alt Hacker NewsNot really. A snippet I posted before:
If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance. Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.
The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.
It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.
The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.
Replies
By your own framing, literally any enforcement of a law is “terrorism”.
So your solution to this proposal of “terrorism” is to actually commit “terrorism”.
Is this not affirming the consequent?
Violence for A ends is Terrorism
Intimidation for A ends is terrorism
∴ Intimidation for A ends is violence. <--- does not follow
Does it serve a similar purpose? Sure. Is it a threat of violence? Sure, but words have meaning.
Stop conflating violence with terms that have their own words, it’s not helpful.
No amount of coercive control will nail you to a cross, or shoot you in the neck in front of your wife and a park full of students, because it disagrees with what you say.
Intimidation by making or implying threats of violence isn’t violence.
The reader assuming aggression in blunt words isn’t violence. Not using someone’s preferred pronouns is not violence.
Violence is violence.
People who want to conflate violence with non-violence want to impose their will on others. It’s a personality trait that lends itself to tyranny. You can’t legislate undesirable behaviour out of existence, but you can lock up those you disagree with, and you will enjoy it. You will say things like “ah well, we got what he deserved”.
Punishing people for things like coercive control does nothing to prevent the harm occurring in the first place, and threats of legal consequences rarely do much, if anything, to deter the unwanted activity.
We’re going to have to be more skilful in our thinking if we want people to Be Good and Live Right. I’m sure I’ve read and listen to people who had something more intelligent to say about how we are to live, but we keep fucking nailing them to crosses or shooting them in the fucking neck.