Well, it’s simple. If a Muslim does it, it’s terrorism. If somebody else does it, especially a white guy, and especially with the Holy Relic of Firearms, it’s another case of moody lonerism (we’ve got to know why he did it!)
None of which heals any wounds or brings back the murdered. But oh, it feels so good for us to get back to the 2 Minutes Hate.
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
Much as I’d like to blame the Orange Chupacabra for all this, he did not invent the ravanchism that causes us to give the weird moral exoneration to home grown terrorists (hey, he’s just a normal guy who snapped) and their foreign born counterparts, who seem to automatically earn the label.