Terrorism: A Fictional Tale

Tom, 24, is white. He’s single. He has no education past 16 and most of his friends are online. Below is a day in his life. On waking, he fires up his computer and logs onto Facebook, Reddit, 4Chan and Twitter to check in on the news. This is the first image he sees:

He then takes in a selection of newspaper front pages:

After this, he considers the totality of his life: 24, out of work, living in a town with no real job prospects, involuntarily celibate, with his best skill being insulting people on a range of games that are based entirely around killing brown people. His friendships are based around alcohol and the pub is his sanctuary: a place where people indulge him in his misery; where there is a general agreement of what the real problem in society is. Their lives were being ruined by the foreigners who were coming over here, taking our jobs, living off our benefits and refusing to integrate with our society. They were the terrorists that were violating our little girls, bombing our arenas and creating no go areas that were ruled by that Sharia law.

It wasn’t just the terrorists though, it was the queers that were ruining his life. God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve. The queers were living off benefits and made Tom uncomfortable. He was angry that he wasn’t even allowed to say that in public without being considered a queer basher. And don’t even get him started on footballers like Sterling, Lingard and Rashford. Flaky, the lot of them. And they weren’t even properly English. Not like Tom, whose family had lived in the same town for 100s of years. Sterling was the worst. Cost us the bloody world cup. And that gun tattoo was making kids shoot up schools. Sterling was, in Tom’s opinion, uppity.

There was one specific kind of foreigner that made him really mad though. The Muslims were the absolute worst. It bothered Tom that there were people that still disputed the link between Muslim immigration and violence. The real cause of bloodshed on the streets today was the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate in the first place. People were so left wing and PC that it was considered racist to point out that Muslims were killing people in the name of their faith on an industrial scale. Tom didn’t know much but he knew that Islam was the religious equivalent of fascism.

Tom, 24, white, jobless, involuntarily single, patriotic and angry had had enough. He loaded his weapons into his car and made his way to the nearest mosque, a smile on his face…

Two hours later and Tom’s TV is still on. The tv show is interrupted by a breaking news story. An attack at a mosque has resulted in scores of worshippers being killed. There is no mention of terrorism and the pundits talk about mental health, a community in shock and a lone wolf. Another pundit asks whether the violence inherent in Islam has led to this attack. The news looks at the morning papers and most have chosen to humanise and focus on Tom, an “angelic” child that was disgusted by the “terror” that Islam had brought to his country. One paper led with a letter written by an MP, commending him for speaking the truth.

Epilogue

James, 48, is white. He’s single. He has no education past 16 and most of his friends are online. Below is a day in his life. On waking, he fires up his computer and logs onto Facebook, Reddit, 4Chan and Twitter to check in on the news. This is the first image he sees…

Dylann, 19, is white. He’s single. He has no education past 16 and most of his friends are online. Below is a day in his life. On waking, he fires up his computer and logs onto Facebook, Reddit, 4Chan and Twitter to check in on the news. This is the first image he sees…

Robert, 36, is white. He’s single. He has no education past 16 and most of his friends are online. Below is a day in his life. On waking, he fires up his computer and logs onto Facebook, Reddit, 4Chan and Twitter to check in on the news. This is the first image he sees…

Adam, 29, is white. He’s single. He has no education past 16 and most of his friends are online. Below is a day in his life. On waking, he fires up his computer and logs onto Facebook, Reddit, 4Chan and Twitter to check in on the news. This is the first image he sees…

Anders, 31, is white. He’s single. He has no education past 16 and most of his friends are online. Below is a day in his life. On waking, he fires up his computer and logs onto Facebook, Reddit, 4Chan and Twitter to check in on the news. This is the first image he sees…