Jo Cox, MP from West Yorkshire, was murdered in broad daylight on a street in her hometown in England on June 16. En route to a weekly session to individually meet with constituents, Cox was stabbed and shot repeatedly. The suspect, Tommy Mair, was arrested on the scene and has since appeared in a pre-trial court hearing. When asked for his name, he said “Death to traitors, freedom for Britain.” He has strong links to fascist and white supremacist organizations in Britain, the U.S. and South Africa.
The murder has shocked British society. Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, has received an overwhelming outpouring of praise for fighting against systemic injustice. She stood up for refugees’ rights, fought for women’s rights, challenged the genocide in Syria and was an advocate for Palestine. On Friday, vigils were attended by thousands in her hometown, in London, Edinburgh and across the British Isles. To commemorate her work, a crowdfunding page has been set up to support a local charity tackling loneliness, a national charity fighting racism, and a charity in Syria providing search and rescue. Within 24 hours it raised over £500,000.
Sadly, Jo Cox’s death is indicative not isolated. It tells of a surge in the politics of hate and racism, which the MP stood against. The links between the suspect and his racist and fascist ideology are inescapable, and the killing happened seven days before Britain goes to the polls in the E.U. referendum, which has been marred with an increasingly virulent anti-immigrant and -refugee narrative.
One example of the promotion of this hatred was published the same day as the murder: It came from UKIP, the small but well-funded nationalist party, which released a poster campaign with striking similarities to 1930’s Nazi anti-immigration propaganda. The poster screamed that the country is reaching “Breaking Point,” a message that bombarded the British public. Further examples show an intensifying, violent anti-immigration narrative being pushed by the Conservative Party, UKIP and the generally rightwing UK press.
Likely to shift attention away from this escalation of hate, swathes of the establishment media were swift in their attempt to depoliticize Cox's murder. Papers such as the Daily Mail and the Telegraph described the suspect, Mair, as a “timid gardener,” presenting him as a person who largely kept to himself. His action was described as out of character, or put down to mental health issues. After a public outcry, some of the stories have since been edited.
But the overarching message of the initial narrative is dangerous, as it distorts the first version of history. By humanizing Mair, the media creates sympathy that, to many, seems unwarranted. Further digging into his background has revealed that he was actively involved in fascist organizations like Britain First. He is also accused of frequently abusing Asian Taxi drivers to the extent that he was blacklisted by a local cab company.
Also far too common in the press is the tendency to downplay violence committed by white men – either by focusing on mental health problems or reporting unrelated details that create sympathy for the attacker. Fascist and racist ideology, in this way, are treated as a social construction. To blame his actions on mental health issues is wrong. The narrative of Mair as a "timid gardener" draws parallels to the narrative about convicted rapist Brook Turner, who the press emphasized had been a "champion swimmer," a factor that seems to have led to a lenient six-month prison sentence. The case has gone viral as an example of white middle class male privilege.
Returning to Jo Cox’s murder, it could and has been described as terrorism. The suspect is linked with organizations that preach hate, which appears the motivation. But violent white men such as Mair do not often get this label – although it happened with white supremacist Dylann Roof, the suspect in the mass shooting of nine African-Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, last year.
To achieve parity in the reporting of these attacks, calls are growing to call out white terrorism where and when it occurs. But a problem with describing acts of hatred as terrorism is that it can underplay or obscure the deeper complexities behind the killings. In the case of Mair’s attack on Cox, it is also a violent act by a man against a woman. The labeling of the Orlando shooting as a terrorist attack, but not a hate crime, has been condemned for ignoring structural violence and prejudice against the LGBT community.
To try and explain the hatred that led to Jo Cox’s death, it deserves emphasizing how it happened within an E.U. referendum campaign where the threat of immigrants was bombarded on to the public by the establishment right. A large part of the blame for creating this hate-filled narrative must fall on those bank-rolling both UKIP and the Leave campaign. This includes bankers and hedge-fund managers, and some who profited from the 2008 financial crash.
The billionaire press, too, deserves some responsibility for pushing this hate. Billionaires and members of the establishment sponsoring Brexit, and anti-immigration messages more generally, have a multitude of motivations. But one sure explanation is this: The virulent racist narrative plays into the 1 percent's hands, deflecting attention from the flawed, corrupt and unfair financial system from which they make their billions.
Looking back at the life of Jo Cox, she stood up against divisive politics. As she said in her maiden speech to Parliament: “Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration, be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”
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