As you may recall, during the London Bridge attacks a while back, three terrorists ran into a restaurant with knives and started stabbing at random. Our news (on this side of the pond) tends not to mention that they met resistance in the form of a 47-year-old soccer fan named Roy Larner. Mr. Larner had had five beers, so when the men came in waving knives and yelling about Allah, his first thought was (as he puts it) "all right, somebody needs to take the piss out of these bastards." So he stood up, screamed "**** you, I'm Millwall"--the name of his favored soccer team--and went at the three of them barehanded. This kept them occupied for some time, and earned Mr. Larner eight separate knife wounds. Eventually the terrorists grew frustrated and left the restaurant, and Larner followed them out, bleeding profusely. He probably would have continued punching jihadis until they killed him if the police hadn't shot all three as soon as they got out the door. Only then did Larner notice he was in really bad shape. He was rushed to the hospital, and (remarkably) survived.
This was not exactly international jihad's proudest moment, getting whooped by an unarmed, drunk, middle-aged man when they had him three to one. Larner has earned the nickname "the Lion of London Bridge," and there were calls for him to receive the George Cross, although judging by interviews with friends and family he did what he did mostly because he was drunk and temperamentally incapable of backing down from a fight. He still undoubtedly saved lives by distracting the terrorists for so long.
But then: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...idge-attackers
Turns out the Lion is a virulently racist right-winger who screamed at protesters, identified with extremists and spit on a black photographer a few weeks before the attack. So, does he still deserve the medal? It might depend on whether you think of the medal purely in terms of the isolated act it recognizes, or as a recognition of the individual as a representative of his country at its best. Maybe he's heroic in the same way Winston Churchill was: sure, he had awful beliefs, but he still did what was needed, when it was needed. Is it okay for modern heroes to be *******s?
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