Watching the murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis and the political developments that followed, it was impossible not to be reminded of the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry. The British Army killed thirteen civilians on that day in 1972; a fourteenth victim later died of his wounds. We are still living with the consequences of the massacre.
The first parallel is the transparency of the crime, which in both cases was carried out in broad daylight. It wasn’t so easy to record events on a camera at the time of Bloody Sunday, but there were thousands of eyewitnesses in Derry that day, including representatives of the international media.
The second parallel concerns the audacity of the lies pumped out from the highest levels of the state. Trump administration officials pretended to believe that Good’s killer acted in self-defense, fearing for his life, just as British government ministers pretended to believe that the paratroopers had only pulled the trigger after coming under intense fire.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the authorities moved quickly to arrange a legal cover-up. In Minnesota, the FBI seized control of the investigation, with Kristi Noem falsely claiming that local law enforcement had no jurisdiction. In Derry, the government of Edward Heath brought in Lord John Widgery, Britain’s most eminent judge, to apply a thick coat of whitewash and exonerate the killers.
More than half a century later, the shameless mendacity of Widgery’s report is still enough to take one’s breath away. He ignored a mountain of evidence that refuted the army’s version of events. If Trump’s sock puppet Kash Patel is allowed to direct the investigation of Good’s murder, no doubt he will supervise the production of some equally brazen falsehoods, although his officers may not be able to match Widgery’s talent for rhetorical sophistry.
There are also striking similarities of wider political context. In both cases, the authorities were deploying squads of armed men in…
Auteur: Daniel Finn
