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Keeping Calm, Carrying On, And The Trap Of Analysing Events Like A Box Set

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I'm going to write one of those articles that get lots of people asking why this kind of article is running on Bleeding Cool. Bear with.

Today, I woke to fifty messages asking if I was okay after the events in London last night, a terrorist assault by presumed Islamic fanatics in which seven were murdered and many injured in before being shot by police eight minutes in, around London Bridge and the thousand-year-old Borough Market. It's a favourite area of mine and I've made mention of it plenty of times on Bleeding Cool.

It's also very close to Titan Comics in Southwark, and I saw many at Titan assuring folk of their safety.

https://twitter.com/PopCultureHound/status/871150526712426497

And now we are into rolling news. Multiple news stories, new articles, each trying to find a new untold detail of the assault, following attacks in Manchester and on Westminister Bridge (hours after I had cycled over it).

People are trying to find a narrative, a story, to make sense of it and the news is happy to fulfil that. I'm getting worried, however, that this international and continual news coverage is giving the perpetrators exactly what they want. Seven deaths in a car crash would be as tragic but would not get this kind attention. Or even seven stabbings that weren't seen a terrorist threat. This is undoubtably a major news story, but it shouldn't be every story. And the reaction from people outside of London, pleading to find out if people they know are okay, also seems out of proportion in a city with a ten million population. But the news creates a level of fear and panic that the events, I believe, don't justify.

So because I am the kind of person I am, I try and find the other narrative, the B-plot, what the main plot is drawing attention away from, waiting for the reveal. It's a stupid reaction, but it's part of the way I think we are going, absorbing real life events as if it were a written dramatic plotline rather than random events.

That's when I see this story, about explosives found in Dublin, that police believe were intended for Northern Ireland for use by the IRA. And it feels like this is foreshadowing.

It feels like people's eyes are off the ball, that while we are looking at the acts of a bunch of unorganised suicidal Islamic terrorists, that the far more organised plans of other terrorists are being missed. Bill Maher probably summed it up in an argument on his HBO show before his recent controversy, telling Chris Hayes that there aren't "Christian terrorist armies like ISIS" going around. Hayes mentioned the IRA, to Maher's response "That's the past! But we're living now!"

The peace process across Ireland did wonderful things, saved the lives of hundreds as well as increasing the standards of living. But with political troubles of late, and people taking things for granted – and their eye off the ball – what else is being missed?

But these are just "events, dear boy, events". There is no showrunner, seeding plotlines, no matter how tempting it is to view the news in that fashion.

I'll be back at Borough Market next weekend. This is London, it'll be open again. We keep calm, we carry on, we complain about how this will affect public transport on the Monday commute. It's what we do. Maybe there'll just be a little more kindness next week.


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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