this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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You sure seem to be right about the broader definition! But legal or not, it still seems absolutely crazy to classify this type of property damage as terrorism to me... I have a hard time to see how to justify that beyond, of course, the technicalities of the definition in the UK
I think it has less to do with the property damage and more to do with the implications of the incident and the intent behind it.
You have a group of people who premeditated a plan to sneak into a highly secured RAF airbase without proper authorization with the intention to damage military equipment owned by the state. This is a major breach of national security, it is an act of sabotage, and it causes direct harm to the British state as it's a direct attempt to undermine the country's military capabilities for political purposes.
That's very good grounds to label the organization responsible as terrorist group. Keep in mind, agreeing or disagreeing with the cause of the activists is irrelevant here. You have to think about things from the point of the view of the state. If an attack like this doesn't get properly punished, then what kind of precedent would that set? Does any self righteous group get a free pass to damage public property and undermine national security? The state cannot allow such avenues of instability to take hold. A red line has to be firmly set, and those who cross it have to face consquences.
Oh trust me, I get that the state wants to punish this and set a red line, no doubt about that. That doesn't make the label of terrorist appropriate, there is plenty of things other than terrorism that are illegal. My idea of terrorism doesn't include this form of property damage, and labeling it as such seems to be what sets a dangerous precedent here.
But this is your personal opinion, and I happen to disagree with it. Your only point of contention here is not the act itself, just the terrorism label. Personally, I think you're focusing on the wrong things. The UK is a democratic country and the people voted in politicians that established their terrorism laws. These laws have been established law for decades, and thus, these laws are reflection of what terrorism mean to the British people. It's their definition, their laws, their punishments. This groups intentionally violated them for a political cause, they know they were going to face consequences for doing so, and they are.
The only way this becomes an issue if this standard is not applied universally or equally, which doesn't appear to be the case. The UK is not using terrorism laws to wrongly accuse other groups who didn't do anything of terrorism, they're not censoring people who advocate for the Palestinian cause because of this incident, and both the punishment this group is facing fits the crime in accordance with their laws. I don't see an issue here tbh
Oh I can tell you disagree with it! I'm quite happy with what I'm focusing on, I can see that you want to have a different conversation than whether it is crazy or not to classify this as terrorism, but I'm afraid I'm not interested in that. I feel like I've made my point clear enough, hopefully you feel the same.