\nI’ve been watching the news this week with interest and not a little sadness, noting the events in Kansas and Arkansas.<\/p>\n
I’ll make a side comment on the difference in coverage between the Tiller and Long murders; one got screaming headlines, and one was buried deep in the news section. There’s a piece to write about how the coverage is driven in part by how central the issues manifested by something are to the media class, and by how interesting the narrative is to them – and Christian militia murderers definitely makes that cut. neo-Islamists murdering soldiers – not so much.<\/p>\n
But I’m bored of bashing the media, and they’re dying anyway, so let’s talk about more important things.<\/p>\n
And the important thing to me is that in my mind, to a large extent, this is what terrorism is going to look like for the next decade or so.<\/p>\n
I don’t envision much in the way of vast conspiracies (maybe, but less likely I believe as the resources they require are choked off – I did a piece I never posted on what it would take to really screw up the US via acts of terror, and it cost about $15 – 20 million. Money at that level is noticed – I hope) There’s no central figure – no Osama or Dr. Evil sitting in a volcano lair directing minions.<\/p>\n
What we have instead is an Idea – about Islam, about the rights of the unborn, about the rights of animals, about tending the environment, about whatever<\/i> – and a cadre of people dedicated to pushing that Idea forward, and who use that idea to pull people who are loosely attached to their lives into the belief that their lives will only matter if they give all for the idea.<\/p>\n
Now that notion isn’t new; it’s not even novel in modern America (ask Jim Jones, Cinque, and Andreas Baader or Charlie Manson). There have always been charismatic, murderous thugs who pried people out of their life orbits and sent them crashing into the ground – usually with a few corpses trailing behind them.<\/p>\n
And the problem, of course, is that the people who are holding the flame of the Idea in their hands, and blowing on it to keep it burning bright are – rightly – protected. Even as it becomes clear that the incitement of damaged people is something they truly hope to do, our system requires that we protect their right to think and speak freely.<\/p>\n
So what do we do about it?<\/p>\n
One thing, I believe, is to hold them up to the light – to make sure that every nasty thing they say and do is widely exposed, and so shame them in the public sphere. This is, I believe, the right thing to do – but the reality is that it will also serve to publicize their cause, and to attract the susceptible. So while it’s right, there are questions about how effective it will be.<\/p>\n
Do we criminalize speech and thought because it might incite deed? My answer is no.<\/p>\n
But like all answers, it comes with a cost – and we’re seeing that cost today.<\/p>\n
I think the core answer is the harder one – and it is make it harder to pry people out of their orbits, to do a kind of COIN within our own country in which we re-establish the concept of legitimacy and revalidate in people’s minds the channels through which they are validated and through which they believe they can engage their beliefs; we need, if possible to, declare a war on anomie.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’re seeing the newest face of terrorism – a passionate idea held by a person who doesn’t care about life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}