Let’s be honest… Amazon is not to blame for Axel Rudakubana’s crimes
Focusing on Amazon distracts from the important questions Axel Rudakubana’s horrific murders raise: What was his motive, could he have been stopped and what did the government get wrong? Says Matthew Lesh
Axel Rudakubana’s fatal stabbing of three children during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, an act etched in infamy for its harrowing wickedness, led to a wave of conspiracies, accusations of cover-ups and inexcusable rioting.
Rudakubana’s pleading guilty has once again sparked debate about the attacks. Yet, early signs suggest the discussion is not proving entirely enlightening. This week much of the media and the government’s focus has been on digital platforms’ content moderation and Amazon selling a knife to Rudakubana. Several major newspaper frontpages yesterday led with the Amazon revelation.
Amazon’s systems clearly failed to enforce the legal restriction against selling knives to individuals under 18. But it is hardly reassuring to think the government’s strategy to combat violent crime is to depend on retailers not selling knives. A determined child could easily find alternative ways to access such a common item. An adult can access them legally.
Concerns have also arisen over Rudakubana buying ingredients for the lethal toxin ricin. This suggests the government wants Amazon to monitor and flag suspicious purchases. Beyond the unsettling privacy implications and the risk of false positives leading to unwarranted police actions, these purchases were not used in the Southport tragedy.
What is most important in this debate is to get to grips with the motivation of the attacker, learn whether it was preventable to avert future attacks, and to assess the government’s handling.
Rudakubana was reportedly “obsessed with massacre and extreme violence”. He possessed an academic study of an al-Qaida manual and had been referred to Prevent, the counterterrorism programme, for a general interest in violence. This points to systematic failures, with earlier warning signs not properly acted upon. But, complicating matters for those who want to ascribe Islamic terrorist motivations, the boy was raised Catholic. This all makes the case perplexing.
Alteranative theories
An alternative theory has emerged, suggesting that a deep sense of resentment and grievance may have fuelled Rudakubana’s actions. Days before the massacre, his father stopped him from returning to his former school armed with a kitchen knife. Having been bullied in the past, this history could have contributed to his tragic motivations.
Focusing on digital companies is helpful for the government. It distracts from the Conservative opposition’s claims that senior government ministers sought to hide Rudakubana’s potential links to terrorism. The sense that there was some sort of cover-up will only contribute to a further decline in public trust and feed societal tensions.
The focus on Amazon also helps reduce focus on the government’s failure to prevent the attack despite warning signs. It also distracts from the questionable early decision not to release more facts which left a vacuum for conspiracies about the perpetrator’s identity to develop, undoubtedly fueling the riots.
The focus on Amazon helps reduce focus on the government’s failure to prevent the attack despite warning signs
The focus on the digital world in the wake of violence is not entirely new. There were demands for an end to anonymity on social media following the murder of Sir David Amess in 2021. This was despite zero evidence that the attack had anything to do with anonymous social media posts.
In the not-too-distant past, video games were blamed for youth violence. But these claims have been definitively debunked. There’s even some evidence that when kids spend more time indoors in front of screens playing in the virtual world, they tend to spend less time committing antisocial behaviours on the streets.
Getting to the heart of what drove Rudakubana and how to prevent similar attacks and the emergence of riots in future is no simple task. But focusing on Amazon risks being more of a distraction than revealing anything enlightening.
Matthew Lesh is the Country Manager at Freshwater Strategy