Letters / ‘A sickening overreach of power by our increasingly authoritarian government’
I have seen many definitions of the words terrorist and terrorism. Was Mandela a terrorist? Is Netenyahu a terrorist? Was L’Overture a terrorist? Was Pankhurst a terrorist? Is Trump a terrorist?
There are people who have claimed to have been terrified by the actions of each of these people, often with good justification. Are they all then terrorists?
For me, the real value that I attach to the word is not about the identity of the person being labelled a terrorist, it is about who is using the word to label them, and what their political agenda is.
In my view, there can be no objective definition of terrorism, it is purely subjective; the use of the word terrorist always serves a political agenda.
Whether it’s a political agenda we agree with or not, the fact remains: anyone who uses the word is, knowingly or unknowingly, furthering a political cause.
It goes deeper than that, though. Use of the word terrorist is not just a political statement, more often it is a pretext for violence, state repression, the removal of human rights – or all of the above.
The proscription of the nonviolent direct action group Palestine Action, which Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is bringing in front of MPs for a vote later today (Wednesday), is the most egregious example of this. It’s next-level dystopian.
Palestine Action is a group that has sprayed paint on planes, occupied Israeli arms factories and destroyed drones which have been destined for Israeli government attacks on Palestinians. They have never caused harm to human beings, yet in labelling them terrorists, our government is planning to equate them with Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Never before in British history will it have been illegal to support a protest group. Wear a Palestine Action T-shirt out in town tonight, or write a Facebook post supporting them, and you could be put in jail for fourteen years.
Peaceful protest and civil disobedience are such vital tenets of our democracy. So many of the rights and privileges we take for granted today were won because brave people stood up and took action in this way.
Right now, our government is participating in a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. So heinous is this crime, I cannot think of many better reasons for citizens to take peaceful direct action in resistance. Proscribing these very people as terrorists is a sickening overreach of power by our increasingly authoritarian government.
We are living in dark times indeed; Pastor Martin Niemöller’s 1946 poem feels very pertinent today:
‘First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak for me.’
Alex Armitage
Bigton
