Why US diplomats tweet from the hip in response to Henry Nowak murder

In the state department of past administrations, how to respond to an incendiary event such as the murder of the British student Henry Nowak would have required deliberations, memos and meetings. Given how it has roiled the UK and inflamed tensions over migration and race, the cautious diplomats at Foggy Bottom likely would have said nothing at all. Now they tweet from the hip. “Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline ,” the department’s official account posted on Thursday. “They must be rejected across the West.” This is, after all, the state department that hosted the far-right provocateur Tommy Robinson for a tour earlier this year, has crowdsourced targets for deportation on X, and portrayed the UK – as well as much of Europe – as an ideological prison that celebrates censorship. And it is one that has returned time and again to a thesis shared by much of Europe’s right: that mass migration has threatened the cohesion of western society and now must be reversed. Some US diplomats believe the UK had this coming. Senior Labour figures including the deputy prime minister, David Lammy, voiced their support for George Floyd , a Black man killed by a White police officer in Minnesota in 2020. Now, they argue, US officials are simply doing the same and speaking their conscience, this time to defend a White man against what they say is the scourge of immigration and double standards. …