| Scoobes said: Err... what?! Terrorism has been a problem for well over a century. The only difference is the source of the terror and the tactics used (suicide bombing is now far more common). In the UK we've had far worse times during the days of the troubles and the origins of that campaign can be traced back to the 1840s. For the sake of comparison:
The coverage in the Western media really is blown out of proportion when you consider you're still more likely to get killed by a dog than by terrorists (in the West, the Middle East is a different story). Stuff like gang violence and domestic abuse are far bigger and more common social problems but only get reported in the most shocking of circumstances. |
I understand, I was thinking about terrorism in terms of the form that we are seeing today but you are correct we have had terrorists in some form or another probably since the beginning of time and I did forget about the 20th century conflicts in places like Ireland. That said, look at how the numbers in your graph have dropped off towards the end of the 20th century. Do you think that European societies managed to accomplish this by just accepting terrorism and saying that more people die from dog bites? I don't know UK history, but I suspect that the people asked some very difficult, uncomfortable and likely, at the time, politicall incorrect questions about the root cause of those conflicts and then moved forward to address the problems. Why is is politically incorrect for us to question policies such as open borders? Why do countries like Japan and Poland (who have not adopted liberal policies on immigration) not have issues with radical Islamic terror right now?
The problem is only going to get worse as long we continue to tow the line of political correctness. You cannot deny that the power structure does not want us to question their responsibility for the current terrorist crisis and they lump all of their critics under the homogeneous label of "racist" to end the debate. While the media and our leaders talk about terrorist attacks they will not speak the root cause of terror which is their own irresponsibility towards the citizens that they are sworn to protect. You can see the line inching back up to the levels of the 1970's in your graph. Addressing this problem will require that we move outside of our comfort zone and admit some pretty difficult realities about things we accepted as true all of our lives (just like the Catholics and Protestants had to do in Ireland). Are we willing to question political correctness or will we let that line continue to move upward? Maybe we should actually try listening to speeches from people like Trump to see if they are actually racist, rather then just trusting the mainstream media to tell us the truth.
