Earlier today, British politician Jo Cox — a Labour party member of Parliament — was brutally murdered during a meeting with constituents.
While many have been quick to dismiss the horrific attack as the work of a deranged loner, it’s hard not to suspect a political motive: Cox fought against bigotry and was a staunch opponent of Britain leaving the European Union; the man arrested for the crime had connections to a far-right group that defended South Africa’s apartheid government and that has campaigned hard in favor of what’s known as Brexit.
While we still don’t know for sure what the killer’s motives are, that hasn’t stopped some of the most fervent supporters of Brexit are celebrating Cox’s death.
While many of the internet’s most terrible people have been leaning hard on the utterly unsubstantiated notion that the murder was a “false flag” by leftists opposed to #Brexit, others haven’t even bother to pretend that they felt bad about Jo Cox’s violent death.
Naturally, this response hs been most pronounced amongst those on the far right. In the US, that means some of the same people who have been trying their best to whip up anti-Muslim anger in the wake of the Orlando massacre.
It will be no shock to readers of this blog to discover that some of these repugnant alleged humans are also big fans of one Donald J. Trump. Tommy Grooves, a self-described “constitutionalist, Patriot, Libertarian, AltRight, Defender of LIBERTY” actually appended a #Trump2016 hashtag to this horrendous tweet:
https://t.co/YE5R8c2TbX The fate of all the political Traitor all over the world in every country.There day of reckoning ! #Trump2016
— Tommy Grooves (@Tommygrooves) June 16, 2016
In the tweet immediately preceding that one, for what it’s worth, he suggested that a writer for Vox needed to be taken on a “TRUMP HELICOPTER RIDE,” presumably a reference to Chilean dictator’s Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s practice of murdering people by throwing them from helicopters into the ocean. (See CORRECTION note below.)
#WhiteResistance, a frequent sharer of Trump’s tweets, as well as those of right-wing internet celebrities like Lauren Southern and Vox Day, had a similar reaction:
(These tweets were removed while I was writing this post, hence the screenshots.)
And there were many others — not all of them Trump fans, but most of them from the far right.
https://twitter.com/NANorthEast_/status/743473897828409344
https://twitter.com/NANorthEast_/status/743497714353246209
https://twitter.com/Fckislam10/status/743528636771270657
https://twitter.com/Fckislam10/status/743531853265543168
https://twitter.com/Steve_Crawford1/status/743543766020042753
https://twitter.com/KerrierKernow/status/743457087917854720
https://twitter.com/BodoKnerz/status/743515167732940800
https://twitter.com/Brassidi/status/743505912401432576
https://twitter.com/franz_soapbar/status/743497007881400320
Over on the rabidly pro-Trump internet Nazi tabloid The Daily Stormer, editor Andrew Anglin and most of his followers seem to be leaning towards the “false flag” theory. Other commenters had a rather different take:
While some celebrated today’s murder, one fellow predicted future murders — some of them possibly carried out by him.
Yet more reminders of how ugly politics have gotten in this misbegotten Year of Trump.
EDIT: Added link to Daily Stormer discussion (archived) and additional comment from there.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post suggested that the reference to “Trump helicopter rides” was an allusion to a famous scene in Scarface in which a man is murdered by throwing him from a helicopter; it’s far more likely that it was a reference to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s practice of murdering people by throwing them from helicopters into the ocean.
@alan
I find your insights into Brexit very interesting, because I have been very confused about whether the right thing is to vote to stay, leave or not to vote at all. There is a ridiculous amount of disinformation, most of it originating in horror stories from far right conspirators.
I do not see how leaving the EU will get rid of ‘refugees’. Genuine asylum seekers are nothing to do with migrant workers. This seems to have been confused by the press who are always banging on about grubby foreigners stealing our jobs, lol, the Daily Mail and the Scum. As a proper Commie, why should I want to support a system which benefits capitalism? Wasn’t Tony Benn right about us leaving? I don’t want to play into the hands of the racists and reactionaries, so I’m very hesitant to side with the Brexit brigade because so many of them are nasty. It seems odd to me that it wasn’t so long ago in the past that the UK wanted to join the EU, but the French wouldn’t invite us to the party. What benefit would we get from joining EFTA if that is simply another capitalist trade association? Why do people blame Europe for the restrictions put in farming etc, not selling misshapen vegetables etc when these demands are made by the corporations, Tesco etc not Brussels?
