[quote=“Oghier, post:57, topic:129900”]
If it’s the former, I would ask why you believe that. The odds of any westerner being killed by a terrorist are in “killed by bears” territory. [/quote]
The problem is that this comparison is not correct. Deaths caused by bear attacks, traffic accidents, hit by lightning, etc. aren’t the same as terrorism because unlike terrorism there is no risk of them escalating. If, on average, twenty people were mauled by badgers last year you can be pretty confident that that number won’t be much bigger next year even if the government did nothing to reduce it.
Terrorist attacks, however, can escalate the number of casualties at an alarming rate if nothing is done about it. Right now it’s only a handful of radicals that strikes every year. If you let this go on it will be several handfuls after a few years and even more after that. That’s the existential threat terrorism presents to society. If left unchecked it will rapidly grow to a size where it will cripple daily life for regular citizens.
You make a good point about escalation potential, and I had not thought of that. We’ve certainly seen that already.
But that still does not make it an existential threat. School shootings are just as awful, and they’ve escalated to a horrifying degree since Columbine in 1999. But even if that trend continues, it’s not an existential threat. The Israelis have lived through worse. The Brits have, too, during the worst times of “The Troubles.”
The one difference I see with terrorism is the potential for them to acquire bio-weapons. That could become a truly exponential threat. Even nukes aren’t that bad (unless they acquire dozens).
Well obviously under that very narrow view of existential only a nuclear exchange or the zombie apocalypse would count as existential. Whether or not a cultural/political system survives without significant change is my preferred term. A huge driver in Zionist organizations were Tsarist Russian pogroms against Jewish peoples in the late 19th Century in the Pale of Settlement areas in the Ukraine and Poland. Compared to Nazi Germany you’re talking only dozens or hundreds killed, but the threat was so existential they started agitating for a Jewish homeland. If the US, Britain or the EU splits up because of the fallout of these globalizing issues i’d feel justified in saying their threats were existential enough for my definition, even if we’re not leaving millions of dead on the table to do so.
It’s absolutely not the same, though it’s interesting to explain why. Pure fatality numbers simply don’t cut it. We accept as a society an enormous cost by allowing private transportation; ten thousand or more people die every year because of it. But it’s not an “existential” crisis (although let’s face it it should be) because we’ve accepted that level of risk. Gun violence is a partial existential crisis in the US; some portion of the population has accepted the level of violence gun ownership causes, but other portions have rejected that standard and do feel gun violence is an enormous problem. There are also problems in risk mitigation; if i never drive and never own a gun (and try to live in an area where gun ownership is low) i am able to personally reduce the exposure to these dangers.
This is why terrorism is so hard to deal with. In this case it was attacking a bunch of mostly teenage girls. It’s striking at the heart of a culture or country in a way that risky behaviors, like gun ownership and driving, do not.
To be clear:
The reason that fatalities from things like private transportation are not an exisistential threat, is because they do not threaten the existence of our society.
I mean, that’s what the term actually means.
You have now started to say “existential crisis”, which is different… although still not really a term that applies here, as it’s a crisis which causes a person to question their own core existence.
There is no such thing as a “partial existential crisis”.
Crime affects people every day, in exactly the same way.
You go to a public space, you are exposing yourself to crime. Whether it’s a guy blowing himself up or shooting you while robbing you makes no difference at all. It’s exactly the same thing.
And we accept such things, because we find it unacceptable to limit liberty to the extent required to try and insulate everyone from all risks.
Edit: This, by the way, used to be the foundation of American conservatism. Now they feel the opposite: that all rights (save the 2nd Amendment) are to be sacrificed for even the slightest hint of even imaginary safety.
Yes, exactly. It’s not the “costs of doing business” ergo “terrorism is ok”. It’s that we value certain principles of freedom so highly that perhaps we will be vulnerable in certain ways. But the principles we hold dear are more important than that vulnerability. Of course we will fight as much as we can, but we can’t compromise our core values for (perceived) safety.
We shouldn’t fight back against them by banning Muslims, building walls, and bombing brown civilians overseas; we fight against them by winning the damn culture victory. i.e. this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkM-SDNoI_8
Cut off Salafist and Deobandi funding. Close the Salafist and Deobandi mosques. Ban the Salafist and Deobandi preachers. Deal with the international fallout. Remove religion from schools. Close faith schools. Promote secularism. Tell your socmedia companies to stop actively assisting Islamists and Muslim governments in closing down secularist, atheist and moderate pages and accounts. Shift religion to the private space. Do it to all religions if you want balance. Learn to distinguish between Muslims and Islamists. Promote imams like this:
Reformists risk a lot, even in the West, many die. None are present in the “official” organisations in the UK, few appear on media or have high profile groups/charities.
Even if the authorities did all that, all they do is drive it underground, but at least the scale is smaller.
You know the concert bomber was reported to the authorities on numerous occasions? By his family, mosque and acquaintances. You know what happened? Not much. I imagine he got 10 mins of someones time and assigned a low risk tag and left to his own device, the sheer volume of suspects is beyond the security services ability to manage.
