Lots to think on there, and for me illuminating, because when I talk about ‘terrorism’ it isn’t as a description of a means, but as a specific instance.

For you and in your post, if I’ve got you right, the point is about our defiance of terrorism as almost abstract noun – in the same way as some of us might oppose ‘drugs’, say. This fits with the whole rhetoric of ‘Global War on Terror’ (which, quite properly, you would feel is not a fair basis for conscription). For me and (if they were honest) the GWOT crowd, and I’d guess for a lot of British people, when we say it’s ‘terrorism’ we oppose, we mean anti-western, revolutionary Islamism and its adherents (al-Qa’eda et al).

This is a very uncomfortable situation for those on the Left, because it creates a ‘them’ and ‘us’. So, people on the Right (wrongly, I guess) appeal to opposition to terror to paper over these cracks.

So, to come back to our differences, as you say: it’s probably nigh-on impossible to “oppose terror consistently as terror.” And I’d say that I don’t, because it’s not terror as such I oppose. And my guess is, although they mightn’t say so on asking, most British people wouldn’t either. Jarndyce has these past days picked up the Bangladesh bombing story – but it wasn’t covered by the news because, to most people, it doesn’t evoke anything near the same feelings.

You view this partiality as hypocrisy, but I don’t. Or, I would insofar as people talk about ‘terror’ when we mean al-Qa’eda et al, but I think that for most of us that owes more to a wish to be inoffensive and PC than any conscious attempt to mislead; we’re confused in our language rather than our ethics. (The exception here are the so-called liberal hawks – but they are less the hypocrites than the woolly optimists.)

Seeing opposition to ‘terror’ as meaning something different – opposition to a particular terrorist campaign directed against us – does have big political implications, naturally.

You would probably view the ethical opposition to terror as being superior to a particular, political “British” opposition to “terror.” As you say, the difference between us is that I don’t think we can ever stop Bad Things universally, but we can do something about Bad People in particular cases – primarily selected by how they affect us and ours. (To come back to the liberal hawks, they occupy a third position – to do something about Bad People universally. Unending wars for the domination of the earth, perhaps?)

Not to go too far into it, but this exterior difference does owe a lot to those other questions, I think. I’m sceptical, to put it mildly, as to our ability to arrive at objective judgements on ethical questions, and especially to abstracting means from ends (or reverse), or deciding where theory stops dictating to practice. For me, the divides are unstable and unknowable, and it’s only prudence that allows our way through – and that’s about navigating in concrete situations, not general hypotheses.

As you infer, the notion of maximum freedom and freely-chosen community you mention is pretty much the other end from me. The idea of freely-chosen community seems unreal to me – we are thrown into our communities, and massively shaped by them; our character/soul/personality (whatever) is not a reflection of our independent will, but formed by our experiences and attachments.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that, for me, a purist ethical opposition to terrorism-as-means of the sort you spoke of in your post, that can be so detached from opposition to the specific instance of terror directed against us by specific people with specific ends, seems almost a bit soulless. My guess is that for most people the moment for that kind of in-principle defiance passed so quickly as to be indistinguishable from our concern with the situation we find ourselves in.

While I can see where you’re coming from, our differences remain. I can’t view ethical questions as so isolated from our political situation. I reckon that our shared ethics would include paying our dues; our living up to our obligations. For me, our obligations include loyalty to our community – so acting ethically as an individual cannot be so neatly detached from what is happening to our community, if it can at all.

All that said, you’re right that it’s not ‘terrorism’ as such that drives the likes of me here, but the specific campaign of it directed at Britain and the West. But I’d guess that that’s the case for most people after the 7th July; perhaps we just hide behind the word ‘terrorism’ so that the liberal hawks can be comfortable in the coalition…

If that’s so, on what basis do we make our judgements on the public policies we will support and advocate as citizens? Are our political objectives not, in some way, tied to the notions of right conduct we ourselves try to live by?

No, I don’t believe they are. I believe that it’s right, always and in every situation, to tell the truth, do a job well and as far as possible cause no harm to other humans. I suspect you believe something similar, perhaps with a few differences of emphasis. I also believe that human freedom of action (including the maintenance of freely-chosen communities) is the highest political good, and that the greatest restrictions on this freedom are the institutions of private property, commodity production and wage labour. I doubt that you go much of the way with me on that one. We can disagree vehemently over the politics, but if we didn’t have the shared ethical background we couldn’t have the conversation to start with. (This, I think, is what makes political troll-baiting sites so tiresome – the feeling that “annoy the right people” is starting to take precedence over “speak the truth”.)

your position seems to be that our (ethically-driven) opposition to terror doesn’t permanently shift our political discussions. To me, those discussions take place within parameters set by common experiences and interests, and knowledge of terrorist aggression (and the threat of which) will alter those parameters.

I think the knowledge that there are people out there who want to kill us must have political implications. But there’s no one right answer to the question of what those implications are – it’s a separate debate. Incidentally, I certainly don’t think that terrorism should ‘permanently shift our political discussions’ – are you suggesting that Menachem Begin should have been an international pariah? (Not that this would necessarily have been a bad idea…)

I lost one thing I want to say, which was to agree with your practical point that “if anyone offers us anti-terrorism as a political programme, we should be very wary of what we’re getting.” But there’s a big difference between that wise counsel, and the suggestion that we should have a moment of (ethical) defiance against terror, and then simply forget it, and carry on where we left off.

Fair point – the part about carrying on with politics as usual undersold the point I should really have made. (This was partly deliberate – I didn’t want to get into the political argument in a few lines at the end of the post, and doing it in greater depth would overbalance the argument. I was also trying to keep things uncontroversial.)

