m going to link. Granted, they’re all pushing the far-right angle as well, but they’re pushing the mental health perspective more. And fucking worse, in this case, is that even then they’re not going to actually look at the root causes involved! You see, in 2010 Thomas Mair happened to be interviewed by his local paper about his experiences with a mental health support team, and he was very positive and enthusiastic about it, yet you can bet £350 million a week that nobody’s going to be asking what could possibly have happened to our mental health services in the six years between then and now that could have lead to this outcome. I mean, it couldn’t possibly have been anything to do with brutal cuts to the services thanks to a Tory-led austerity program, cuts that a significant proportion of the media daily reminded the public were the consequence of excessive immigration, could it?

When we, as a nation, are responding to asking questions about the possibility of the media contributing to an undercurrent of racism in our society the same way as America responds to questions about gun control after things like Sandy Hook, then I’m sorry but we have utterly fucked up, and it’s time we took a look at why. We really need to look at how our media operates, because for too long it has continued to get away with distorting issues, misrepresenting facts and statements, and both lying to and outright misleading the public. Maybe then, once we’ve asked those questions, we might be one step closer to finding out just how did such far-right thought and belief manage to come so close to mainstream opinion that a pro-Remain MP could be assassinated in the run-up to an EU membership referendum by a white supremacist, in our country, in 2016.

Neither claiming that the media may have, in some way, contributed to the death of Jo Cox, nor continuing to campaign for the Remain campaign in her memory is “politicising her death”. That’s a bullshit way of avoiding the argument, used by people who don’t want to actually address the contributing factors because they know, deep down they know, that they may be complicit in the problem. We are better than this, and should not stand for it.

I’m so fucking ashamed to be British right now.

Last updated June 27, 2016