Most crimes and almost all premeditated crimes have a motive. Terrorism is no exception.
The fact that ISIS would want to attack a civilian target, filled with young, mostly female fans, one of the softest targets in the world as an obvious expression of the kind of blood-soaked propaganda warfare ISIS seek to wage.
The Duran’s Alexander Mercouris explained what ISIS sought to achieve in doing this.
READ MORE: 5 reasons for thinking ISIS’s leadership ordered Manchester attack
The young singer Ariana Grande, whose fans were targeted and slaughtered by ISIS is no stranger to political controversy.
She famously shouted, “I hate Americans I hate America. ” in a public place before committed a grotesque act of vandalism.
Her widely publicised views against conservative politicians are a matter of public record. She also has spoken in favour of allowing Muslim refugees into the US and opposed Donald Trump’s antithetical stance on this position. She also once said she worried that she would one day grow up to be a serial killer.
It is imperative to determine if in some perverse way, Miss Grande’s politics played a factor in the decision by ISIS to attack her performance.
In spite of a total blackout from the mainstream media at the time, when Paris’s Bataclan concert hall was attacked in 2015, the band whose performance was interrupted by the hail of terrorist gunfire was called ‘The Eagles of Death Metal’.
The band were know for their somewhat eccentric right wing views. They also had performed in Israel not long before the Paris attacks. While on stage in Israel, a member of the band was seen denouncing Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters, a known Palestinian supporter who advised the band not to play in Israel until a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis could be embarked upon.
The terrorist shooting at the Eagles of Death Metal performance in Paris and the recent bombing of an Ariana Grande show are thus far, the only ISIS attacks on pop music performances in a western country.
READ MORE: Roger Waters has lost millions by standing up for Palestine–but he doesn’t care
What is the significance of this?
Both artists made controversial political statements not long before the incidents which targeted their performances. One could say that Grande’s statements indicate that she is of the radical liberal pseudo-anti-American left while the Eagles of Death Metal are on the eccentric right.
It will only be through examining the digital communication and personal belongings of the suspect and his possible accomplices that one might be able to determine whether Grande’s performance was targeted because of her politics.
This article is not for a moment implying that ISIS supports the causers of either Grande or the Eagles of Death Metal members–nor do they support the antithesis. Indeed, radical Salafism at times had a more positive relationship with America than perhaps Miss. Grande did, given her professed hatred of the US.
Likewise, ISIS seeks to target American citizens irrespective of their political views and irrespective of Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s positive relationship with the US. Saudi and Qatar are of course major benefactors and ideological inspirations for ISIS, al-Qaeda and other copycat groups.
Likewise, ISIS are not supporters of Palestine and have played some part in helping distract the Arab world from the plight of the largely secular, anti-ISIS Palestinian population.
However, was it the fact that ISIS wanted to show controversial artists who had made politically charged statements that their views are intolerable just by the nature that they are so freely expressed? This is something that also must be explored.
One thing is certain: the mainstream media would never ask these important questions.
The post Manchester bombing singer: “I hate Americans. I hate America” appeared first on The Duran.