Terrorism- The use of violence or threats of violence to intimidate a target into performing a desired action or to deter a target from ceasing an undesired action for religious and political reasons.
Terrorism has a clear definition. Of course, in the world of social media, this has blurred the lines between what digital communications are real and what ones are fake. This has become more confused with trolling. That is why there have been few people charged under the Digital Communications Act.
It becomes more confusing when people make public statements on social media which may not represent their intent but express their outrage and fantasies. However, the lines between fantasy and reality do get blurred. This is one of the concerns academics have about digital and social media. Sociologist Jean Bauldriad proposed the phenomenon of ‘hyperreality’ which describes how social and digital media has come to the point that people are unable to tell the difference between reality and simulated reality.
Has there been terrorism in New Zealand? There have been numerous examples, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, the bombing of the Union Trades’ Hall and of course the 2019 mosque shootings.
However, we also live in a country where schools receive death and bomb threats either for pranks or for avoiding exams. Or, in the case of one Dunedin student, to protect the lie she had built up about going to university.
Something only becomes terrorism when the media and the Government says it is. This is why they called the 2019 shootings a terrorist attack but not the New Lynn knife attack.
What becomes terrorism then turns into a national security issue which leaves it to our intelligence agencies and our police to respond. However, it is important to note that the Government only advises while the police still have the final say.
However, we live in a democracy, which means that the Government decides who are terrorists and who are not. Every country has this. In Syria, they called the chemical attack on Aleppo ‘a justified bombing on jihadists’. China calls the Uyghur Muslims terrorists and describes the concentration camps in East Turkistan as ‘deradicalization’ camps.
This is to be expected in authoritarian regimes, which is why it was shocking when it happened in democracies like America and New Zealand. First, it was the FBI classifying parents who stood against Critical Race Theory as domestic terrorists. Next thing you know they were classifying the Proud Boys as a terrorist organisation.
Of course, it goes without saying that the media indirectly has some power in deciding who are and who are not terrorists which feeds into the government and political sphere.
The 4th estate thesis argues that, as part of the media’s duty to hold the government to account it is also a part of their duty to question the government narrative. We saw this with the 2012 Urewera terrorist case when the media defended Tame Iti and the other Tuhoe activists from what did seem like overkill from the police. It was at this point our post-modern cultural elites began questioning what is a terrorist and whether ‘terrorism’ is a social construct. However, in the same vein, the media is willing to support the current intelligence community consensus that today’s terrorists are anti-vaxers and white supremacists. (Something which I focused on in a previous article).
There used to be a time when terrorism had an objective meaning. Of course, in this post-modern world which extends the definition of ‘violence’ to now include speech along with action, it is not a far cry to suppose that the academic class will include content and expression as terrorism.
It is also telling when the political class ignores the actual violence from their supporters and instead tries to spread the misinformation that everything their opposition does including peaceful actions is more dangerous than Covid.
On top of that, we have our security apparatus now deciding what ideas are ‘threats to democracy’ which have been taught to them by the cultural Marxists in academia.
The new definition of terrorism will be written by the left.