The Politics of Safety

I know a lot has been written about the many problems associated with Facebook’s ‘declare yourself safe’ feature, and I don’t really feel I can say anything new on that topic. But with the last attack in London it has come to the fore again, and I feel like some kind of response is worth recording. There is something so particular about having alerts occur in the news feed as people I know in London declare themselves safe, alongside others inquiring after my safety. I know attacks like this are horrific. They are particularly horrific if attention is given to the actual thought processes killers must go through using such proximate methods of murder. No simple explosion, requiring only the nerve to detonate, or the misfortune to have a fail-safe take care of a change of heart. This is coupled with the disturbingly quotidian nature of the tools involved. What these two things mean is that it is absolutely impossible to guard against such attacks. People already drive cars into pedestrians, and some people stab others with knives. The laws we have in place in regards to buying and carrying knives, and driving and renting cars are sufficient. Police presence to deal with the possibility of street violence is also, bar funding and recruitment issues, sufficient – in that such events cannot be prevented by increased numbers. You cannot protect yourself against the possibility that someone is psychotic enough to mow you down with a vehicle, or attack you in the street with a knife. Well, perhaps with the latter some jujitsu training might help, but probably not much. I know that, for myself, confronted with a psychotic person willing to harm me, I tend to frieze up, not go all Bruce Lee. I like to flatter myself imagining that if it’s directed at someone else, I would play the hero, but I haven’t had that tested.

Political leaders, however, have to respond. It is refreshing that we currently have a few sufficiently sane to express sorrow for the loss, horror at the actions, and regret that we live in, have helped to create and are continuing to create a world in which such psychotic actions are conducted all the time on an unimaginable scale and at a distance that allows the perpetrators and their commanding fanatics to imagine themselves untouched. Actually that is unfair – plenty of those forced or by the dictates of chance to find themselves controlling the drones or flying the planes are seriously troubled by what they do. The problem lies with the organ grinders. Among those of this fanatical stripe are politicians who respond to atrocities like those committed in London on Saturday (and not those committed elsewhere) by claiming events like this happen because we are insufficiently vigilant, a soft-touch, too ‘tolerant’ of extremism. As if it is tolerance that breeds extremism.  Of course we could claim there have been levels of a soft-touch here, as our fanatics nursed extremists at home and abroad in the hope that they would spread chaos only where they want to see it, in the cities of Libya, Syria or Iraq. But to do so is to break the line, the solidarity of we who are the victims of their aggression.

And here is the key problem with being declared safe on Facebook. It is complicit in the game of these fanatics. Complicit in singling out these events as something that demands action, if as ridiculous an action as status-flagging. People I barely know have (auto) inquired about my safety. If, as would have been roughly as likely, I had been killed while cycling across London, would they do the same? Would anyone beyond my very close friends and family ever know? Why then, would the death at the hands of a differently motivated psycho be of so much interest to so many disconnected people? Now of course this will read as callous and cold-hearted. But London is a big city and people are dying in it all the time. To hazard two of the main killers, I would guess that air pollution is very high on the list, domestic violence, and perhaps poverty, and sleeping rough are right up there.  Without the support of my family I would have ended up homeless at various points. Would Facebook have enabled me to declare myself ‘unsafe’? Would there be a reaction?

This function begins to take on a different meaning in these circumstances. One that is even worse than that implied by the blatant Western-centrism of the function’s initial appearance; that we care about certain lives so much more than others. This is about the necessary corollary of that declaration of certain life as sacred. It is a political mobilization. I am safe, and this is a safety brought at the price of the safety of many others. It is both relief, I am not among the wounded, and battle cry – I am safe, we are safe, we will remain safe, you will not shake us. But we cannot and should not be safe. We are not safe. Not safe from the myriad deaths that await any of us as we rise from our beds, and not safe from the consequences of our support, tacit or otherwise, for the fanatics who wish to wage war. There is a hideous dualism in the declaration of safety, combined with the same culture’s demand that its rulers be willing to launch a nuclear holocaust.

Recognizing the risks posed to all of us, to the ever present absence of safety, could be an important part of resisting the mobilization of our bodies by an elite that day by day are revealing colours of a deeply sickening hue. The world from which they profit is one deeply riddled with risk, one in which wealth provides the clearest form of safety. In these terms, London’s population of six going on seven million contains a lot of people who are very far from safety. These are the things that matter. These are the things we have a hope of controlling. These are the risks that we might see reduced with the right political choices. Prising the fingers of fanatics from the reins (and triggers) of power will also do the same thing. Playing the politics of safety in any form plays into their hands, and we shouldn’t have any part in it.