Racial profiling won't help predict terror

1 November 2021

Maren Sass

(Image Courtesy of Unsplash)

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of InQuire Media

On 15 October 2021, Sir David Amess was stabbed to death while meeting constituents. A Roman-Catholic MP, he had promoted conventionally conservative causes such as Brexit and opposition to abortion. Across the aisle, he was valued for his congeniality and genuine concern for his constituents. In the days after the killing, the public response of shock and grief was mixed with a sense of bewilderment. How could this have happened? And why?

At the scene of the crime, officers apprehended a young man who later admitted to stabbing Sir David Amess 17 times. Although he was a British national, the media was quick to point out that he was of Somali descent, as if that were an important clue to solving the puzzle of how one man could violently turn against a fellow countryman.

Soon after, it was announced that the case was being treated as an act of terror. The suspect claimed he had selected his target based on his voting history condoning attacks on IS positions abroad. When he further declared ties to the so-called Islamic State, it appeared the puzzle had been solved: A young man, radicalized during lockdown, had committed an act of jihad against a democratic representative. Case closed. One could almost hear ex-president Bush’s sinister conclusion: “They hate us for our freedom”.

But is it really that simple? If crime shows have taught us anything, it’s that the answer is never as close at hand as we would like it to be. Often, we need to search in unexpected places to solve a mystery.

And so, we turn our gaze to Germany, where a similar act of domestic terrorism took place in 2019. The event caught the country equally off-guard and left behind the same sense of bewilderment. This was followed by a fierce debate on hate speech, extremism and accountability that continues to this day. Some of the painful lessons that Germany learned in the process might now be useful to the UK.

On the night of 02 June 2019, district president Walter Lübcke was found murdered outside his home. The killer, a German national of German descent, had shot him in the head at close range, seemingly unprovoked. Like Sir David Amess, Walter Lübcke was also a Christian politician whose values had guided his policies. He, too, was a highly visible public representative appreciated across the aisle for his approachability and genuine concern for his voters.

But all these clues turned out to be misleading. Walter Lübcke was not targeted for his faith or democratic values, but for one particular remark he had made years prior. In 2015, while defending Chancellor Merkel’s open-door policy towards the many refugees arriving in Europe, he had famously said anyone who didn’t agree with this was “free to leave”.

Right-wing extremists were quick to decontextualize the remark and instrumentalize it to provoke widespread outrage that would bolster their following. By 2017, these extremists had organized into a political party, the AfD, which was voted into parliament with 13% of the popular vote. There, they continued to stoke voters’ growing sentiments of alienation, insecurity and distrust towards the government with hyperbolic and violent language. “Traitors of the people” such as Walter Lübcke were to be “placed in front of a firing squad”. A sentiment the killer, with ties to known right-wing terror groups, parroted verbatim.

This bears chilling resemblance to ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s announcement of wanting to “take the knife” to civil servants. His statement, made in the throes of Brexit campaigning, had also been aimed at fanning the flames of voter alienation and distrust. One can only hope it was an eerie coincidence that the method of violence invoked in each country became the method of violence employed.

At the times of each killing, both German and UK citizens feared deprivation and inequality as they struggled to absorb migrants into society. In both countries, this was accompanied by rising Euroscepticism, with the EU portrayed as a specter that wrested sovereignty from the people and rendered governments helpless. And tragically, in each case, populist movements instrumentalized society’s fears to deepen the polarization that would cement their power. To do so, these populists employed a rhetoric which not only normalized images of violence, but also subtly increased a public sense of dread.

In such cases of perceived insecurity, terrorism becomes the extension of the overall rising levels of violence. In Germany, between 2014 and 2018, acts of violence, including personal injury and homicide rose by 11%. Meanwhile, violent crimes in the UK have been steadily rising since their lowest levels in 2013, showing a staggering 38% increase .

Upon closer inspection, it would appear then that “they” do not, in fact, “hate us for our freedom”. Neither killer’s ethnicity nor democratic freedoms served as a reliable marker for his proclivity towards violence. Instead, we can find more insightful indicators in their surroundings: violent networks that provided support and encouragement on the one hand, and violent political discourse that normalized the unspeakable on the other. This interpretation of events does not serve to condone or excuse hateful crimes. But it might help broaden our horizons as we seek to prevent future violence.