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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.)
I mean... look up historical activist tactics, especially in the '60s and '70's.
Both terrorist-lite and terrorist-heavy tactics get employed, and there are whole books written on the proper training and implementation of each.
Generally agreed, but the other approach is to empower those on the receiving end to immediately respond relatively harshly and given them legal support for doing so.
Florida's notorious anti-riot law did in fact increase penalties for organizing riots/violent protests. But it also added legal protections for individuals who are targeted by rioters and respond with violent action (limited to self defense, mind).
I think its obvious that if interrupting a religious service with a mob of people could get someone beaten or even shot, and the defender would be legally immune from consequences... they'd be much, much less inclined to take on the risks inherent in that action.
This is a separate question from whether the churchgoers have the ability and will to actually get violent.
In practice, even in very liberal jurisdictions, church invasions over the Dobbs decision were routinely met with violence and police had little interest in whether that violence was legal- theres a few videos from LA around then.
I don't remember this happening, but it's quite possible I just missed it at the time. Do you have any worthwhile links to share?
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