What Joe Cox's Murder Tells Us About Double Standards

LONDON: Jo Cox, a 41-year-old Labour MP was assassinated ahead of 23rd June referendum to decide whether Britain remains in the European Union or leaves. The man charged with murdering her, 52 year old Thomas Mair, repeatedly shot Cox as she was leaving the village library, plunging a knife several times into her body as she lay dying.

As he killed her, Mair shouted variations of the slogans “Britain First”, “Keep Britain independent” and “Britain always comes first”. When produced in court and asked by the Judge to confirm his name, Mair said, “My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain.”

The media coverage surrounding Cox’s death, however, has focused on Mair’s ‘mental illness’ as the context for the brutal politically charged murder. “Suspect in Jo Cox's killing described as quiet, polite and reserved,” said the Guardian in an article that focused on Mair’s mental health. “Jo Cox murder suspect Thomas Mair volunteered at a special school 'several times a week'” notes the headline of an article in the Daily Mail the deconstructs Mair’s social personality. TIME magazine’s “What to Know About Jo Cox's Murder Suspect Thomas Mair” says that the “suspect has been described as a quiet loner with mental health issues.”

What’s missing from the narrative is the word “terror.”

Britain First is an extremist right-wing group. It is a group that defines its political, social and economic view of the world in terms of regressive, narrow and exclusionary identities. Even though the group has denied that Mair had any links to it, other details that have since emerged tell a different story. It is clear that Mair -- influenced by neo Nazi ideologies -- was at the very least inspired by the extremist group.

And Mair isn’t alone. Across social media, right wing white supremacists glorified Cox’s murder.

And whilst all of this is extensively covered, what’s entirely absent from the discourse is the fact that Mair’s attack on Cox was unequivocally an act of terror.

A few weeks ago, in a tragic and brutal incident in a different part of the world, Omar Mateen walked into a gay club in Orlando and killed 49 people. Before his death, Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. No confirmation has been found of any link between Mateen and the terrorist group. Yet, the attack was described the world over as an act of terror.

The question that then arises is: why is an attack inspired by a right wing white supremacist extremist group not qualified as an act of terror, whereas an attack inspired by a right wing Islamist group so unequivocally labelled as one?

The absence of an answer exposes our double standards.

The context of mental illness is relevant in the cases of both Mair and Mateen. But so is the context of terror. Of right wing extremism and the violence it promotes.