How should we react to Terror?
Obviously the worst things when something like last night happens is the lives cut short. The families torn apart. Those left behind injured because of lost loved ones, or actually physically maimed by the attack.
Nothings is worse that that and my heart, and unequivocal sympathies go out to all those affected by what happened.
So that is the worst thing, but for me a close second is seeing the Terrorists winning. Seeing the evil bastards who did their things last night getting *exactly* what they were hoping for. Seeing people I know, people I like and expect, dancing to the tune of terrorists. Playing into their hands. Giving them exactly what they want.
When people strap a bomb to themselves to blow up little girls, or drive a van into a crowd of people on a bridge they are not engaging in a military tactic designed to win an armed conflict. They aren’t trying to “Best the British Army” in a war…
No they are engaging in propaganda. They are trying to elicit reactions and responses. They are trying to create the conditions that they believe further their cause. And when you react the way they want you to then you aren’t being strong. You aren’t sticking it to conventional wisdom. Your aren’t “Standing up to the PC Brigade”.
No, you are being the tool of evil violent terrorists. You are being the weapon they are trying to wield. You are puckering up and giving them exactly what they want. And it makes me sick seeing people becoming the useful tools of the evil terrorists who think it is OK to blow up little girls at concerts or drive into people going about their lives walking on a bridge.
It makes me sick seeing them get what they want.
The purpose of a terrorist attack is to provoke a reaction that drives a narrative of “Us vs Them”. By making otherwise sensible non Muslim people post shit on my Facebook feed like “It’s time for us to take some big action”; not saying what that is of course just allowing people to infer what they mean… But trying to drive a narrative that on the one side is every Muslim, and on the other side is everyone else.
And when they succeed by getting people to either think that way, talk that way or better still act that way then they get what they are really after. And that is by getting out reactions to convince a larger proportion of what they consider “Their side” to give up on being normal people and instead sign up to their fascist ideology of religious war.
So every Britain First meme someone reposts attacking Muslims in general helps them trying and convince the next guy that instead of going to uni and becoming an engineer he is in a holy war and should strap a bomb to his chest or drive a truck into people.
When they do this what they are trying to do is make us recruiting Sergeants for ISIS or Al Qaeda or whatever the current international terrorism franchise is currently in the ascendancy.
And I say no. We can’t ever, shouldn’t ever, let them get what they want. We shouldn’t allow them to make us their patsies, and their tools.
And the reality is that they do this stuff because they as desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Because they are manifestly losing the war of hearts and minds normally. Most Muslim people in the UK are not flocking to their banner for armed conflict to the death with the west. These terrorists, and fascists can’t win people over with their arguments or vision or words. Most people in this country have utterly rejected this. And they are having to resort to desperate measures, murderous vile measures, to try and change peoples minds.
And we shouldn’t let them. Not now, not ever.
I’ve seen a lot of people posting about “collective responsibility” that someone how this is the fault of people other than the tiny proportion of Muslims who either do Terrorism, or actively support it. But I don’t think the people posting that even believe it.
Nobody is, or should ever be tarred by the brush of others when it has nothing to do with the. The sins of the Father are not the sins of the Son.
I’m not responsible for the murders that Anders Breivik committed at Utoya, because we are both white and he felt he was fighting a race ware on my behalf. Nor am I responsible for Thomas Mair murdering Jo Cox for the same reason.
All Hindus aren’t responsible for the crimes carried out during the Gujarat Riots in 2002. And all Buddhists aren’t responsible the the crimes by Buddhist nationalists against Muslims in Myanmar. And if you think that Islam is uniquely a religion that causes it adherents to engage in violence in the name of faith you probably don’t want look at the history of Christendom.
Because this is an asymmetric conflict we can’t win it with tanks, or guns. And “eye for an eye” won’t work. Because it is a fight of ideas, not a conflict between military powers. And our reaction if we go down the “eye for an eye” route is exactly what they want, and exactly what strengthens their side in the war of ideas in which they are engaging.
So you don’t have to react they way they want you to. You wanna do something constructive go and give blood. That is probably the single more useful thing you can do to help with this sort of problem in the future.
But please, please don’t give into hate and division. Don’t blame whole groups of people for the actions of a few. Don’t be an active participant and making the world the way these murderous cunts wish it was.
How we react, what kind of world we build. That is on us. In these circumstances, and about these things lots of people like to be experts on religions they don’t know much about. Well the dominant religion here, Christianity has something to say about what we should do:-
“Turn the other cheek”
So for those who want to see this as a clash of civilisations, as a war of religions. That is what “our” religion has to say on the topic.
“Turn the other cheek”,
Also published on Medium.