@ Ladybug
Thanks for the video link.
Just to add to the comments about the hostility towards vegans and vegetarians – I’ve noticed some of my friends and family have exhibited a rather bizarre hatred toward gluten free foods being produced, offered for sale, or consumed. Not sure what business it is of theirs what others choose to eat or avoid eating – nor is it clear how the mere existence of people who avoid gluten is offensive in any way, shape, or form.
Maybe everyone has some random ritual fetish upon which to focus a certain amount of irrational fear and abhorrence? Not sure what that is, in my case.
@ Virgin Mary
There’s certainly more to the EU issue than immigration; so it’s a real shame that that topic seems to have drowned out all others. And you’re spot on with your observation that the UK’s membership or not has little to no bearing on the refugee issue (that being governed by international treaty obligations that have nothing to do with the EU) so it’s both spiteful and daft to conflate the two.
As to your query about ‘what’s a commie to do these days?’ 🙂
Well it is difficult. You don’t really have a mainstream option. The EU is obviously set up to promote a capitalist agenda; and a particular form of capitalism at that. See for example the Greek situation where a pro austerity budget was insisted upon and further privatisation was a condition of the bail out.
That’s not just an EU thing though; capitalism has prevailed generally. You can see that by looking at two recent ‘left wing’ victories; the success of the SNP and the election of Siddique Khan. It’s great that they are pro social justice but they’re both also very pro big business. The SNP’s inducements to investment from big companies offer amazing tax breaks for example and Khan has made it very clear he’ll protect the interests of the City of London.
I think in essence capitalism won the economic battle and progressive views won the culture wars (or at least that’s where we’re heading). So you have a Tory party that introduced gay marriage and a Labour Party whose most radical economic policy (even under Corbyn) is considering possibly bringing some critical national infrastructure under state control (but leaving everything else to the free market).
I’m not making an “all politicians are the same” type negative argument here, I’m quite content with the general consensus; but I can see how frustrating some people may find the homogenisation of politics.
Of course, in the old days “if you don’t like it move to Russia!” was the default insult, but now that’s the last place you’d be able to avoid unbridled capitalism.
I feel for you. Neither in of out are satisfactory options. Your best bet might be to vote in just to make a stand on welcoming refugees. As we’ve said that’s not actually a relevant issue but it’s a perception thing.
@ proudfootz
I’m always slightly in two minds about the gluten free thing. I have coeliac disease, diagnosed through intestinal biopsy. I need to be strict on my diet because the three times in 15 years since diagnosis that I’ve accidentally eaten more than a crumb of gluten I’ve been incredibly sick – pains that felt like someone was ripping my intestines out, vomiting more times in an hour than I had in my entire life up to that point. But I’ve also seen the massive increase in available gluten free options, from one loaf of rice bread that was the size and weight of a brick and only half as appetising to eat to multiple shelves of options. Yet I still don’t get why someone would choose to eat a restrictive diet if they didn’t have to, because it can be really difficult to deal with. I miss being able to eat whatever I want. I also get annoyed at the few who go on about how they’re eating gluten free for health but then order a cake or pasta because it looks too good to resist – I don’t want that to lead to waiters not taking my need for gluten free food seriously because they think it’s all just a silly fad diet. All that said, though, I wouldn’t tell someone off for eating gluten free for some vaguely formed notion of health. I’ll internally roll my eyes if they tell me they’re doing it because they read about a celebrity in a magazine, but hey, it’s their choice.
@Reggie
Yeah, I haven’t had a true diagnosis myself because my insurance wouldn’t cover it, but it’s the best guess my doctor could give me. I’ve described the feeling of eating gluten as being like digesting razor blades. And I do worry about waiters not taking me seriously or not knowing what they’re talking about, too. But I’m so happy with all the GF products out there now and I basically only eat out at places I trust. And there are wonderful cookbooks and flour blends now, too, which makes the baker in me very happy.
I’ve noticed a lot of the people who are angry about gluten free are people who don’t know the first thing about it (they complain about ham and potato chips being labeled gluten free, for example), but think it’s the people who eat gluten free who are the idiots. They assume everyone going gluten free is following a fad and they assume they know which products contain gluten because it’s “common sense.”
So…something has been on my mind for a bit…
I have to know, if you have a cake, isn’t the point to eat the damn thing? It’s not something you get because you love the way cake looks when sitting on a pretty cake stand, decorated well beyond what any old average boring cake would have which will conveniently disguise the aging of cake while you admire it for weeks or even months, but oh no it’s not for eating! You don’t bake a cake so you can guard it against the endless marauding hordes who will break into your house aiming to get a piece of your cake to eat.
