Last Wednesday I blogged the case of the socalled lyrical terrorist, who had her conviction for “storing material likely to be of use to terrorists” quashed; the material in question being some fairly ropey, anarchist cookbook style “terrorism manuals”. It was another in a long line of dodgy anti-terrorism prosecutions, with lots of media attention and lots of government hype, not justified by the endresults. Every so often another supposed terrorism plot is uncovered, a serious threat averted and it always turn out to be either be no-hoper wannabe-jihadists with no links to real terrorists, mentally disturbed fantasists or just innocent people looking a little bit too Muslim for the Metropolitian Police.

If the suspects are white however, it’s another matter. Remember the terrorism case in Burnley two years ago? Probably not, as apart from some mentions in the local paper, few newspapers or news shows deigned to pay attention to it, despite the fact that the people involved had massed a huge arsenal of weapons and such and were talking about the coming racewar. Unlike the heavy-handed prosecution of Muslim terrorism suspects, the government kept quiet about this case, didn’t whip the tabloids in a feeding frenzy and let the courts do their job. Last Friday, there was another such case, as a Goole Nazi sympathiser went on trial for making nail bombs, amongst other offences:

A Nazi sympathiser charged with terrorism offences after nail bombs were found at his East Yorkshire home has told a court that he made the devices when he was “just sat around bored”.

A jury at Leeds Crown Court heard how police found four home-made nail bombs in a holdall under a bed in 31-year-old Martyn Gilleard’s flat in Goole.

Officers also found “potentially lethal” bladed weapons, 34 bullets for a 2.2 calibre firearm and documents about committing terrorism, including how to make a bomb and how to poison someone to death.

Again, little attention has been paid to this trial, a Google news search finding less than twenty news articles on the subject, but you can imagine the hue and cry had this been a Muslim suspect. It’s not that I want the same hysteria for this case, it’s just that it’s so blatantly obvious how the British government atttempts to create a narrative about terrorism, by spotlighting those cases, no matter how weak, that fit the War on Terror and keeping quiet about those that do not. It’s easy enough to get the media to cooperate on this, as journalists, not to mention their editors, are lazy and under constant deadline pressure; few go out looking for stories that don’t fit pre-determined templates.