The Oxford Street ‘terror attack’ shows the need to tackle hysteria

It was Friday 24th November, the day of the supposed Oxford Street ‘terror attack’. I was home for the weekend, shopping with my mum on Oxford Street, which was packed with people out for Black Friday. We had stopped for a cup of tea, then got up to catch the tube home from Oxford Circus at 5pm after what had been a lovely afternoon. All of a sudden, a crowd started gathering at the exit and confusion filled the air. All we could establish was that there was apparently an ‘incident’ outside, obviously implying terrorism. People continued to leave and, as Londoners, we just assumed that the threat of terror is just part of things.

A crowd of screaming people burst through the doors. What happened next was a blur to me but I was suddenly engulfed. There were shouts of “Duck!” and “Get down!” and everyone threw themselves on the ground. We felt sure we were in immediate danger. My mum and I hugged as she prayed and I repeated again and again, “We’re going to die”.

The mad scramble made us feel like animals fighting for survival

I could still see people running outside. I had never experienced fight or flight mode like this, I felt so raw, stripped so bare. My mum and I both agreed afterwards that the mad scramble made us feel like animals fighting for survival, as extreme as that may sound. A shop assistant, crawling, found us and told us all to quickly get to the back of the shop, where a mass of people were gathered, panic stricken. There was no phone signal and we couldn’t access news websites for information. We were totally in the dark and rumours were circulating.

Eventually, after maybe forty minutes, we were told we could leave if we wanted. My mum and I finally plucked up the courage to leave; every sound or sharp movement made me jump. As we got further towards Green Park though, people seemed to be acting normally. People were actually standing outside pubs drinking and chatting. Didn’t they know? We had just thought that we would die. We regained phone signal, responded to messages from worried friends and family and looked at the BBC News app to see what was happening, only to find out that there had been no terrorist threat whatsoever. And yet trapped in that shop, the fear we all felt could not have been any more real.

Was that the day that terrorism finally won? Surely this is what they want us to feel, scared and on our guard at all times

I had based my reactions entirely on others around me. The crowd panicked, so I panicked. It was truly a domino effect and with phone service down, we had no information of my own to judge from and the rumours were misleading. I realised the power of fear and hysteria like that when I was still shaky despite knowing the police had found nothing. Given what I saw and felt, I still can’t get my head around the fact that those people were running from nothing (what was later established as a ‘minor altercation’). Was that the day that terrorism finally won? Surely this is what they want us to feel, scared and on our guard at all times. I don’t think feeling that way is necessary or justified, but at the time, they succeeded in taking over my mind. The Oxford Street ‘terror attack’ that wasn’t made me feel unsafe in my own home; in a way I felt defeated.

If this is where we’re headed, a paralysed society, its a scary thought. That so many people can collectively fabricate such a threat and genuinely believe in the possibility of death, working themselves into such a frenzy that they actually put themselves at a greater risk, is shocking. Are we just stupid? I don’t think those of us who were there can really be blamed for feeling that way given the atmosphere, but the trigger needs to be looked into to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Training and preparation can of course help, but we must get to the root of where our beliefs are stemming from. Only by addressing this can we manage our reactions to events like this and stay safe. I’d argue that its the language and images we are fed by news channels and the media that are really influencing the way that we think. That so much of what should just be seen as simply a crime is today being labelled as ‘Islamic terrorism’ cannot be good for our psyches. Terror today is painted as the biggest safety issue the Western world has ever faced.

People have been taught to mistrust and dehumanise a whole group of people, to treat them as our enemy

But if you look at the facts, the threat has been blown out of proportion. People have been taught to mistrust and dehumanise a whole group of people, to treat them as our enemy. Education and more positive images in the media are necessary to prevent frankly absurd events like this one from occurring again. The Oxford Street ‘terror attack’ has laid bare the damage that media fear-mongering is doing. It is both offensive and as we have now seen, actually very dangerous.