If you have a cake, is it not for you to eat at least one slice? Assuming you like cake and would have one, but there’s always pie, tarts, and so on…but there’s no well-known phrase about getting a pie and eating it too. Perhaps those who are fond of pie are too busy eating them to make one up? This is one of the great mysteries of our time!
@msexceptiontotherule
That one has always confused me. When I first heard it I was confused because if I were to say, “I’m having some cake” that would mean I’m eating the cake, so I’m simultaneously having and eating cake. Then my mother explained that it means you can’t have as in possess the cake if you’ve eaten it, but I thought that would be a very silly thing for a person to expect because all food is gone once you eat it, so how would anyone ever expect otherwise? And has anyone ever wanted cake simply to own cake? It’s not like those gold foil covered chocolates or anything, where you can both play with it and eat it. Cake is not fun to play with.
I’ve never understood the point of that saying.
It’s been reversed. Originally you could eat your cake and have it too, i.e. you cam eat it now, but then you won’t have any later.
The Danish and German versions of this proverb are pretty funny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_can%27t_have_your_cake_and_eat_it
Actually I empathise with the Spanish version:
Querer estar en Misa y en procesión – wishing to be both at Mass and in the procession
I recently attended a civic ceremony in a church for which we had to be seated 20 minutes before it started, which meant I missed the procession to the church, which I actually also wanted to see….
@ kupo
Yeah, getting a diagnosis isn’t always easy. In some ways I was lucky to be diagnosed very quickly, but that only happened because I was so dangerously anaemic that there was a possibility it was some sort of intestinal cancer. Getting the diagnosis of coeliac disease was relieving considering what it could have been! And I have known a few people who’ve had a range of tests that were inconclusive but were advised by doctors to eat gluten free because it did seem to help.
And yes, I’ve heard all the comments about warning labels! At least here in Australia the law is that everything with any sort of allergen in it needs to have an allergy advice. Yes, it means cheese has warnings that it contains dairy, and packets of peanuts have warnings on them, and people laugh about how ridiculous it is. But the reality is it’s easier to just have a blanket rule that all food has to have labels than try and decide what has labels and what doesn’t.
Also: That saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket. Are you really gonna bring one basket/egg?
Trendy, fad diet, Natural News gluten hipsters annoy me, but then I remember that their bullshit makes it easier (supply and demand) for actual sufferers to get the food they need, so I’m actually kinda glad for their existence now
@Ladybug
Yep. People always ask why I don’t drink as if they’re tryna rescue me from how square I am. Why do you need to know?
“Can’t sit on two chairs with one butt”…that all depends on the size of the derriere.
And cake technically *could* be fun to play with, if you’re into that sploshing thing….:P I imagine people who are into it don’t have carpeted floors where they splosh. If more people knew how to cook and not just microwave or instant stuff, then regular baking of cakes could happen! Never again would we have to deny ourselves cake all because we want to still have cake around later! The whole thing makes it sound like there’s a cake shortage and it’s some great conspiracy that is the cause.
Can you just imagine a cake conspiracy flung into all the political campaigns and refs exchange? It’s a hell of a lot less scary.
I have heard that Jo Cox may have died when she intervened in a fight that was going on outside her surgery. That is to say that she intervened, but it was not about her and that her death is therefore being used for political gain. Such a story sounds plausible. It may also offer a crumb of comfort that the world is not as evil as the initial indication.
Elsewhere, it is being said that a man wrestled with the perpetrator, to prevent him from attacking Jo Cox. A Chicken and Egg scenario.
I don’t know the truth yet. I was not there. What I do know however, is that the events appear to have unleashed an outpouring of the most vile hatred. People in the UK and accross the world in the US have been celebrating the murder, for her supposed crime of supporting refugees, as your site has highlighted, just as fundamentalist christians have cheered the massacre in Orlando and the Gun Lobby in the US have portrayed Orlando simply as a conspiracy geared to engineering Gun Control. Whatever the truth, actually this commentry alone indicates that we have a huge problem. One very sick world. Where is our humanity when we celebrate the murder of countless innocent individuals, revelling in this loss of life? At the same time as saying that those who express sympathy are politically motivated?
