Interesting argument - I have also noted that unlike the Paris attacks, there has been no real social media impact (no silly changes of Facebook profiles, or meaningless posts about "solidarity" like I saw after the Paris attacks. Indeed, most people seem to have not made any comment whatsoever.So people are bound to grab hold of anything that promises – however falsely – to put control back in their hands, whether that’s exiting the EU, sacrificing their civil liberties, or even turning on a single religious minority.
Meanwhile, at the same time, we half-know these promises are illusory. Reluctantly, we sense there is no magic button to press that will make this horror stop. That the Brussels attacks came so soon after the murders in Paris adds to the feeling of glum resignation, captured by the cover line on the latest edition of the Economist: “Europe’s new normal”.
This too, I recognise, is another coping strategy, a way to get through what could be a sorrowful few years or even decades ahead. But it may be necessary. And this may be what we glimpsed in the more muted reaction that greeted this week’s agony in Brussels. Perhaps we are beginning to become inured – thickening our skin and hardening our hearts, proofing ourselves against the pain to come.
It may be the case that the public are now resigned to the inevitability of low level terror attacks, certainly it is the message of the politicians. Yet, I wonder how long the European public will just accept that the argument of the politicians that there are no alternative policy solutions to the issue of Islamist terror and that we can only carry on and hope for the best.
Is that sustainable? Or will the general public, after a few more attacks, start to think "if the current lot of politicians have no answers, we'll elect politicians who do promise that they can solve this problem. Contrary to what mainstream liberal politicians say, there are policy options out there, the main one being the internment of all potential terrorists on intelligence watch-lists. Right-wing parties that promise that option if they get elected may find that the public will turn to them once they lose patience with the political mainstream.
