PETER HITCHENS: I want Jo's killer to hang. The Left want to use him for propaganda
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This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column
I think the man who murdered Jo Cox MP should be hanged. I think it a great pity that we no longer have this powerful deterrent against cruel violence.
So let no Leftist propagandist try to smear me as an apologist for her killer, whose dishonoured name I shan’t even repeat here in case he relishes his notoriety.
But I am repelled and disturbed by the attempt to pretend that this deranged, muttering creep was in any way encouraged or licensed to kill a defenceless, brave young mother, by the campaign to leave the European Union.
Of all the low, dishonest tricks used by Remainers in this continuing contest, this slimy innuendo is the worst. Of course cheap Left-wing propagandists always like to insinuate that anyone more conservative than John Major is a secret Nazi, longing to massacre people in death camps.
Two could play at that, and it wouldn’t work out well for the Leftist smear-merchants, if two did play at it.
A lot of very prominent people on the mainstream British Left, in politics and the media, have never properly apologised for their many years of sympathy with the Soviet cause. Even fewer have regretted their slurping admiration for the homicidal, torture-prone Castro regime in Cuba.
Sick Leftist monster-worship of this kind is, amazingly, quite respectable. Listen to them still talking about ‘Fidel’ today as if they were old mates.
Admiration for Nazi killers and torturers is, quite rightly, restricted to such people as the Moors murderer Ian Brady and Jo Cox’s attacker.
I do not know why Jo Cox’s killer did what he did. I am told that, despite his supposed ‘Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder’ (he washed his hands until they bled), he was not prescribed any of the potent mind-altering pills that doctors like to dish out for these things. Likewise, there is no evidence that he took illegal drugs.
But the same is true of Brady. Some people just do step outside the normal limits of humanity. It cannot always be explained. But this was not a person with any serious political interest. Had he been, he would have known that the cruel murder of a young mother would help the very cause he wanted to damage.
But one Blairite commentator wrote last week: ‘Deep down they [opponents of the EU] feared that aspects of the language or direction of the Brexit campaign they legitimately supported had emboldened extremism. While they themselves were in no way permissive of the act, might they in some way have been permissive of the motive? Or even of the mood?’
The politest word for this is ‘cobblers’, but ‘tripe’ will do as well. More or less deranged people turn violent all the time, whatever the ‘mood’. Jo Cox’s attacker was not officially classed as mentally ill, but (and here I am absolutely not trying to excuse his act) I am not sure where the boundaries of mental illness run.
Officially mentally ill people (those actually classified as such by the NHS) attack – and often kill – dozens of innocents every year, alas.
Sometimes they give their acts grandeur by saying or yelling political things. But it doesn’t mean their motive is political. The Leytonstone knifeman shouted ‘This is for Syria!’ but not long before, he had told doctors (seriously) that Tony Blair was his guardian angel.
When I heard of Jo Cox’s death I simply felt grief at such a loss, as any normal person did. Only later did I realise that some people would take this opportunity to smear the ‘Leave’ campaign. And so they have.
What is much worse, the authorities entered into the same spirit. The killer was tried, absurdly, as a ‘terrorist’. Terrorists, like the IRA who actually did murder another MP, Ian Gow, are horribly rational. They saw Mr Gow as a fierce and influential opponent of the ‘peace process’, by which they would eventually defeat the British state and obtain its surrender.
They didn’t shout anything. They just put a bomb under his car and stole away, later collecting their reward – victory – from the Blair government. I don’t recall anyone, at the time, blaming Left-wingers who openly sympathised with Irish republicanism for creating a ‘mood’ in which this sort of thing was more likely.
Jo Cox, a shiningly good person, was foully murdered. Her killer has been justly tried and convicted but alas cannot be justly punished. Let her family mourn, and let her rest in peace. Do not turn her memory into cheap propaganda.
A fantasy full of REAL danger
I have been puzzled for years about the extraordinary appeal of the Harry Potter industry. The books aren’t that good, and the films aren’t either.
Can it possibly be because they confirm the soppy self-satisfied groupthink of the post-Blair generation?
In search of an answer, I went to see the new J. K. Rowling film Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. I still have no idea what it was about. An angry pudding terrorises New York City, but it can’t be all bad because it occasionally kills ‘Right-wing’ politicians and puritanical religious leaders. These are portrayed as killjoys, witch-hunters and child-beaters, with terrible hair and clothes.
Meanwhile, the Magical Community is full of funky, Multiculti, understanding, liberal types, sparkling with equality and diversity. Eventually, they manage to understand the pudding, which only wants to be loved. But then they kill it.
Have I got this right? I am not sure, and do not care. But too much of this must certainly soften the brains of those exposed to it.
****
A major military power on the edge of Europe, which illegally occupies a neighbouring state’s territory, is sinking into tyranny.
Its increasingly megalomaniac leader has built himself a huge new palace and is systematically eliminating all opposition as he prepares to become an unchallengeable supreme ruler.
Journalists at the only remaining major opposition newspaper have been arrested on ridiculous charges. They are among thousands of others scooped up in an enormous purge, flung into prison or removed from their jobs.
No, it’s not Russia, the economic cripple with a navy even more decrepit than ours, which you’re constantly being told to fear.
It is Turkey, still an unchallenged member of the supposedly pro-freedom alliance Nato. Turkey, in actions very similar to the Russian seizure of Crimea, grabbed North Cyprus by force in 1974 and has been there ever since, still our welcome ally.
Turkey’s President Erdogan, a passionate Islamist who regards democracy as a means to an end, is at least as repressive as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and has certainly locked up many more journalists.
So, if all those media who attack Mr Putin the whole time are really so worried about Russian repression, why do they say so much less about the ruthless extinction of freedom in our Nato ally? Could it be their anti-Russian outrage is phoney?
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