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@ HebrideanUltraTerfHecate
2025-06-04 17:50:00
https://thecritic.co.uk/look-back-in-anger/
Yet, on that day, it wasn’t just the bombing at Manchester Arena haunting the public. That same year on March 22nd, Islamist Khalid Masood had driven a car into pedestrians on London Bridge, killing six people and injuring a further fifty. The day before One Love Manchester was aired, another Islamist terrorist attack had been carried out in London, in which eight people were killed and a further forty-eight injured via vehicle-ramming and stabbings. As then-Prime Minister Theresa May put it, these were three acts “bound together by the single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism.” It’s very difficult not to look back at the theme of love, love, love — however sincerely intended by the artists — and not see a useful mantra for keeping a firm, virtue-coded lid on what was undeniably a cultural boiling point.
How might the atmosphere have been changed if one, just one, person had come out on stage and said that actually, it was okay to be angry at a senseless murder of innocent people and multiple attacks on our nation. Love could extend to the love of one’s country, its values, and the protection of its children. Anger was not defective in these circumstances, far from it — Aristotle himself taught that anger was a moral emotion as much as a vice, i.e. necessary for good.
Perhaps this was considered to be too complex and nuanced a sentiment — in the unlikely event it was considered at all. “Love vs evil” was clean, safe and comforting in the short term.