The hinge

The assassination of Jo Cox yesterday is truly shocking. As a parent, all I could think about was the unbearable anguish she must have felt for her young children during her last moments, confronted with the possibility of being unable to continue protecting them and providing for them, and my heart breaks for her and for them.

Speaking of Syrian refugees and their children, Cox once said "these children have been exposed to things no child should ever witness and I know I personally would risk life and limb to get my two precious babies out of that hell-hole". Now she no longer has the chance to be there for her own children.

But Jo Cox was also an MP, and as a citizen I was horrified that the political climate of hostility and anger and prejudice that has been cultivated recently should summon and circulate such poisonous storm clouds of hate and intolerance from which the dark lightning was provoked that struck her down so tragically yesterday.

For although the attacker is being portrayed as a lone wolf with mental health problems, as John Donne said, "no man is an island", and as Alex Massie eloquently described in the Spectator yesterday, our motivations are informed by our surroundings. And if it is confirmed that the attacker shouted "Britain First" it would seem toxic right wing fantasies that have been given credence recently may have influenced his actions.

There are secret chambers to the heart not found in any anatomy textbook. The routine beat of our hearts is the slow pad of our footfall as we pass by these many mansions everyday. In some we store treasures that we may visit on occasion: unique, glorious, private repertoires of intimacy that we only unveil in the immediate undeniable presence of love.

In others we hide monsters: prejudice, frustration, grudge, insecurity, self-loathing. The door to that chamber is rarely touched and rests ajar, the hinge rusted stiff with neglect.

But recently we have become fascinated with that door, beguiled by the possibilities it represents. We have picked the scabs of rust from its hinge and oiled it until the oil, blood red with rust, has spilled on the floor and stained our hands. And what we are now finding is that monsters need no invitation once the door will open easily, and murder is the hinge on which it swings.

People take matters into their own hands when they feel powerless and let down by politics. This sense of powerlessness can be exploited. It can be encouraged. This sense of powerlessness is part of a corporate agenda where the commercial inconveniences imposed by democratic authorities are to be circumvented or abolished.

Isolated individuals are easier to manipulate and control than those embedded in a long tradition of open democratic debate with collectively agreed procedures for evaluating circumstances and identifying the appropriate response. Individuals whose isolation is accentuated by our society's focus on instant gratification of narrow self-interest, and a sense of distrust fostered by the media's relentless emphasis on the narrow self-interest of others, always presented as a threat, will react to every spurious dog-whistle that irresponsible politicians articulate and that corporate-owned media then dutifully transmit. We forget that it is our ability to defer indefinitely the gratification of our own needs and desires that makes us human.

The dog-whistle goes from the podium, over our heads, and straight to the misfit at the back of the room lurking by the exit.

The lone wolf assassin always emerges in an anti-democratic climate, whether it is theocratic or fascist in manifestation, a climate which is cultivated at arms length with the utmost plausible deniability by powerful interests controlling the media and concerned only with preserving their own power and privilege. Fascism and religious extremism ask us to dehumanise our antagonists, to consider them to be sinners or traitors or infidels, and both ideologies share the fascist paradigm, described by Goering in Nuremburg, that people are fundamentally evil and can only be redeemed by unquestioning submission to a religious or political authority which legitimises itself with an appeal to some ultimately unverifiable and metaphysical inspiration. The powerless, marginalised, ostracised loner who feels rejected by the people around him finds his vindication in this transcendent vision, and strikes the first blow. It is easy because the victim is not a person like him. The victim is one of "them".

We might lose faith in politics, but that doesn't make politics go away. If you don't like politics become a hermit. Politics is always present where any co-operative endeavour takes place. If you lose faith in politics all that happens is that politics becomes ugly.

Nationalist sentiment has been manipulated recently using toxic fantasies of victimhood and manufactured grievances about immigrants and foreigners to summon and unleash its chaotic power in service of a clandestine corporate agenda. All that is required now for fascism to emerge from this chaos is an attack on democracy, a rejection of it as a valid mechanism for expressing a collective response to our circumstances. We saw that with the assassination of Jo Cox.

Fascism may be as fascinating as a scab, but like a scab, the urge must be resisted.

If you are dissatisfied with politics, get involved. Join a union. Participate in a community initiative. Join a political party even, if you can find one that you agree with enough. If you can't, become an activist for the issues that are important to you. Seek like-minded people with whom you can pursue this activism. With equal vigour seek out people who disagree with you and embrace them as the litmus of your own convictions and the very image of your own enthusiasm.

And include those isolated individuals who may otherwise feel left out. Overcome barriers to inclusion. Let the discipline of democratic reflection and argument dispel the notions that would fester and thrive in their involuntary hermitage.  

At all times work to make the world a better place for everyone, not just yourself.

Like Jo did.