The real oppression is terrorist attacks that leave people in fear of their safety.
Not oppression: arresting some radicalised extremist for preparing themselves with terrorist training manuals and suchlike.
Not oppression: arresting some radicalised extremist for preparing themselves with terrorist training manuals and suchlike.
What does this have to do with terrorism? It might be a stated excuse for implementing laws like this, but the intent does not equal actual result. Also, I have not been killed by a terrorist, but if a law like this is passed where I live I will have been limited in my freedoms by my government. I am not scared of terrorists as of yet, so the net result is that I am not oppressed by terrorists, but I am oppressed by the government.
News agencies and governments spread the fear of 'terrorist' attacks. Most of the time there are loners who carry out their 'attacks'. Calling them 'terrorists' makes them more scary, while in fact they are most often troubled individuals who choose to label their insanity with 'ISIS' so that the fear they spread is bigger. News agencies, eager to make money selling advertisement, use these mentally ill people by calling them 'terrorists' and sensationalising the events in order to get more viewers.
"Not oppression: arresting some radicalised extremist for preparing themselves with terrorist training manuals and suchlike."
This has nothing to do with what is happening. The article talks about making it illegal to read extremist websites. Intent and effect do not go hand in hand. On top of this stated intent and true intent do not go hand in hand either. Governments cannot be trusted with the authority to decide who gets access to which information, very recent example:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/no-justification-spani...
> Most of the time there are loners who carry out their 'attacks'.
No. Some guy with a knife yeah, but for most of the other cases no
I'm not scared about attacks, but I'm deeply scared how we came to tolerate radical "religions"
First they came for the radicals ...
How about anything that goes against human rights?
Let's face it: Terrorism is really a minor threat to almost all people's safety, yet it's constantly evoked to further restrict people's liberties.
One time in the streets of New York there was some racist shouting things at people of a certain ethnicity, picking them out from the crowd and calling them 'baby rapers'. Several people of different races shouted at him to "shut the fuck up". Those people obviously weren't swayed into thinking that all people of that specific race were indeed 'baby rapers'.
I would rather live in a society where people are allowed to say that the holocaust didn't happen and have them be judged as the idiots they are, than a society where saying things that are deemed as 'extreme' by the government is illegal.
I'm not saying I like it, but just saying "well terrorism isn't a threat" makes as much sense as saying "no one's every robbed our bank, so we can stop locking the door and having a guard posted outside" without giving further context.
People don't just wake up one morning and go, "Ah. Such a beautiful morning. I think I'll start terrorising people today."
Do they?
However, I don't agree with massive loss of liberty like this one being proposed (as well as the snoopers charter, etc), and am wary of the potential for the laws to be misused by malevolent governments.
New laws have to be proportional and have minimal scope for misuse, IMO.
Is it means, to forbid mass media to speak about terrorism? The root cause of terrorism is his direct goals, the fear is the cause. Without information about terrorism the would be no fear, so terrorism would become pointless.
But the truth of the matter is, we are creating the conditions for terrorists, every single day - by delivering our own form of terror: the (Imperial) Coalition forces currently demolishing Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan/Yemen are, indeed, terrorising entire populations in the rush to be the most efficient war-fighting machines on the planet.
If you want to stop terrorism, its quite simple: stop letting your governments get away with murder. The way they do it, is couch everything in secrecy, while we the citizens decide that ignorance of the war our societies are waging is worth the luxury and decadence those wars provide.
POP QUIZ: do you know how many people the state killed, in your name, today? Yesterday? Last week? Until you start paying attention to this statistic, citizen, you cannot cry when the terror comes home to roost.
I mean, World War II happened, because (some) Germans wanted to conquer more land to have room for the Aryan race to grow. Not to mention wanted to kill anyone who didn't fit their ideal. (Or think of, e.g., the inquisition, if you want a non-Godwin's-law breaking example).
I'm not saying it's necessarily happening in this case, but yeah, it's possible for people to just really, genuinely believe that other people who aren't the same race as you, or who don't believe the same things as you do, should be killed.
Hell, 60 years ago much of the US population thought it made sense that people who had darker skin than they did should be segregated.
We can certainly look for root causes, but you really, truly have to accept that some root causes might be religious in nature, not rational, not what most people growing up in a Western society might consider normal. It's not always a case of "well there must be valid reasons for their actions", unless you choose to completely ignore history.