A bit of an absurd sentence in a Guardian news item on the ‘Gordon Brown’ assassination plot (see here). Unfortunately the writer’s (or the sub-editor’s, maybe) lack of history or context, and an obsession with Islamist terrorism, leads to this:
He is not the first white person arrested for an alleged terrorism offence.
Obviously they should add ‘connected with the current al-Qaida inspired terrorism’ but the assumption is that al-Qaida inspired terrorism is the only terrorism that ever existed.
Of course, he’s not the first white person arrested for an alleged terrorism offence. In the 70s there were hundreds of white-Irish people arrested and some executed by the security services, and as well as this there were anarchist/leftist terrorists (such as the Angry Brigade). It’s like the IRA never existed or the world started in September 2001.
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