14 Nov 2015

Paris and the reaction: A sick inducing 15 hours

My thoughts and prayers are with those men and women who lost their lives in the barbaric acts of mass murder in Paris last night, as well as the family and friends they leave behind who will struggle to come to terms with what happened.

The attacks were almost certainly carried out by Islamist terrorists, who are intolerant of anything that does not fit their narrow minded, absolutist and bigoted view of how life should be lived by everyone.

They despise freedom. They despise difference. They despise the idea of democracy. We should be uncompromising in our determination to not yield one inch to them. Because what they want is completely unacceptable, namely submit to their demands or die, there can be no negotiation with them, so we must be unflinching in efforts to root them out and destroy them.

What needs to be made clear though is that what happened in Paris is completely unrelated to the democratic imperative of leaving the EU.

Some people who variously possess racist, xenophobic or cultural superiority beliefs, are using the terrorism of a relatively small number of homicidal maniacs as an excuse to demonise all muslims. They think that if all muslims can be grouped together and painted as an enemy, then a new apartheid can eventually be realised. After all, fewer dark faces around the place makes Johnny Racist a happy boy.

These same narrow minded people are the ones whose main focus is stopping all immigration into Britain. Many are quasi-brainwashed devotees of the Cult of Farage. As such they seem to think it's a good idea to wrongly paint atrocities like Paris as somehow a consequence of EU membership and freedom of movement, and therefore seize upon such events as a convenient justification for demanding Brexit.

It is irresponsible, disgraceful and damaging behaviour that undermines the moderate and rational effort to leave the EU. Far from speaking for the majority in this country, these bile-filled people will repel the majority and risk undermining the prospects of a leave vote at the referendum.

The nausea felt at the terrible events that unfolded in Paris last night has been compounded today by the all-too-predictable reaction on social media of those on the extremist fringes of our society. It is sick inducing. If only they would shut up and slither back under their stones.