And so it could. Because of the likes of him.
By the likes of him I mean the cabal of self-serving spivs promoting the dictatorial multi-culti ethos of ‘share, care and be aware’.
Once we’ve committed ourselves to obeying the diktats, we surrender the intellectual tools that alone would enable us to realise that yet another act of Islamic terrorism, this time Down Under, wasn’t a ‘lone wolf’ attack in any sense other than the purely superficial one.
The murderer did indeed act by himself, but he didn’t inspire himself. The inspiration came from his hodgepodge cult that has been waging war on the West for the last 1,400 years.
By the same token, an SAS man may be acting alone as he blows up a radar behind enemy lines. But acting alone doesn’t make him a lone wolf.
Quite apart from the specific orders he may have received from his superiors, the SAS soldier acts in accordance with the ethos he accepts as a given. This includes love of his country, loyalty to his comrades, his concept of honour, sense of righteousness and whatnot.
His alone is the hand that activates the detonator at a deadly risk to himself. But this physical hand is being moved by an interlacing complexity of metaphysical factors, without which he wouldn’t have joined the SAS in the first place.
Dismissing each act of Muslim beastliness as the private initiative of a deranged maniac, or a small group thereof, is an intellectual and, which is worse, moral copout.
In 2013 such supposedly individual terrorist acts killed 17,891 and wounded 32,577. These aren’t victims of random street violence. They are war casualties.
Yet this isn’t any old war. It’s the Phoney War revisited and made ten times worse.
Then, in 1939, after declaring war on Germany, Britain and France sat on their hands without firing a shot. But at least they did declare war.
Our spivs not only haven’t done that, but they refuse both to acknowledge that war is under way and to identify the enemy. It’s as if every Nazi soldier storming into Poland had been assumed to be acting of his own accord, with no blame to be attached to his regime.
The usual argument that very few Muslims are terrorists is another copout, another lie designed to avoid the truth. The truth is that all global calamities have always been perpetrated by a small cadre of radicalised and manipulative elite.
Not all German soldiers torching Warsaw were committed Nazis, and neither were all Soviet soldiers raping half of Europe committed communists.
Relatively few Americans saw themselves as anything other than loyal subjects of George III in 1776, not many Frenchmen were fire-eating revolutionaries in 1789, and not all Indians wanted to be independent of Britain in 1947.
In each case the tone was set by the variously wicked few, who then did to the masses what a shepherd does to his flock at the end of the day. Properly manipulated, the masses are indeed like sheep – but they are always led by wolves, running individually or in packs.
Dave, Ed, Nick and even, one suspects, Nigel are never going to talk about the dreadful dilemma facing the West in such terms.
They, along with all our politicians, face their own dilemma.
They’ve first fostered the Golem of modern ethos, then lost control over it. Now they have a stark choice: either they acknowledge that their creature is a monster devouring our civilisation or they pretend he is a cuddly puppy.
The first option will put paid to their political careers; the second will enable them to hang on indefinitely, or rather until the monster has finished his repast.
Hence the talk of lone wolves, and hence also the pathetically inadequate palliatives broached by Dave as preventive measures.
Now what if Sydney does come to London, but in the shape of single fanatic wielding not a pistol but a nuclear device? What if the subsequent casualty list includes not two hostages but 100,000 Londoners?
Five gets you ten this lot will still be talking about Islam being a religion of peace, and how unfortunate it is that not all its exponents are peaceful chaps desperately wishing to share, care and be aware.
It’s they who are the real wolves. The question is, what does it make us?
My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.html or, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752