A Bang, Then a Whimper

Ariana Grande’s music is a harmless mixture of mechanical bleeps and tasteful innuendo. She is as wholesome as it is possible to be while performing in a bikini and bunny ears. Grande is a former Nickelodeon child star, and her fans have grown up with her—and so the audience in the 21,000-seat Manchester Arena was unusually young. The first victim of last night’s attack to be identified was 18 year-old Georgina Callender. So far, the youngest victim was 8 year-old Saffie Rose Roussos. Many more children are among the wounded.

Perhaps Salman Abedi perceived some symbolic value in attacking a concert by an American singer. Certainly, the killing of children multiplies the fear and revulsion that terrorism inspires. For in the secular West, children are sacred not just because of their demonstrable innocence, but also because they are our posterity, the next best thing to an afterlife.

Meanwhile in the parallel universe of Islamism, on Tuesday morning ISIS claimed Abedi as a “soldier of the Caliphate,” and acclaimed him for slaughtering “a gathering of Crusaders.” Terrorists are ingenious in the way of perverts. They work hard to contrive new ways of arousing themselves, of spreading disgust and, more importantly, fear. For, as has been plentifully demonstrated in recent years, a reasonably determined terrorist can kill at will in Europe’s cities.

Manchester is England’s third largest city by population, but its second largest in terms of culture. In the 19th century, Manchester was “Cottonopolis,” the global heart of industrial capitalism. During the American Civil War, Manchester’s weavers went on strike to show their sympathy for the Southern slaves who grew the raw cotton that, loomed in Manchester, was then shipped to the captive markets of India. Even today, when the cotton mills are long closed and Manchester is best known for its indie rock bands and its drug problems, corduroy trousers are known as “Manchester trousers” in several European languages.

Manchester was once the first city of globalization, but only one among many post-imperial cities to undergo its discontents. “It’s grim up north,” is a catchphrase among the southern English. When Abedi’s parents came to England as Libyan refugees in 1994, they settled in the Victorian suburb of Whalley Range—not so grim by northern English standards, and certainly not in comparison with the banlieues of Paris.

There is more we need to learn about Abedi, such as how he came to manufacture a bomb. This information, we are told, is readily available on the Internet. Given the recent series of live-streamed rapes and murders on Facebook Live, it is only a matter of time before we are treated to a live stream of a terrorist bombing in a European or American city. Perhaps the social media companies who have made so much money supplying information while shirking so much responsibility for its content, should set their houses in order.

This morning, President Trump called the terrorists “losers,” but of course, we all know by now that they are winners. And not just because “soldiers” like Abedi die in the conviction of victory, or the utility of their sacrifice as a recruiting tool. Trump was speaking in Bethlehem, after a meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas is believed to have been the bagman for the attack on the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Abbas is now a billionaire, running a mini-statelet with American and European money, and distributing that money to the families of suicide bombers. Terrorism pays, and not only when we are prepared to pay off the terrorists.

Terrorism pays because fear works. After the attack, many concertgoers alleged that the venue’s security had been inadequate: perfunctory bag searches, more concerned with confiscating contraband water bottles than searching for weapons. But Abedi detonated his bomb outside the security envelope—in the foyer, where parents gathered to collect their children. Sooner or later, the bomber always gets through. Loopholes will be closed, security will be tightened, and stable doors bolted. The cost will be passed on, first to the customer, and ultimately to liberal democracy.

Britain’s politicians emitted the traditional flatulence on Tuesday morning. When Theresa May condemned a “callous terrorist attack,” committed with “cold calculation,” her excess of alliteration betrayed the speechwriter’s hand. Labour’s beleaguered leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who on Saturday had found himself unable to condemn the equally foul massacres perpetrated by Irish Republican terrorists in the 1970s and 1980s, called the Manchester bombing a “terrible incident.” This kind of language usually describes accidents, like a pile-up in fog on the motorway between Manchester and Liverpool.

This morning, Britain’s political parties suspended their general election campaigns. So much for keeping calm and carrying on. And what a dividend for Abedi and his online sponsors: one bomb, and the mother of democracies closes the shop. As usual, it was left to Queen Elizabeth II to state the obvious.

Normally, Her Majesty stays out of politics, but the bombing elicited a rare public statement. The queen described her shock, praised the emergency services, and ended by saying, “I would like to express my admiration for the way the people of Manchester have responded, with humanity and compassion, to this act of barbarism.”

This kind of mass murder is not an “incident,” but a direct challenge to a free society. The alleged ratio of callousness to cowardice in the killer’s motivations is not relevant, either. Barbarism is not an accident or an act of God, but an act of will by barbarians. Too often, the barbarians are “known to authorities,” yet are permitted to build bombs or buy guns.

The truth is that the racially and culturally mixed people of Manchester responded with enormous kindness on Monday night. Even the taxi drivers, who turned off their meters and ferried lost teenagers to safety. Like acts of barbarism, acts of civilization are not hard to identify. The people who carry out mass killings are not hard to identify either. They are Islamists. They are supported and abetted, directly and indirectly, by radical imams, Internet propaganda, and a well-funded network of false “Islamic charities” and “outreach” programs.

All of this is “known to authorities.” The British public know it too, as do the people of every other state afflicted by Islamism, and especially people in Muslim-majority states. The point is tedious, but must be made over and again. If we do nothing, this will keep happening. The social cost will rise with the death tolls. The terrorists may never raise the black flag over Buckingham Palace, but the fear they spread will dissolve the ties of trust that hold a society together. And if people feel that their governments cannot protect them, they will be right to feel “phobic”—to feel frightened. At that point, they will take matters into their own hands, and turn to illiberal politicians and rough justice. This is how democratic liberalism is dying—with the bang of the homegrown bomber, and the whimpering of the elected politician.

Dominic Green, Ph.D. and fellow of Royal Historical Society, is a frequent contributor.