What’s the price of the culture which silences people by calling them “Karens” and “Racists” when they notice something is wrong? A lot of dead children.

A security guard had a “bad feeling” about suicide bomber Salman Abedi but did not approach him for fear of being branded a racist, an inquiry has heard.

Kyle Lawler, who was 18 at the time of the Manchester Arena attack, was standing 10 or 15ft away from Abedi.

He later told police he was conflicted because he thought something was wrong but could not put his finger on it.

About five minutes later, at 22:31 BST on 22 May 2017, Abedi detonated a bomb packed with 3,000 nuts and bolts.

In his statement prepared for the inquiry, Mr Lawler said: “I just had a bad feeling about him but did not have anything to justify that.”

The witness added that Abedi was “fidgety and sweating”….

“It’s very difficult to define a terrorist. For all I knew he might well be an innocent Asian male.

“I did not want people to think I am stereotyping him because of his race.

“I was scared of being wrong and being branded a racist if I got it wrong and would have got into trouble. It made me hesitant.

“I wanted to get it right and not mess it up by over-reacting or judging someone by their race.”

Ten children died. Dozens more were wounded.

In total, over 20 people were killed and over a hundred more were hospitalized.

All of this happened because the British government and the media, like our own, had spent so much time treating people like criminals for seeing something suspicious.  When you give people a choice between saving lives and being called bigots, or keeping their heads down, often that’s what they’ll do, from cops to guards.

And of course the guard tried to cover it up with a dubious story, which is the only reason why we’re hearing about this.

Mr Lawler agreed that on five separate occasions after the bombing, he made statements, verbally or in writing, where he “deliberately shortened” the time between him leaving the City Room to the bomb going off, “so no one would say, why didn’t you do something?” the inquiry was told.

But we know the answer why.

I don’t know to what extent we can say it’s his fault. He’s the product of a broken and corrupt system who was following orders. And those orders, cultural and political, told him not to act even when all his instincts were telling him that something was very wrong.

That’s the gift of fear. When we ignore it, bad things can happen. Very bad things.

There is a reason that we have so much unconscious wiring. It’s there to warn us of things that our rational mind can’t justify. Sometimes it’s wrong, and sometimes it’s disturbingly right. 

This story, in a nutshell, is the reason why Israeli security is so effective. Lawler’s Israeli counterpart would have been trained to look for exactly those things, to follow his instincts, and to sync with his supervisors and follow a plan of action. 

This atrocity didn’t have to happen. It happened because western countries refuse to deal with the reality of Islam. And instead form circular firing squads.