Forgive me for returning to cover old ground yet again, but once again my cup runneth over with anger following the decision of part of the press to start referring to the new public face of ISIS with an “amusing” nickname. Goodbye “Jihadi John”, the psycho killer Mohammed Emwazi killed in a drone strike, and hello “Jihadi Sid”, AKA Siddartha Dhar.
The Express says that Dhar has been nicknamed Jihadi Sid, just as Emwazi was nicknamed Jihadi John, but nicknamed by whom? Not by the family and friends of those murdered by ISIS and not, so far as I can gather, by ordinary people in the real world. Like most of you, I discuss these matters with other people and to date I have never once heard someone refer to them by comedy nicknames. This is because ordinary people live in a real world a million miles away from the third rate journalists in today’s media.
To be honest, I have never been all the enamoured with nicknames attributed to all manner of bad people. Peter Sutcliffe morphed into the Yorkshire Ripper as a direct result of media activity, Donald Neilson, the armed robber and murderer, became the Black Panther and Harold Shipman became Dr Death. Again, not because the bereaved came up with the names, it was the media, mainly the written press.
The Sun, Express and Mail refer to “Jihadi Sid” in the terms of being a benefit scrounger, in a fairly blatant attack on the benefits system in general. It seems incredible to me, but perhaps it shouldn’t. The new public face of the most awful terrorist group in the land is attacked not for the beheadings, shootings and throwing gay people from roofs, but because he has allegedly been claiming benefits. All of them point out, without giving any detailed breakdown of course, just how much he was getting in “handouts’, a term the gutter press use to describe any benefits, even those to the seriously disabled and terminally ill, one presumes.
Jihadi John, we are told, was so nicknamed by hostages as being one of four “Beatle” terrorists. I cannot see a single reason why the press should carry on with it. John Lennon generally wrote songs of peace and love which the world loved. Why suggest, even in the most general terms, that Emwazi and Lennon were one of the same?
“Sid” is short for Siddartha and some journalists must see Sid as being a bit of a laugh too. “If you see Jihadi Sid, tell him” is part of the headline I am expecting any day now.
Dhar is not some kind of local hero, someone to whom we should refer in such light-hearted terms. These people delight in their notoriety and I’ll bet Emwazi and Dhar found their nicknames hilarious. Don’t give them the satisfaction of hanging nicknames around their necks. They are sick beyond words and we should regard them as such.
