There is always a surge in pride in the wake of a terror attack, a kind of emotional recalibration to neutralise the hatred you just witnessed. We've seen it since the events in Westminster on Wednesday, as we did after the 7/7 bombings. But it seems different now. Unlike in 2005, it feels almost strange to hear people praise London. Over the last few years, London has become the great enemy.
Islamic extremists, it goes without saying, hate it. London represents what they most fear, the idea that people from different cultures can live side-by-side. It represents the idea of mixture, which strikes fear into a puritan's heart. The list of nationalities injured in the attack bears the point out: three French children, two Romanians, four South Koreans, one German, one Pole, one Irish person, a Chinese citizen, one Italian, one American and two Greeks. He drove that car down one London street and those were the people walking along it.
But terrorists are not the capital's only enemies, they are simply its most murderous. It has many others, from the religious to the secular, from the left to the right.
In the wake of the attack, Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins made her own hatred clear. "An entire city of monkeys," she wrote. "The patriots of the rest of England versus the liberals in this city. The war is between London and the rest of the country."
http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2017/03/24/week-in-review-the-attack-on-london
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