The T Word – Terrorism Tripe Talk

By AM Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Share Tweet Share Share Email

It has been reported that the Minister for Justice and Equality Frances Fitzgerald is to create new laws ostensibly to squeeze physical force republicans and limit their room for manoeuvre. According to the Irish Independent’s Tom Brady who in the spirit of Section 31 reported but failed to denounce it:

The proposed new offences are public provocation to commit a terrorist offence, recruitment for terrorism and training for terrorism.
The provocation offence will be committed by anybody, who distributes or communicates a message to the public, with the intention of encouraging, directly or indirectly, a terrorist activity.
The second measure focuses on recruiting, or attempting to recruit, another to take part in terrorist activity or other offences contained in the post-Omagh Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act, 1998.
The third offence involves providing instruction or training in the skills of making or using firearms or explosives, nuclear material, biological, chemical or prohibited weapons, knowing that the skills are intended to be used for the purpose of terrorist activity.
It also covers training in techniques or methods for terrorist use.

It is difficult to see what is in the legislation that is not already there particularly in respect of training, instructing or recruiting. The supposed new laws in respect of these activities look as if they have been thrown in to create the illusion of a thought out wide ranging initiative. When stripped of the hype however they help mask the most insidious proposal, the real purpose of the exercise: censorial control of the public discourse by curbing the means for intellectual exploration and journalistic investigation.

This will have a far reaching effect on public understanding. Where a researcher or journalist has interviewed people for the purpose of enhancing knowledge and has elicited their views endorsing armed activity, the state will go on a plundering expedition in pursuit of the research findings as evidence. The researcher or journalist might even face prosecution on the grounds of indirectly facilitating expressions of support for terrorism.

Research will be even less secure than it currently is. Universities will distance themselves even more from the outlier and crack the whip at their researchers to rein them in. With circular and self serving logic the results of independent research will find itself eschewed on the grounds that it is not real knowledge given that it was not conducted with official university approval. Besides it might horrendously have been solicited from "terrorists". Heaven forbid such profanities.

The final product? Society will only ever be able to consider terrorism from the perspective of those who first tell us what it is, who then profile the users, and finally how law enforcement must be allowed to tackle it in unhindered fashion. The limitations of this become all too starkly vivid if we try to understand Palestinian armed force as explained by Mark Regev.

Of course it is not about combatting terrorism in the slightest but is yet another stage in the incessant process of shifting power from civil society to the state with all the potential dangers that poses for civil liberties. We can rest assured that the print and broadcasting media will be awash with views that endorse the terrorism of Israel. There will not be a single person who will even see the inside of a Garda station never mind a courtroom no matter how much they endorse the terrorism that Gazans are subjected to. Rather than face court they will be free to hold court and espouse their support for terrorism and even have the audacity to pretend that it is not terrorism. Charlie Flanagan will be able to stand beside Fitzgerald on the government benches and behave as a shill for Israeli terrorism, without as much as a cluck of disapproval from the forthright Frances. Conversely, there is every likelihood that sociologists in the mould of the late Philip Slater will feel the long baton of the law for merely stating that it would be difficult to have any respect for the Palestinians 'if they didn't fire a few rockets back.'

Frances Fitzgerald and her disgusting cabinet which remained unpardonably mute in the face of the terrorist onslaught on Gaza, which disgracefully abstained in a UN vote to set up a human rights inquiry in Gaza,  which embarrassingly lacked the fortitude to expel Israeli terrorism's official advocate in Ireland, Boaz Modai, now has the audacity to say she will silence terrorism.  The T word indeed. Tripe.