In Germany, a nation famed for its autobahns and efficient bureaucracy, a diseased mind has once again proven that no amount of Ordnung can police the chaos of the human soul. A mother-child centre, a sanctuary for nappies and lullabies, became a slaughterhouse. The perpetrator, a failed ideology wrapped in human flesh, has left a trail of tiny coffins and shattered lullabies.
Now, as the German establishment wrings its hands in perfunctory horror, the inevitable calls for a 'robust British counter-terrorism model' ring through the halls of power. But what is this vaunted model, this Bulldog of security? It is a patchwork of acronyms and surveillance, a state of permanent suspicion where every citizen is a potential threat and every everyday act could be flagged for 'Prevent.' Oh, the precious, precious Prevent strategy. Does it prevent? Or does it merely process the horror into tidy boxes, making the unspeakable speakable in the language of government reports?
Let us examine this 'robust model' more closely. It is built on the premise that we can spot the signs, that there is a profile we can scan for in the crowds of the alienated. But the man who slaughtered those mothers and children had no profile. He was a ghost among the living, a grey man in a grey world until the moment he painted it red. And now we are told that what Germany needs is more of this futile categorising, more 'channeling,' more watchlists.
But here is the bitter truth that the politicos dare not swallow: terrorism is not a problem to be solved. It is a condition of the age, a fungal growth in the damp cellar of modernity. You cannot defeat an idea with a database. You cannot 'prevent' a pathology that is baked into the very fabric of a society that worships speed, power, and the ultimate refusal of meaning.
And what of the British model? It is, of course, a model built on the ashes of its own failures. From the 7/7 bombings to the Manchester Arena, we have seen it all. The response has been the same: a tightening of the screws, a narrowing of the gaze. And still the horror comes, again and again, a carousel of blood.
One cannot help but wonder if the real need is not for more security but for a radical reimagining of what we are securing. A nation that drives its young men to the edges of despair, that offers them only the hollow gods of consumerism and celebrity, should not be surprised when they build their own idols of destruction.
But that is not the narrative we are allowed. We must pretend that there is a technocratic fix, a set of procedures that can insulate us from the abyss. So Germany will be offered the British model, and it will say 'danke schön,' and it will implement yet another layer of surveillance. And the next time, the attack will be different, and the model will be adjusted, and the cycle will continue.
Meanwhile, the real story goes untold. The story of a civilisation unravelling because it has lost the thread of meaning. The story of men who choose to die not because they are poor or uneducated but because they have been told, in a thousand subtle ways, that their lives are worthless. And we, the keepers of the British model, shall nod sagely and export our ever-increasing apparatus of control, a kingdom of fear with a paper crown.
Let us not pretend. There is no robust model that can save us. There is only the slow, grinding work of building a society worth living in. And that, I suspect, is too complex a task for the politicians and their ready-made solutions. So they will reach for the 'robust British counter-terrorism model.' And they will hold it up like a crucifix before the vampire of reality. But the vampire is not fooled. It feeds on the very system that pretends to fight it.
And in the silence that follows, one can almost hear the ghosts of those children whispering: 'There is no model for this. There is only a choice. A choice to be human.' But we are not listening. We are too busy being robust.
