Just yesterday, the seemingly peaceful north-western town of Southport — Merseyside — erupted in violence when a local 17-year-old male, carrying some bladed weapon, entered a nearby Dance School and began stabbing indiscriminately. Three little children were killed, and a few more were hospitalised.
Social media was quickly inundated with unconfirmed reports of the identity of the assailant. Even without the dissemination of official details, it was quickly “assumed” by many that the killer was a Muslim Syrian refugee. It was a powder keg of latent prejudice and fear.
Armed with this misinformation that probably themselves had spread, right-wing thugs migrated by the dozen to Southport. What would have started as an expression of misguided protest degenerated into riots as anger and fear spilt into the streets as attacks against… anything.
But the truth remained elusive. Because the attacker was under the age of 18 at the time of his hideous crime, police were legally obliged to withhold his identity and details, sparking a speculative frenzy and a propaganda-feeding storm among those seeking to point the finger at Muslims or immigrants.
And as an author, I couldn’t help but be haunted by the oddly familiar theme. My first novel, Vanished Echoes, begins with a kidnapping that spills over into a wave of xenophobic rhetoric and intermittent violence. Riots spread throughout London as well as other parts of England after a Bulgarian man is [falsely] accused of the crime.
In the fantasy world of Vanished Echoes, current events are merely scaffolding – but by making fiction out of plausible real-world incidents and by retelling them through the eyes of liberal protagonists, I hope that it will still have the effect of a cautionary tale – that it will alert readers to the ease and quickness with which we dismantle the rights of random, vulnerable communities, on the most spurious of evidence, and in the cause of immediate and irrational fear. Fiction does not look so fictional after all, but it is prescriptive.
Here’s a passage from my book’s epilogue:
Through this dramatised narrative, I intended to underline the societal issues that presently grip Britain – a nation of escalating division and eroding compassion.
In the climate reflected herein, a missing native child elicits greater outrage than racist brutality against foreign innocents. Little provocation kindles prejudice and protest.
And
I hope that thought-provoking stories like this can serve as cautionary tales to reinstate human decency before it becomes too late. Holding up a mirror to modern ills takes the first step towards righting them. If this work prompts a subtle rethinking of these themes, its intent has been fulfilled.
Just a year ahead of his time, these words seem to capture the essential lesson from the actual events in Southport, highlighting the importance of expanded, explicit empathy, tolerance and responsibility in the wider community.
Yet, the media has a crucial role because they can significantly skew public perceptions. We have fiction and real-life examples where selective emphasis and exclusion have bypassed empathetic reframing and unwittingly deleted individualisation or decentring. By creating a difference, erecting a wall or cage, you also invite the addicting endorphins of crude pleasure derived from a belief in “their” inferiority.
Our response to both the tragedy in Southport and its aftermath must be to resist the urge for easy answers and scapegoats in favour of fact-checking, interrogating assumptions and extending that compassion, not least, to those who share the same name.
Echoes of hatred and division can be erased only if we all agree to broadcast a message of unity and understanding. When tragedy strikes, let us not forget one another. Only in this spirit can we hope to steer our world away from these needless acts of brutality and towards a society that respects and cherishes all of its citizens.
Rest in Peace, angels.
Godspeed
LPR
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