This blogpost started as a comment underneath It Never HappesIn Your City, written by Envy Fisher (Lost in Translation), but kept growing until it was too long to post as a comment. It Never Happens In Your City refers to the shooting/attack in a tram in Utrecht on the 18th of March 2019. Envy describes how a mundane day is turned upside down when the 'unthinkable' happens in her city: a (terrorist?) attack. She chronicles the way the news takes hold of her, how it changes the way she experiences her surroundings and how easily mundanity is hijacked. So please check out her narration and experience of the event.

In this comment-turned-blogpost I will not really go into my experience of that day, instead I try to scratch the surface of the more problematic reasoning behind these kinds of attacks and the dire need to realise that these aren't just acts of "brainwashed madman", but symptoms of a bigger problem that needs to be acknowledged before we can act against it (or even prevent it). I generally try to avoid engaging with these kinds of topics because the uneasiness and friction that comes with these big news events, especially as a non-related party who is hurt but not wounded, is a difficult line to walk. Especially if you don’t want to contribute to the political one-liners that can do more harm than good. However I do feel the need to write down some of my thoughts on this event and others like it because our grief should empower our actions as a way to honour those who have been harmed.

The tragedy of the disrupted everyday

In 2016 I wrote about how tragedies take a lot of energy, which we (I) prefer to deflect by focussing on the little things in life; creating small insignificant self-directed tragedies that are only dubbed as such because it’s easier to ‘deal with them’ then it is to face the monster in the closet. The tragedy behind the Tragedy, as I wrote in 2014, is that they take place in the realm of the everyday; there where tragedies such as ‘your inability to match your black socks back together‘ or ‘missing your train because you overslept’ coincides with earth quakes, railroad accidents and mass shootings. The tragedy of these stories is in the innocence of the everyday that gets disrupted. The young girl on her way to work. The busy father juggling his mug of coffee with the morning paper. The schoolboy sleepily staring out of the window, slightly bopping his head to the music in his headphones.


Tragedies highlight the vulnerability of the mundane and how easily it can be hijacked. This is the scary part. It can happen to you. It can happen to me. But the anxiety that these Tragedies releases through its familiarity is often outweighed against a disassociation: ‘this will never happen in my city’ or ‘this is the work of one brainwashed madman’. Until it does happen in your city and until you realise the one-of-a-kind “madman” is a symptom and not the disease. Although the hijack is acted out by one “madman”, the disease is what created him. By leaving out the disease there will always be another “brainwashed madman”. There will always be an idolisation of violent actions as the answer to life’s problems (whether these are blamed on personal woe, ideological narratives of rights and wrongs or an accumulation of twisted turns not taken).

A tragically twisted mundane morning

For those who don't know: I live about a thirty-minute train ride away from Utrecht, I'm studying there and I'm currently also doing my internship there. That morning, on the 18th of March, public transport personnel (as well as the police) were on strike. Even though they resumed their work that same morning, there were a lot of delays and other side-effect problems that hindered commuters. The strike had turned my usual thirty-minute train ride into an hour+ travel, but I did finally manage to get into the office. As said, I’m currently doing my internship and that day there were two new interns to join our team (although only one could make it due to the strikes). After the usual small talk we went to work with our daily tasks. In my case: curating content for the website and social media.

The office was washed over in silence, except for the clicking of our keyboards, when we suddenly heard the thudding sound of helicopter wings getting louder and louder. This isn’t that peculiar as there’s a hospital nearby and people get hurt more often than you realise (until you live/study/work nearby a hospital). But the thudding wouldn’t stop and we realised multiple helicopters made their way through the air. While my colleague and I looked in awe through the window, the new intern quickly grabbed her phone. “There’s been a shooting”, she said hastily while scrolling further to find more articles, trying to puzzle together the early reportings about this unfortunate event that happened just 8 minutes away from us.

The neutralisation of extremism through the “madman”

Whenever big news events happen that are acted out by a “brainwashed madman”, the media tends to focus on biographical facts as a way to explain their act; as a way to point out the one-of-a-kind element behind it. This language is adopted by others and used to come to terms with the horrible deed. The “madman” is made to be ‘just another’ unfortunate lonesome loon and is mistaken for the disease and not the symptom (the act and its implications is contained in the psyche of one twisted person). The “madman” is used as a way to confirm the idea of how extremism can be contained through eliminating one “brainwashed madman” (which is often expanded to a particular population through the “madman’s” biographical facts). However if you want to fight against the disease you can’t get caught up in this reasoning of the “madman” being the disease and the only actor or singular symbol of extremism standing on the stage (because what is going on backstage? Who has turned on the spotlight?).

This reasoning actually further fuels polarisation and extremist thought. Especially as it gets presented as ‘natural’ and ‘neutral’, the only reaction possible: fighting violence with violence. This creates a chain re/action with no beginning and with no end, just more tragedies. And while the “madman” and the dialogue it triggers is standing in the spotlight, we forget to look passed the political one-liners packaged as truths and see the other people standing on the stage (and, once again, what is going on backstage? Who has turned on the spotlight?). Yes, there is a rise in extreme acts played out by “brainwashed madman” who ‘acted on their own’. However the play they act out, the underlying ideology of the hijack, even when it is labelled as an act of revenge, takes place on a bigger stage. With more actors, a backdrop, lightening, choreography and an audience. We also need to recognise ‘our’ roles in their stage production and not just lean back in our chairs, booing or cheering them on, while whispering to the chair next to us ‘this is the work of one brainwashed madman’ or ‘this will never happen in my city’.