Isn’t it fascinating how basically every religion, race, and sex has terrorists?

Nail Bomber looks at the 1999 London bombings that targeted minority groups in London, including different races and the gay community. It turned out that the man responsible for the bombings was a far right white terrorist.

Being only four years old when these occurrences happened I know nothing about them so watching this documentary was a real eye-opener to me. Now we know throughout history there’s been lots of different types of terrorists and bombers, and to see this being a white man when we’re now so big on Brexit and immigration in England was really interesting, because it shows that it’s not just certain people but anyone could be a terrorist. It could be a neighbour, it could be your friend, could be a family member, it’s not just one group.

I loved looking into the police investigation and how they tracked down this man. It was really interesting seeing the undercover agent join the far right group and how he talks about how open they were about being Nazis and being white supremacists so early into meeting him, because it painted this view of them that they were trying not to have in the media, but clearly was the way they were.

You think of things rising up like the BMP and Ukip and how, even if they are a small minority nowadays, there are still people who think these very far right thoughts that people like Hitler thought too. It’s quite disgusting that in this day and age people can still have such a dark hatred against others when they’ve literally done nothing wrong.

I feel especially now with the rise of social media this means these people have an even bigger chance of meeting others like them. Before you have crazy Dave in the pub who would hammer on about conspiracy theories but no one would believe him, but now you’ve got anti-vaxxers on Twitter creating protests and huge groups because they’re able to mingle within one another in their echo chamber, and they deny anyone who goes against what they think. It’s absolutely shocking that these types of people can be on the rise again because of social media making it so accessible for them.

I think this documentary is a real eye-opener into peoples’ racist and bigoted views and how easily they can be hidden in a society. This man targeted these people because they did not fit his agenda, they did not fit his ideal, it was said in the police tapes that he got angry when he spoke about gay people and had to adamantly say time and time again that he wasn’t gay as if it was something bad. I do not understand this man’s mindset and to go to the point of creating nail bombs that were intended to kill and even injured a child is so shocking.

We can never forget what has happened in our past and we cannot let these acts blur our vision of what people are like. If one person bombs a group of people that does not mean that everyone in their race or society is like them, but at the same time we cannot allow these people who have these mindsets and these views of hatred against others fester in a place that encourages them and allows them to think that doing this sort of act is ok.

What do you think of the bombings?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding