I listen to the news on this, and see the rioting, read the comments on twitter about taking back 'our country', and feel the inchoate rage driving it. I hear Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network screaming 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore'. I think the madness has grown since 1976. Times change ever quicker, increasing lack of certainty. The 1970s were characterised as the 'me decade', we now live in the 'who is me' 15 minutes.
The need to have a villain to hate has been abused many times in history by grifters, madmen, megalomaniacs, and now is no different. There's an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer where demons exploit the fictional murders of children to feed off the hatred caused by a witch hunt following those murders, and that plays in my head watching the manipulation that followed the tragic events in Southport.
The creation of the villains allows the mess of life, the dark depressing bits, to have some sense made of them. Hitler saw that and used it to indulge his own fuming hatred. Some just see a chance at celebrity, an opportunity to make their own small lives mean something. They tell stories of new world orders, and grand conspiracies which link everything since if you just join the dots you see the big picture that must be true. So the violence in Leeds, in Southend, and Manchester Airport, are all building to the murders of 3 girls at a Taylor Swift dance class. The shocking madness of what happened which is impossible to process is explained, and given meaning.
And my mind plays the imagined screams of those poor children.
