Kings Cross United

Six months on from 7th July, Rachel from north London and her friends demonstrate how to combat terrorism:

The bomber hated us all, he didn’t care who died, he wanted to kill as many as he could. The more I know of people from my train, the more I look at strangers – anyone – and see in them a fellow passenger on a journey. One man on a train with hate in his heart and a bomb on his back, seeking to divide and kill, versus dozens of passengers drawing together, caring for each other, comforting each other, remembering the dead and injured and bereaved – and celebrating life with new friends.
Out of such terrible darkness, light has come.
As we said in the pub ‘Take that, terrorists. Cheers’
*clink*

4 Replies to “Kings Cross United”

  1. Robert,
    Please read all of this.
    What is interesting about blogs, is that you can go anwyhere, and hear anything you like. Just so you know, as if you didn’t, daft me!
    Anyway, you linked to some other nutters in Edinburgh and they linked to a conspiracy site about 7/7. You really have to be into the times of the trains from Luton, but essentially they were saying that the train all the media said the bombers had caught from Luton to Kings Cross was cancelled! Thus the bombers could not have done it. This despite an earlier train being delayed and departing at about the same time.
    Jeez Oh! Help my Boab! There must be a conspiracy here! Was I convinced? Well I was credulous enough to think they might have a point.
    However I started to read the comments on their web site and a name came up. Go on, guess who?
    You win the prize for it was indeed Rachel from North London, who is indeed a star. She frankly took all their stupid arguements and binned them, and she did it with logic, empathy and style.
    Strange how we came to the same conclusion via very different paths.
    Maybe we should both offer to buy her a pint. Or two.

  2. I think Rachel from North London makes a logical error, and I don’t think it’s a great way to combat terrorism at all, though it might be a great way to combat the personal effects of it. But it misses the point, I fear. Or maybe it’s me. I just think taking terrorism personally is a mistake; the whole point of terrorism is that it is *not* personal to the people that it hurts, that’s what makes them be able to do it. Isn’t it much easier to kill depersonalised strangers who you view as a symbol of your oppression, than a living breathing person with a life to live and loved ones that you can envisage? The whole point of terrorism is that it uses innocent people as pawns in a political game. I understand the need to object to this and assert one’s personhood in the face of it, but to attribute any personal motives of the perpetrators to their victims I think is unrealistic. The bomber didn’t hate any of those people, he hated what they represented, which is something quite different.
    The human mind is supremely capable of twisting reality into a shape that can make all kinds of dreadful deeds possible, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have had a 7/7. Until we understand this, we won’t be able to combat terrorism at all.
    I bet she doesn’t smoke.

  3. I bet she doesn’t smoke.
    Oh she definitely does.
    I think I might agree that the bomber hated something other than the people on the train. Nevertheless, if you have actaully been bombed, and walked past victims of the blast who would not make it home… is it not a triumph to not take things personally?

  4. I think it’s very difficult for people coming from outside this situation to understand how the ‘personal’ aspect of it affects people. My best friend died at Kings Cross. There will not have been a personal hatred of him, but an indiscriminate hatred of all of us. Why him and not me? Everyone gets discriminated against at some point – ask any black or coloured person. I’ve been discriminated against or hated or distrusted by people who have never met me on the grounds of nationality, town, football allegiance, beliefs and gender by any number of people. There are Scots nationalists who will hate me for being English, radical feminists who despise me for being a man, and class-war warriors who despise me for being middle class. It’s called stereotyping and up to a point we are all guilty of it. But For someone to actually want to kill people for being different it must require something much more deep seated than just the hatred of an idea or a system. We must be careful not to claim we understand the full extent of the depth of this. I don’t believe we can ever fully understand what makes people like this think. If we did, we could become like them.

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