Let’s start with a little Shakespeare. In Macbeth, the Bard famously wrote: “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.”

The odious Raoul Moat, the self-styled urban commando who terrorised Rothbury, died a coward’s death.

His true colours were revealed the moment he pulled the trigger to take his own life.

After maiming his former girlfriend and killing her innocent partner, after shooting a policeman in the face for no crime greater than sitting in his own patrol car, and after leading Northumbria Police on a merry dance for a week, Moat didn’t have the guts to face up to what he’d done. He was a spineless, irresponsible bully who, one would have imagined, would have been lamented by few outside his immediate family.

Not so.

A Facebook page created in his memory has so far attracted 17,673 followers. The site describes him as ‘a legend’ and its followers have lionised the murderous thug, transforming him from villain to hero with their comments.

Criminologist David Wilson suggested to Sky News that Moat had tapped into a ‘dispossed, white working-class, masculine mentality’ and become an anti-hero. His words resonate with truth, given the popularity of Moat’s Facebook tribute and the nature of its comments.

But try rationalising Moat’s twisted glory to the family of ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart, her murdered partner, Chris Brown, or the remarkably sanguine Pc David Rathband, who has expressed an absence of malice for his attacker.

And try explaining to the scores of police officers and rank and file citizens whose lives were endangered that, in fact, Moat was just a little misunderstood and his outlaw’s war against The System was just. It’s nonsense.

The popularity of Moat’s Facebook page is as unwelcome as it is revealing about the true nature of our 21st century society. It illustrates the fact that a malicious and disaffected group exists that would rather support an anarchic, gun-toting monster than the people who uphold law and order.

The police force makes mistakes from time to time – don’t we all? – but Moat was no Jean Charles de Menezes; he was not an innocent victim. He may have been mentally ill, he may have led a dog’s life, but his actions against others were inexcusable.

Those who seek to exalt and hero-worship his heinous crimes, or exonerate him from his nihilistic deeds, need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. They should and ask themselves this: is a lawless, barbarous, mutinous society what they really want?

If the answer is yes, the people of Somalia, Iraq and Zimbabwe would willingly swop places with them.

By Andy Richardson