Now I am seeing a rash of people sharing posts to the effect that they are Deleting those “Friends” on their Facebook page who have “Liked” Britain First. For a long time, our Muslim friends have been criticised for allegedly not standing against terror, when terrorist events have taken place, however, I have questioned elsewhere why the vast majority of non fundamentalist Christians and the rest of “Jo Public” are not criticised for not standing against the Orlando Massacre, or events such as the murder of Jo Cox, or even the existance of groups such as Britain First or Nigel Farage and his ilk. It is good that people are deleting Britain First supporters. One step up perhaps from simply changing a facebook status to the colour of a flag. However, perhaps we need to give more thought to and do something about the general apathy in our societies that allows these things to grow in the first place. Why did you friend them? Two sayings come to mind. The old – First they came for the Jews . . . . . and one of my favourites – You are either part of the solution, or you are part of the problem. Time perhaps for everyone to wake up and work to ensure that we are all part of the solution.
UPDATE Apparently the alleged (innocent till proven guilty . . . .) perpetrator has just appeared in court and when asked what his name was he replied “My name is death to traitors and freedom to Britain”. Ooops. Quite possibly guilty as charged?
I am so glad I left Facebook over two years ago. I was sick of otherwise rational British Christians, people I know snd family friends, liking and sharing posts by American moon fruits like John Hagee, Sarah Palin and endless prosperity and End Times preachers, like it’s somehow something that we should support. And it’s common place to find British Christians who support the right to bear arms, and sided with Alex Jones rather than Piers Morgan (not that Morgan is a nice guy, he certainly isn’t) saying that Jesus told his followers to take up a sword to protect themselves from the Romans. I think most Christians are downright scared of not agreeing with other so-called Christians, because all the bugbears, homosexuality, abortion, guns, Muslims put the fear of, well, not God, but other Christians and they want yo be seen as toeing the ‘party line’ so anything less than ‘conservative’ is seen as anti christian, when really it is not. Americsns are lucky really because they have a seperation of church and state whereas we do not. We have the Church of England and the Queen as Defender of the Faith. However, our state religion is not as highly politicised as Amirican Patriotism, and we don’t get Pro Life, Pro Gun (surely a contradiction in terms) lobby groups screaming about in parliament and carrying out hate crimes against the ‘Libtards’ like you see every week in the states. I left religion a long time ago, but I see no reason to respect Jesus’s teachings which I see quite ironically as being completely compatible with my Communism.
It’s taken me a couple of days to get to the point where I can comment on this story. Jo Cox was not my MP, I’m not a Labour supporter (I vote Green because they’re almost as leftwing as I am), and I’m not in Yorkshire, but none of that matters. A good person died because someone thought they had the right to kill people with different political opinions to them. It’s a terrible outcome of the nasty atmosphere the EU Referendum has stirred up.
And these cockwombles are gloating about Jo Cox’s murder? Bollocks to them, may their path ever be strewn with Lego and their feet always bare.
Re: the EU ref,
Not sure which way to vote. I feel like I need to vote remain but there’s a socialist case for leave. Mostly I’m just appalled by the behaviour of both campaigns and glad they actually called a truce this week.
Further re: seafood, veganism & vegetarianism
I eat meat rarely but I love seafood, especially salmon and prawns. One of the benefits of living on the coast is seafood availability. That said, occasionally I’ll go for the vegetarian option, depends on how I feel.
One of my friends is vegan and she often shares stuff on Facebook, trying to persuade people to be vegan. We’ve agreed to disagree. I understand the arguments for animal welfare and human health; I choose, consciously, to continue eating an omnivorous diet. I’m constrained by finances and availability, like many poor people.
People argue about dietary choices as if we all have the same finances and access to food. We don’t. It’s a case of making the best, informed, choice for yourself.
@Reggie
The labeling laws are a bit different here in the US. If it’s one of the top 8 allergens it needs to be called out on the package somewhere, but some brands decide to put it in the allergen list and others just include it in the ingredients list. Wheat is in the top 8 but not Barley or Rye (oats can be labeled as gluten free here, unlike Australia), so to help Coeliacs there’s a gluten free certification companies can get which is where it tests at under 20ppm. This testing is expensive, so you pay a premium for food with that label. It’s actually pretty common for ingredients like food starch, cellulose powder, msg, “natural flavoring,” etc. to be sourced from grains, and it’s also fairly common to get cross-contamination during harvest, transport, or processing of many naturally gluten free products. Wheat is a government subsidized crop here, so we grow a lot more than we need and it gets processed into other things, increasing the number of processing plants that could have cross-contamination. (Corn is even worse, and I hope I never have to eliminate it from my diet again like I did when first discovering which ingredients I react to.) So basically anything without the gluten free label is suspect, but you still only see the label on products that have been known to contain gluten. I used ham and potato chips as examples because here in the US ham often has fillers sourced from grains or broth added to it (guess what they put in a lot of broth?), and potato chips are often given flavorings that include a gluten ingredient or are fried in the same fryer as the flour tortilla chips.
