University of Westminster’s fashionable and murderous notable alumni
I was going to post something else as first ever article on this blog, but the news is the news.
(Just so you know, I swear a lot.)
First of all, let me present myself. I’m Francesca — WitGee on the Internet, so far 22 years of age, graduate student, intern, another degree in the making, little to none employment prospects. Who cares.
Fun fact: I’m one degree of separation closer than you to the man with “a penchant for wearing stylish clothes” Jihadi John. Why? I attended a university where free speech is granted for hate speakers but not naive lefty activists (let’s raise our hands in air you guys!). Where LGBT students are systematically ignored when denouncing harassment and sister university institutions can be found in the land of the free — joking, they’re in Uzbekistan. Ladies and gents, welcome to the University of Westminster, formerly the Royal Polytechnic of Central London.
Back in the summer of 2011, I remember bragging to my Italian friends I was moving to England to study at the same institution Pink Floyd studied at. Investigating online, I found an even longer list of notable alumni! One of my favorite designers, Dame Vivienne Westwood went to the Harrow School of Art (incorporated in the institution) for a term, political theorist Chantal Mouffe studies there, Burberry’s Christopher Bailey too — still waiting on that freebee monogrammed shawl mate. Also Charlie Watts from the Rolling Stones attended, together with photographer Perou, Nobel prize Sir Alexander Fleming, Crazy in Love, Single Ladies, Partition, Flawless and Grown Woman director Jake Nava (Queen Bey basically knighted him) and oh so many others.
What I didn’t know was that also Carlos the Jackal took some Russian Language courses there. It came up in a conversation I had last year with my former flatmate and we found it hilarious (hey, a terrorist is a Wmin alumnus!) but also bizarre: at the time Ilich Ramírez Sánchez was working with the PFLP. This was right after the Black September conflict in 1970, how did the institution not know? Her Majesty’s Secret Services tend to have encyclopedic knowledge on all things threatening and non (I’m looking at you, GCHQ!), did they know? And if they did, was the university informed?
Flash forward to 2015 and I finally get it: the University of Westminster could not give a toss about what its students are doing. Well, they say they do, but my dog writes better statements so… Who cares if the news report that Jihadi John studied computing at Cavendish Campus? Who cares if in recent years there were allegations of extremist infiltrations on campus? Who cares if last year reports showed that up to 40% LGBT students felt unsafe on campus? Who cares if even with over 3000 signatures against it, homophobic Sheik Haitam Al Haddad was still allowed to speak publicly at a society event (now postponed) one day before Student Pride? It isn’t even the first time this happens (this too)! Ok, the real turning point for Jihadi John’s (real name Mohammed Emwazi) radicalization seems to be a safari in Tanzania gone wrong, with a Guardian article also claiming that he has been in jihadi circles for at least the past six years. This would explain why the secret services were on him for so long, although he himself initially complained to Cage UK he was being harassed by UK officials. He said “I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started. But now I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London. A person imprisoned and controlled by security service men, stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace and my country, Kuwait.” According to reports, after graduating in London he moved back to his country of origin to work, but once he visited the UK again he was denied returning to Kuwait by counter terror authorities for fears he had ties with the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabab. Let’s be clear, MI5 harassment is on the top of the worst bullies list (hence why I linked Cage UK twice) and the treatment they reserved him could very much explain the decisions the guy took, including gleefully beheading people on camera. I mean we also had Cherie Blair, who’s married to a war criminal, and, again, Carlos the Jackal… It’s dark.
In the supposedly grand scheme of things, there is minimal correlation between the free speech platform the university provides for hate preachers’ talkfests and this peculiarity. It’s actually more about the social system England (and most of the West) finds itself in. There is probably an encyclopedia to write on the effects of these social dynamics on youth from a non-Western background and honestly, among the real causes that led Emwazi to join IS, it is a semi irrelevant question to ask if it had anything to do with our (!!!) former university — it probably doesn’t. That said, by tomorrow, there’ll be some article on how the dude found himself lonely and marginalized in a systematically brutal society towards those who are skeptical of it. And it is true, we saw it first with political terrorism in the seventies, there is no space for questioning the power of the state, and it will always have the upper hand, especially when on its side there is the secret service, but are we sure there was no other shelter to seek than extremism? Think about it. If I start feeling like destroying the shit out of the place where I live and kill my peers, I would first manifest it in my discourse and then possibly question these ideas. If I don’t go through step two, questioning my ideas, there’s a problem in my upbringing and surroundings, which never taught me to doubt myself. If nobody around me is receptive enough to confront me during step one well… shit, here comes the perfect storm, the flood-the-universe kind of storm. We have to understand whether the environment around him sought to protect him — this being your educational institution, your community, your city (hint hint you piece of corporate work Boris Johnson). And please, let’s not start with the old Daily Mail mantra “but Islam is evil…” no, Islam is peaceful and it is psychologically coercive preachers that make it all about that Jihad. It isn’t (all about that Jihad) and most British Muslims are living examples of that. Also stop asking them to apologize for crimes they wouldn’t commit in a million years, it’s backward like your take on pink eyebrows (awesome, gotta try that!)
Disclaimer
My beloved friend Daniel had something to say at this point. He states “And I’d also factor in the systematic destruction of the Arabic left, leaving a political vacuum for Wahhabism — that ideology of western Capitalism’s great ally, Saudi Arabia but that might mean a whole new essay.” Basically “the Americans quashed the left there and funded radical Islam. They created their next enemy. Also, I’d say no religion is a religion of either peace or war. It all comes down to praxis. Same as some Chinese bureaucrats can turn human emancipation in the form of Marxism into each party official deciding on behalf of the proletariat just what it is they need.”
Moving on…
There still is the problem that practically providing students with hate discourse towards different groups and letting this divide the student body has a horrible effect, whether you associate it with a professional butcher or “just” letting a hate speaker in, with the consequent generation of ignorant, bitter anti-minorities feelings that then spread into the wider society (this too) (and this). Hate is the very antonym of civil society, allowing harassment is not the same as giving free speech a platform (e.g. the Charlie Hebdo debate) and it brings upon you all the crap from the Pandora box, including PR shitstorms, Westminster.
