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Notes -
With the recent arrest of Don Lemon, I think it's worth asking how society should respond to the sorts of activities he (allegedly) engaged in?
Disrupting a church service is not exactly terrorism, since there was no actual violence used. But it's not civil disobedience either -- nobody is seriously arguing that the laws against disrupting meetings are themselves unjust.
It's sort of Terrorism Lite. It's kind of like, as another poster analogized, to holding your fist a millimeter away from someone's face while chanting "I'm not touching you." The point is to (arguably) inflict as much harm as you can get away with, to grab attention, to intimidate, to provoke a response, etc. while plausibly claiming that you are non-violent.
Maybe it's my imagination, but I feel like I've seen more and more of this Terrorism Lite in recent years. Things like traffic-blocking; meeting disruption; etc.
While it's true that there are already laws on the books against these sorts of things, I think an argument can be made that there needs to be a more focused and vigorous response. By analogy, in theory blowing up a bomb in a train station is already against the law, whether or not it's in support of some political objective, but there is value in having special laws on the books against terrorism and especially against those who finance or otherwise support it.
In the same way, there could be laws which sanction people, organizations, and governments for providing material support to what I have called Terrorism Lite. (Perhaps someone can suggest a better term.)
It works when you have allied media organizations and friendly local authorities. It's literally in the Antifa playbook. The goal is to exploit the right to protest to pursue low level paramilitary activity. They're very good at it, and they've established the norm so much that regular left-wingers often now seem confused when their protesters get arrested for intimidation, vandalism, or even violence. They've gotten away with so much that it has moved from an expectation to an entitlement.
Occasionally right-wing protesters try the same tactics only to discover that it doesn't work for them.
Exactly. Like a recent Twitter narrative going around partly inspired by Generalissimo-in-exile Will Stancil where people were lauding his personal courage in taking to the field.
I agree that what he's doing takes a degree of courage, but it's also insane to equivocate it to similar actions of right wing protestors. Stancil hasn't even jeopardized his academic job, whilst the risk of complete financial and social censure for being equally visible as a right wing agitator is considerably higher.
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