Neo-Nazi slaying in the UK UF

The Washington Post has an article by Griff Witte and Karla Adam about a legislator, shot and stabbed in England:

The man detained by police in connection with the killing of a rising star of British politics had long-standing ties to a US-based neo-Nazi organization and, in the past, had ordered a how-to guide for assembling a homemade gun, according to a watchdog group that tracks extremist behavior.
The details emerged as police tried to piece together the motive behind the killing of a British lawmaker, Jo Cox, who was stabbed and shot in an attack that stunned the nation and led to a suspension of the European Union referendum campaign just a week before the vote.
Larger questions over security and threat levels were also underscored. Police said another man had been arrested in March of 2016 for sending abusive messages to Cox, who had been a strong advocate of an inclusive and multicultural Britain, amid a wave of hostility toward immigrants that is helping to fuel the anti-EU campaign.
Cox’ suspected killer was not named by police, but was identified in the British media as 52-year-old Tommy Mair, a local resident whom neighbors described as quiet and devoted to his mother. Family members said that Mair had never expressed strong political views, but that he had an obsessive personality. He was arrested shortly after the attack.
Witnesses told British media that the assailant appeared to have been waiting for Cox outside a library in the town of Birstall, where she had been meeting constituents.
According to documents obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the US-based organization that tracks extremist groups, Mair was a longtime supporter of the National Alliance, a once-prominent white supremacist group. In 1999, Mair bought a manual from the organization that included instructions on how to build a pistol, the center said.
Cox was shot by a weapon that witnesses described as either homemade or antique.
In all, Mair sent $620 to the group’s publishing imprint for titles including Incendiaries, Chemistry of Powder and Explosives, Improvised Munitions Handbook, and Ich Kampfe, published by the World War Two-era Nazi party, the law center said.
The Daily Telegraph also reported that Mair had subscribed to a South African magazine published by the White Rhino Club, a pro-apartheid group.
Officials have not commented on a possible motive for the killing, but British media organizations including the Guardian, the BBC, and Sky News quoted witnesses as saying that the assailant shouted “Britain first!” during and after the attack.
Britain First is the name of a far-right group that stages provocative anti-Muslim demonstrations. After the attack, the organization posted a statement on its website denying involvement and saying it “would never encourage behavior of this sort.”
Nick Lowles, chief executive of the British-based anti-extremist group Hope Not Hate, said Mair had affiliation with far-right groups that stretched back decades, although he was not a prominent player in any of them.
It remains unclear whether the attack had any links to debates over immigration in the lead up to the EU vote next Thursday, Lowles said. But he described the current atmosphere as “increasingly toxic. That leads to increased prejudice. That leads to increased hate. And, at some stage, that leads to violence,” he said. “Whatever the outcome next week, the UK has become a much more intolerant and divided society. It’s going to take a long time to heal.”
Anna Turley, a Labour lawmaker, told the BBC that she and Cox talked often about the “increasing nature of hostility and aggression, particularly towards female MPs, particularly on social media.” Turley added: “We were all reviewing our security.”
But she insisted that “Jo would not would not have wanted us to be hidden and be behind walls.”
The killing was of the sort that has become all too common in the United States, but is virtually unheard of in Britain: without warning, hyper-violent and ultimately, perhaps, inexplicable. Parliament urged lawmakers to review personal security measures, and flags flew at half staff outside 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace.
Witnesses recounted a savage attack in which the assailant targeted Cox with a gun as well as a knife. The attacker continued to stab and kick Cox even after she had fallen to the ground, bleeding.
The killing shook Britain to the core and prompted an outpouring of grief across the political spectrum. Both the pro- and anti-EU camps announced that they were suspending their campaigns until the weekend. Cox, 41, was a supporter of keeping Britain in the 28-nation bloc, and was a champion for humanitarian efforts including greater aid for Syrian refugees.
“We’ve lost a great star,” Prime Minister David Cameron told the BBC. “She had a huge heart. She was a very compassionate, campaigning MP. She was a bright star, no doubt about it; a star for her constituents, a star for Parliament, and a star right across the House, and we have lost a star.”
Some commentators took note of the anti-immigrant, anti-politician sentiments that have been further whipped up during the divisive EU referendum campaign.
On the same day as the shooting, Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party, unveiled a referendum campaign poster showing a massive queue of migrants with the slogan: Breaking Point. We must break free from the E.U. and take control of our borders. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, called it “disgusting”.
“When you shout ‘breaking point’ over and over again, you don’t get to be surprised when someone breaks,” said the Spectator magazine’s Alex Massie. “When you present politics as a matter of life and death, as a question of national survival, don’t be surprised if someone takes you at your word. You didn’t make them do it, no, but you didn’t do much to stop it either.”
Cameron’s predecessor, former prime minister Gordon Brown, described the attack as “a devastating blow to our democracy.” Cox had worked as an adviser to Brown’s wife, Sarah Brown, on women’s and children’s health campaigns. “Sarah and I were privileged to work with Jo and her husband Brendan over many years and in her tireless efforts on behalf of poor and desolate children and mothers,” Brown wrote. “She went to some of the most dangerous places in the world. The last place she should have been in danger was in her home town.”
Gun attacks in Britain are rare, a fact that authorities here attribute to extremely tight gun-control restrictions. Attacks against members of Parliament are also highly unusual and, beyond those at the highest reaches of government, politicians customarily do not have security details.
The last British lawmaker to be killed while in office was Conservative Ian Gow in 1990 from a bomb placed under his car by the Irish Republican Army. The same year, a former Parliament member, Donald Kaberry, was wounded in an IRA bombing and died the next year.
The attack on Cox echoed the 2011 shooting of then-Representative Gabrielle Giffords (a Democrat from Arizona) in Tucson, also while meeting constituents. Giffords was severely wounded but survived. On Thursday, she tweeted: “Absolutely sickened to hear of the assassination of Jo Cox. She was young, courageous, and hardworking. A rising star, mother, and wife.”
Hithem Ben Abdallah, a resident who told reporters he had seen the assault firsthand, described how a good Samaritan initially tried to stop the attacker from stabbing Cox. But the attacker, who was wearing a white baseball cap, then pulled a gun from a bag and scuffled with Cox before shooting her at least twice. “He was fighting with her and wrestling with her and then the gun went off twice and then she fell between two cars and I came and saw her bleeding on the floor,” Abdallah said, according to Britain’s Press Association.
Cox, the mother of two young children, was elected in May 2015. She also was national chair of Labour Women’s Network. On her Twitter page, she described herself as “mum, proud Yorkshire lass, boat dweller, mountain climber and former aid worker.” She previously worked as an adviser to the Britain-based aid group Oxfam.
Nick Grono, head of the Freedom Fund, an anti-slavery group where Cox once worked, said she “lived her ideals.” She and her husband would spend Christmas vacations in the Balkans, working with children who had been traumatized by the conflict there, he said. He also said she enjoyed “hiking everywhere around Scotland.”
In Parliament, Cox had been outspoken about the need to do more to protect civilians in Syria, and had argued in the House of Commons for Britain to accept 3,000 child refugees.
Before Cox’s death was announced Thursday afternoon, her husband posted a photo of her on Twitter standing beside their houseboat in London.
Brendan Cox later released a statement saying his wife would have had no regrets about her life.
“Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day of her life with an energy, and a zest for life that would exhaust most people,” he wrote. “She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now, one that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn’t have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous.”

Rico says that 'quiet and devoted to his mother' is pretty much the description of any murderer these days...