Is Palestine Action a terrorist organisation?

[TopBadger]

Having re-read this thread, and other online articles, it's clear that...

I may not have been paying adequate attention

Is indeed the case. PA is beyond a protest group... when I examine my own biases I expect I probably wasn't inclined to look too hard at them in the first instance simply because the stuff they're pulling is somewhat insignificant compared to what Israel is doing in Gaza.

[El Pollo Diablo]

And there we have it again. This assumption that all they did was throw some paint on an aircraft.

That’s nowhere near the full extent of what PA have done. Assuming you’ve actually read this thread then it’s a bad faith argument to characterise them this way.

Sabotage is probably the most appropriate description rather than terrorism or vandalism.

It's worth reading that Paul Mason article. In it he describes how countries like Germany have a middle ground option legally, where organisations can be designated as extremist (short of terrorist) which leads to additional oversight, surveillance etc. We don't have that here, so proscription under the terrorist laws are the only option. It may still be that that is still appropriate, though I can see an argument for being able to use a middle ground option in some circumstances.

To me this would seem to be the right solution. People are largely railing against the epithet "terrorist" and see it as broader evidence of a government doing anything and everything to maintain a friendship with a state they see as carrying out genocide.

The situation has two faces, it seems - a legal one and a social one. Legally, the government can proscribe an organisation by successfully describing them as terrorist and carrying a vote in Parliament, the police can arrest those who publicly support that organisation as a result, and the government doesn't have to say in detail why they believe this decision is correct.

Socially, this is rather like policing by consent - the police have power because the public suffer them to have that power. Unless the police maintain public confidence, they cannot do their jobs. Similarly, the Government doesn't have to say in detail why they want to proscribe PA, but they have clearly lost public confidence/consent in making that decision - for right or wrong. They will not regain that confidence either until they reverse the decision, find a different way to proscribe them, or explain why they are actual terrorists.

Of the cited examples, the three with a more detailed explanation do not meet any threshold of "terrorism" as far as I can see. The two with details held back may do, and I do sympathise that keeping those details under wraps may be necessary for legal reasons, but in doing so the government is in a very tricky bind. The public does not and will not believe that PA is a terrorist organisation unless those details are released and accord with that judgement. The fact then that old people are being arrested for supporting an organisation which seems clearly not terrorist in turn seems very silly.

Clearly, though, it seems PA are certainly extreme (is there a difference between extreme and extremist?) when it comes to protesting, and proscription doesn't seem wrong - but having no mechanism to do it other than calling them terrorist, when that does not seem to fit the bill, is making the government look particularly weak.

[Allo V Psycho]

Thanks, all, that's very informative.
I think 'terrorist'' may indeed be an inadequate term to describe certain kinds of malign action, since it has been assigned particular meanings in common usage, and perhaps the Germans have it right in using other kinds of legislation which the U.K. currently lacks.
But if it is the case that PA has been circulating instructions on how to form cells and destroy evidence, and targeting defence industry and other military targets...
... ok, call me paranoid, but I'm currently living in Poland, where anxieties are quite high...
... doesn't that sound like a bit like asymmetric warfare?
Who might imaginably be behind that?

Spoiler:

Never thought I'd be a prepper, but here we are, kitting out the basement with an emergency radio, calor gas cooker, logs for the fire, etc...

[jimbob]

<Snip>


But if it is the case that PA has been circulating instructions on how to form cells and destroy evidence, and targeting defence industry and other military targets...
... ok, call me paranoid, but I'm currently living in Poland, where anxieties are quite high...
... doesn't that sound like a bit like asymmetric warfare?
Who might imaginably be behind that?

Spoiler:

Never thought I'd be a prepper, but here we are, kitting out the basement with an emergency radio, calor gas cooker, logs for the fire, etc...

Yup, the Russians would be remiss if they at the least haven't got someone in the peripherally on signal chats with them inciting attacks on valuable assets like air refueling tankers.

At the very least. Something with almost zero risk / effort and loads of deniability

Useful idiots are particularly useful if you can persuade them to perform sabotage for you.

[Sciolus]

Between Russian agents and undercover police, does PA have any real members at all?

[sTeamTraen]

I don't know if this is actually practicable, but do we need specific anti-terrorism legislation at all?

The problem is that it potentially treats exactly the same crime in a different way based on the motivations of the perpetrator, which are fundamentally unknowable.

If a psychotic person decides that the woman sitting across from him in the Tube carriage is a threat, so he gets up and stabs her, does it make a difference if he is a Muslim? Or if he is a Muslim and shouts "Allahu Akbar" at the same time (something which, I get the impression, Muslims shout a lot in moments of great stress)? If the police then go round to his house and start looking at his YouTube history, how many jihadi videos does he have to have watched to conclude that he had a political motive?

Ditto for a white person who stabs a black woman and emits a raclal slur as he does it — is he necessarily a sympathiser of Patriotic Alternative?

There is always going to be a spectrum, from 9/11 and the IRA at one end to lone idiots at the other. But even for the "big boys" I wonder how much of what they are/were doing wasn't already covered by existing legislation.

In the case of PA, for me it's a case of a plague on everyone's house. Damaging planes that are used to send aid to Ukraine is an own goal comparable in some ways to when the IRA murdered two Australian tourists in Germany, having mistaken them for British soldiers. And the people getting arrested for supporting PA could have chosen to express their support for Palestine in many other ways that didn't involve advocating for PA. But the government's use of anti-terrorism legislation to in effect turn anyone who is Very Angry About Israel into a terrorist sympathiser just looks ridiculous — and yet it's an almost inexorable consequence of the framing. The "Plasticine Action" t-shirts highlight the absurdity — everyone knows what someone who wears this means, and yet no court in the land would convict someone for wearing it. (Or if they did, someone would presumably produce "Play-Doh Reaction" t-shirts, and so ad infinitum.)

[shpalman]

I don't know if this is actually practicable, but do we need specific anti-terrorism legislation at all?

The problem is that it potentially treats exactly the same crime in a different way based on the motivations of the perpetrator, which are fundamentally unknowable...

The legal system already has to do this, in terms of motive and premeditation, and the punishments are different because would take more to deter someone who has a stronger motivation.

(The paradox is always that there's no point punishing for a crime which has already been committed, but the point is to deter someone else.)

[sTeamTraen]

I don't know if this is actually practicable, but do we need specific anti-terrorism legislation at all?

The problem is that it potentially treats exactly the same crime in a different way based on the motivations of the perpetrator, which are fundamentally unknowable...

The legal system already has to do this, in terms of motive and premeditation, and the punishments are different because would take more to deter someone who has a stronger motivation.

(The paradox is always that there's no point punishing for a crime which has already been committed, but the point is to deter someone else.)

It also seems to hit a singularity of some kind when you get to suicide bombers.