In Defence of Peter Hitchens

Peter Hitchens needs no defence, least of all from me. But, given some recent comments and replies on the UNN Telegram site I thought it might be appropriate to consider his recent comments regarding the case of Axel Rudakubana. Specifically, Mr Hitchens questions whether it is correct to refer to Rudakubana as a terrorist and whether the use of cannabis had any influence on his behaviour.

I declare considerable respect for Peter Hitchens, and it would be very hard to wedge a cigarette paper between his views and mine on most issues. However, we would disagree on the issue of the death penalty and addiction, to which I will return below.

The main issue that has led to considerable opprobrium (something to which the man himself seems utterly inured) is his ridiculing the notion that Axel Rudakubana was a terrorist. I happen to agree with Mr Hitchens. His claims led to accusations that he was ‘shilling’ for the state which are, frankly, ridiculous.

Peter Hitchens must be the least ‘shillable’, compliant or clubbable of current mainstream and legacy media journalists. He was first off the blocks – preceding even the lockdown sceptics movement – regarding Covid-19 restrictions. He has since been relentless in this and has regularly thanked the Sunday Mail editors and publishers for allowing him, more or less, free reign on that issue where other newspapers silenced dissenting journalists.

The Daily Telegraph was especially odious in this regard, simply pushing the Covid narrative for all it was worth. They claim to have seen the light, now that it is safe to do so. But they and their bunch of cowardly journalists and columnists have a great deal of catching up to do with Mr Hitchens.

Probably, the Sunday Mail placed some restrictions on Mr Hitchens’s reporting. For example, vaccine mandates and the nature of the vaccines were studiously avoided. But witness the fortunes of anyone – and I have personal experience to draw on – who questioned either the efficacy or the side-effects of the Covid vaccines. It was undoubtedly better to hear what Peter Hitchens had to say than to have him silenced.

It may have escaped most people subscribing to and commenting on the UNN Telegram site that Mr Hitchens has another ‘first’ to his credit among mainstream and legacy media journalists. He has expressed severe reservations regarding the safety of the outcome of the trial of children’s nurse, Lucy Letby. This has made him less popular in many circles than Jack the Ripper. Undaunted, he continues stridently to publish his views.

On the issue of the nature of Axel Rudakubana’s mayhem of murder and maiming, the question of whether he was a terrorist is, surely, worth raising. Several things point to the probability that he was not. He was not a Muslim terrorist, although probably inspired by Islamic terrorist literature. He appears, almost certainly, to have acted alone where most terrorists do not and, crucially, he pleaded guilty. Terrorists never plead guilty; that was ‘terrorism 101’ in the IRA manual and a pattern that is repeated where there has been enough left of a Muslim terrorist (the ones who don’t blow themselves up) to stand trial.

Another strand to the argument that Rudakubana was not a terrorist is that he was clearly and utterly barkingly insane. He was, irrationally, full of hatred for white people and, for reasons not entirely clear except their inability to offer much resistance, young white girls. But who knows what goes on inside the head of a maniac? We know little about what goes on inside the heads of those considered sane.

The issue of his sanity raises the matter of whether Rudakubana was a cannabis user. We don’t know but we do know that, despite the psychiatrist involved following his arrest declaring him sane, he had previous multiple psychological referrals. Peter Hitchens asks the question as he probably knows more than most about the correlation (he is assiduous in never claiming causation) between cannabis and violent crime. He studies it systematically.

Comments on the UNN Telegram site to the effect that smoking cannabis does not mean that you will go out and kill someone are both correct and stupid. They are correct for reasons that hardly need to be explained. They are stupid because that is not the point being made by Mr Hitchens.

Cannabis, certainly in the strengths available now in the form of skunk, is a dangerous drug with mind altering capabilities leading to permanent damage. Reluctantly, I refer to my own family. I have a cannabis addicted son whose life, and the lives of those around him, has been ruined as a result. For the record, I have seven other children with which to compare him and his fortunes in life.

Avoiding the conclusion that Axel Rudakubana was as mad as box of Islamic fundamentalists perhaps allowed the court to impose a maximum criminal sentence without any mitigation on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Had he been found to be insane then he really could have been locked up for good in Broadmoor. As it is, he may spend his whole life in prison. But in 52 years nobody who arrested him, assessed him and sentenced him will be alive. A future parole panel may consider his case leniently.

On the issue of addiction, a concept in which Mr Hitchens does not believe, I part company. However, as I have never heard anyone holding anything but an unreasonable discussion with him on this – one where he has been given time and the courtesy to explain himself – I do not know why he believes this or how he can explain how drugs and alcohol take such a devastating toll of lives. Perhaps one day I will be lucky enough to hear his views in full.

Naturally, the death penalty and the lack thereof in the UK has been raised many times in the wake of the Rudakubana sentence. Mr Hitchens is a declared supporter of the death penalty and backs that view with hard figures related to the clear correlation between the existence of the death penalty and the number of murders.

It is notable, and typical, that he has not raised this in relation to Axel Rudakubana. As a Roman Catholic, despite the evidence in favour of the death penalty and the fact that I would care little if Rudakubana were to face it, I am unable to support it. The fact is that Rudakubana will never face the death penalty and nobody (abortion and assisted dying excepted) in the UK is ever likely to do so again because of judicial procedures.

Whether he was a terrorist, terrorist adjacent or merely inspired by terrorists; whether he was insane, exacerbated or not by the use of cannabis, is mainly academic in light of Rudakubana’s actions. On the other hand, accuracy (aka ‘truth’) remains important, and nobody should be criticised for raising concerns about any established narrative.

It may transpire that Axel Rudakubana was a secret convert to Islam, that he had direct links to Al Qaeda and that he had accomplices. If that is the case, then I am wrong and so is Peter Hitchens. As he has done in print before, he will undoubtedly admit he was wrong.

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.

This piece was first published in Unity News Network, and is reproduced by kind permission.

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(Photograph: Nigel Luckhurst, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

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