Starmer wants to “Overhaul Terror Law”- Here’s WHY

With every major news story there is an “aha!” moment, the second where the pieces click into place and you realise “Oh, that’s what it’s really about!” Sometimes it’s instant, sometimes it takes a little while.

With the Southport stabbing story it was today, when the media announced that the government will be “overhauling terror laws” in response to the incident.

Writing in The Sun (or, more accurately, having his name attached to something in The Sun), Keir Starmer claims “we are facing a grave new threat”, requiring an “expanded definition” of terrorism.

Further, he wants to make it harder to buy knives:

…it remains shockingly easy for our children to get their hands on deadly knives. The lessons of this case could not be clearer.[…] The technology is there to set up age-verification checks, even for kitchen knives ordered online.

And do more censorship (from The Guardian):

“with just a few clicks, people can watch video after horrific video, videos that in some cases are never taken down. You can’t tell me that the material this individual viewed before committing these murders should be accessible or mainstream social media platforms,”

That will be at least partially covered by the Online Safety Act, which comes into force in March.

But the golden prize here is the “terrorism” law reform, which will seek to “broaden the definition of terrorism” to include the “grave new threat”. Again, from the Sun column:

And I’m afraid the blunt truth here is that this case is a terrible warning sign. Because Britain now faces a grave new threat. Terrorism has changed. In the past, the main threat was highly organised groups, with a clear political intent. Groups like Al-Qaeda and the IRA […]But now, alongside it, we also have to guard against extreme violence perpetrated by loners and misfits — a growing cohort of young men who can access all manner of sick material online.

The aim is to make “terrorism” even more abstract by removing it from religious or political ideology. This would mirror EU legislation from last year, which saw an informal and incredibly vague definition of “potential terrorist” adopted by the new Knowledge Hub.

In a statement to Parliament yesterday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said [emphasis added]:

given the growing numbers of cases where perpetrators are seeking to terrorise, even without a clear ideology, we need to ensure that the law, powers and sentencing are strong enough to cope

Why are they  talking about terrorism lacking ideology?

It is all linked back to the Covid19 anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests. When they say “no clear ideology”, they mean people expressing anti-government sentiment who can’t be boxed into a religious or “extremist” group.

Anyone, in other words, who has any problem with anything the government might be doing or legislating.

And if you don’t believe me, here is Vikram Dodd writing about how the “surge in online violence makes declaring a terrorist incident more difficult than ever” in The Guardian:

The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated two trends: it increased the number of young people entering the terrorism system, and the number of people with no or unclear ideology.

It’s all right there if you’re reading between the lines.

What does this mean in practical terms? What are they actually going to do? There are some hints.

When Starmer (or whoever wrote the Sun piece) mentions “too many people are falling between the cracks in our society”, for example, that means more surveillance and tighter controlling on home schooling.

When he says “That will mean difficult questions about how to protect our children from the tidal wave of violent videos online.”, he’s talking about ending online anonymity, as they are trying to do in Australia.

But, as is often the case, the practical is secondary to the rhetorical and emotional. The loosening of definitions is an aim of itself, as it enables Orwellian use of language.

The final aim is to make “Terrorism” a label so fluid as to be meaningless, applied on ad hoc basis to anything and everything as needed.

If you have a problem with forever wars

If you don’t want a ban on raw milk

If you just think your Council Tax is too high

Bam – you could be a “terrorist”.

So there’s that…

The situation was very cleverly played, coming at their goal from both sides.

The “riots” that followed the stabbing have prepped the left to fear “white supremacist violence”, while the absurd story about the “al Qaeda training” manual found in the alleged attackers home is fuel for the anti-immigrant right.

Either way, both sides are now outraged and/or terrified by the idea of “terrorism”, and both sides will be much more likely to accept whatever the people in charge do about it.

This is how and why your fears are played with – and why you need to be 100% sceptical of any narrative that ends up making you want the government to “do something” (anything) to make your fears go away.