So to the uneducated it seems like putting “gluten free” on a package of ham is a way of extracting money from fools who don’t know what gluten is, even, and since Jimmy Fallon once went around to a bunch of people in the streets and asked them if they were on a gluten free diet and then followed up by asking what gluten is, and none of the people in that clip knew what it was, that must mean no one on a gluten free diet knows that ham doesn’t have any gluten in it. The reality is that no one who doesn’t have to avoid these kinds of things actually knows what’s in their food, but they think it’s sillier to put “gluten free” on a bag of chips than to put “may contain nuts” on a can of mixed nuts.
kupo said
This has always mystified me; it’s just words on packages, ffs!
I live in southern California and there are weekly grocery store ads that are primarily in Spanish, with small print in English. I’ve had people tell me that this is wrong, stupid, they’d never shop in such a store, and furthermore, it shouldn’t be allowed. What?! Well, hey, there are plenty of other grocery chains, after all, but why the vitriol? Also? These are often the same people who exalt the infinite wisdom of the free market unironically! It’s almost as if they don’t understand the concept! @_@
@valarys – I didn’t get a welcome package, either. Not that I’ve seen, anyway, but I don’t tend to revisit many comment threads, so I don’t know that for sure! Also, mmmm! Fishcakes, YUM!
@all the Brits – I hope everything turns out for the best on the EU referendum. Is there any chance the EU might treat you better even if you vote to stay? It happened in Los Angeles when the San Fernando Valley had a vote to secede from L.A. in 1995. The whole of L.A. got to vote and it was resoundingly rejected, but the Valley did get more representation on city boards, so that was something.
LostInLindsey:
The trouble is, what good is the socialist case in our current political environment? If we vote to leave, the tory government will lurch further to the right, possibly under Boris. There will be more cuts aimed at the vulnerable, further erosion of worker and union rights, and more xenophobia. Even if the tories lose the next election, we’ll just get another neoliberal government.
I don’t necessarily agree that fad dieting is harmless. As someone who has had eating disorders, the designation of some foods as good/moral and some as bad/evil is actually pretty dangerous.
@chesselwitt
Assuming that you are a Yank, it might clarify things to note that in Britain ‘surgery’ is used in much the same way we use ‘clinic.
@proudfootz
I’ve wondered about this myself and did a little reading that might shed some light on it, but it is speculation. I’ve been puzzled at the odd way that some people intensely judge the food choices of others. I can’t find the paper that had most of the info but I think I reconstructed some of it.
Basically the chemical detection senses (smell and taste, especially smell) are among the oldest and seem to have a disproportionately large effect on the rest of the brain. This makes sense when one considers that our ancestors (100’s to 10’s of millions of years time frame) would have done a whole lot of our socializing with smell so the odor detecting brain and the social brain share a lot of territory. Modern humans don’t socialize with smell the way that things like rats do, but we do socialize around food and those brain regions that would have historically been used the way rats do are still there.
The anatomy of the central nervous system that handles smell includes the olfactory tubercle (lesions alter social behavior in rats and in humans the region is involved in reward behavior and the effects of cocaine and amphetamine), orbitofrontal cortex, (stimulus-reward associations, stimulus-outcome associations, new expectations about punishment and social reprisal, suppressing negative emotions, especially in approach-avoidance situations such as the game of chicken conflict resolution, damage to this area results in both inappropriate displays of anger and inappropriate responses to the anger of others).
So yeah, we are probably sensitive to food in ways that really make us irrational. Sometimes I think I’m lucky my social brain is somewhat burned out.
Even before the UPDATE you posted, there was plenty of evidence that this was a poolitical assassination – Mair’s far right links, the witness describing him shouting “Britain first” or “put Britan first”, the Nazi materials found at his home. Why not do some simple checking before posting “plausible” garbage?