Conjure up an image of a hate preacher. Go on, take a second to picture them in your head. Imagine the clothes they are wearing, the colour of their skin, the look on their face as they radicalise and the room in which they’re stood. I’m doing the very same as I type.
Sat in an office, somewhere deep in the Kensington Tower from where he dishes out his venom, is Paul Dacre – Editor of the Daily Mail, suit and tie no doubt pristine.
Is he who you were imagining?
With a circulation of 1.5 million, and hundreds of millions more online, this multi-millionaire media mogul has a platform and audience much greater than most clerics secretly whipping up tension.
How about Rupert Murdoch? Owner of the Sun. The tower block might be in London Bridge by the River Thames, but it’s pretty much the exact same picture.
Their words are as steeped in hatred as Abu Hamza and Anjem Choudary, their divisive rhetoric rampant with the same inhumanity and callous contempt. They wilfully spread lies about communities, find ways to divide and separate intent on destroying any chance of cohesion. But while some are placed onto watch lists, placed under house arrest and deported, the likes of Murdoch and Dacre are allowed to prosper, respectable figures invited to Downing Street and to the most exclusive of political events.
When news broke last night of the terror attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque in London, once again the English capital was thrown into mourning. One dead, multiple injured, it was an attack on innocent people peacefully going about their daily lives. For the most part the mainstream, established media have been uncompromising in their condemnation of the attacker, save maybe the Mail‘s disgraceful attempt at justification by citing a hate preacher who’d previously visited the mosque, as if to justify this terrorist’s action.
http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-cul ... rk-attack/
I kind of feel that this crap is actually pulling us together as a society.