Some thoughts on the Norway terrorist attack
I’m calling last week’s events in Norway a terrorist attack because since the revelation that the perpetrator was a white non-Muslim, noone else seems able to. The mass killings in Oslo and Utoya highlighted the long-overlooked dangers of right-wing extremism, but they also exposed the prejudice that we all share in the way we have been conditioned to define terrorism and its perpetrators. ‘They would probably think I was a terrorist, lol’ is a quote from the diary of the mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik that I took as the title for my article. As I have no papers to write for before my next course starts, I have put it straight into my ‘Unpublished articles’ archive. Please read it and discuss it. Because until we can call a white man a terrorist we have no right to sneer at the values that drove Breivik’s rampage.
More articles up
Last week, The Zahir published my latest feature. ‘Climate of suspicion’ looks at the surveillance operations at work within environmental protest groups and the treatment of green activists by the UK police force.
After a two year hiatus, I have decided to return to news reporting. I will still be writing features, comment and satire but a few news reports will be creeping in as well. I’ve got my ear to the ground so if you have any news from York (preferably student related) let me know!