The point is, there is almost no political position from which you can consistently oppose terror as terror. “Britain opposes terror”? Not hard to find evidence that suggests otherwise. “Marxists oppose terror”? Well, most of us, most of the time, I guess. And so on. I think you’d argue in favour of the “Britain” example, on the grounds that (a) it’d be consistent with British values to oppose terror and (b) we bloody well do oppose it when it’s directed at us, but for me this suggests either hypocrisy or woolly optimism (“we’ll oppose it consistently from now on…”)

So the bridge from ethics to politics goes nowhere. Politically what you’re left with is some people who have reason (in their eyes) to hate us and have the power to harm us – and, politically, the question is what we can do to reduce the threat they pose. Which includes taking seriously what motivates them and (even more importantly) what motivates their sympathisers. I know that to you this line of argument smacks of leaning over backwards to be nice to people that we ought to be ostracising. Putting it schematically, I think taking a stand against Bad People is less important – and less likely to be effective – than persuading people not to do Bad Things.

Phil: As I said at the top, I think the differences are very deep-seated, and also that I “set out what I think [your] position is” – inevitably, you know your argument better than I do, so my apologies if I have mischaracterised you. My point wasn’t (isn’t) to set up a Guardian-reader strawman but to explore a different way of approaching the world to mine, and with which I disagree. It also wasn’t to infer your personal political position, but what seem to me the political implications of that approach.

The ethical system you advance has a very clean separation between ends and means, and theory and practice; it also (as humanist) is heavily universalist, and would – correct me if I’m wrong on any of this, obviously – be troubled by focusing on divisions which might lead to judgements for or against them.

Now, for you – again, correct me – ethics is concerned with our private lives, but has no necessary implications of the public action we might support. If that’s so, on what basis do we make our judgements on the public policies we will support and advocate as citizens? Are our political objectives not, in some way, tied to the notions of right conduct we ourselves try to live by?

Your original post said, in its penultimate paragraph:

“Opposing terror is not a political act. Which isn’t to say that it’s not a good thing: death has its due, and the dead should be mourned. All terror is equally unforgivable, and we should say so: to resist terror is to honour its victims. But when we’ve demonstrated our opposition to terror we’ll go our separate ways, and within a month or a week we may well find ourselves on different sides of a political argument.”

“Which is how it should be: life goes on, which means that politics goes on – and it goes on without the terrorists, just as it did before. We defy terrorists, but there comes a point when the best way to defy them is to forget them.”

Here’s my problem, and again correct me if I’m misinterpreting: your position seems to be that our (ethically-driven) opposition to terror doesn’t permanently shift our political discussions. To me, those discussions take place within parameters set by common experiences and interests, and knowledge of terrorist aggression (and the threat of which) will alter those parameters.

Politics is not simply about division and conflict within society; it’s the mark of managed divisions, to advance a recognised set of common interests, on the basis of some previously agreed terms of debate (those parameters). For me, the ethical response to terror must inform the political response.

Funnily enough, the long gestation of the post meant I lost one thing I want to say, which was to agree with your practical point that “if anyone offers us anti-terrorism as a political programme, we should be very wary of what we’re getting.” But there’s a big difference between that wise counsel, and the suggestion that we should have a moment of (ethical) defiance against terror, and then simply forget it, and carry on where we left off.

Phil’s argument, then, is that solidarity against terror should be focused on revulsion against terrorist acts, without regard to either the actors or the motives which drive them.
…
faith in universal humanity means that all people can join in that revulsion against terrorist acts, regardless of their agreement with the motives. British liberals can join hands with Afghan Taliban sympathisers, as long as they agree that the means employed on the 7th July are wrong.

I’ll take that bait. I think that for Taliban sympathisers to condemn the 7th July attacks would be a highly desirable outcome, considering that the pool of Taliban sympathisers is precisely where active jihadist terrorists recruit (as far as we can tell). And I don’t think it’s inconceivable – but I don’t think that submerging the anti-terrorist message into a polemic against an “evil ideology” makes it any more likely.

(I also think that it would be highly desirable for Taliban sympathisers to cease to sympathise with the Taliban, for Muslim community leaders to drop the cover-up-your-daughters stuff and for British Muslims in general not to take being a Muslim quite so damn seriously. But these positions have nothing to do with terrorism – and when it comes to opposing terrorism, we liberals need all the allies we can get. Especially among people who don’t agree with us on the secular / liberal / Enlightenment / women’s liberation stuff, since – as I suggested above – they’re more likely to be the ones who can actually influence people to stop doing it.)

Blimpish, at least, will have noticed that I snipped the middle of the paragraph I quoted. This, I’m afraid, is where his representation of my argument goes off the rails. Quoting from the next paragraph:

The heart of the argument is this: the real problem is in our use of exclusive categories that divide people, each assuming their own superiority and attempting to dominate others. If only we would recognise that at the end of the day we’re all human beings, and appeal to the common (ethical humanist) ground we all (or very nearly all) share, then we’d have a whole lot less trouble in the world.

This extends the ethical humanist stance against terror into a political position – a statement about how the world is and how it needs to be changed. But this is precisely what I said that it isn’t (and can’t be). As I said in my original piece,

acts of terror are always meaningful. The act was committed by a certain group, with its own aims and its own history; certain targets were chosen; the effect of the act was to shift the balance of power in particular ways; some causes were furthered and others hindered. In practice, this means that ‘unforgivable’ is not the end of the story. From London to Madrid to Algiers to Deir Yassin to Fallujah to Srebrenica to the via Fani to Brighton to Omagh to the Milltown Cemetery, we have always to ask (we cannot help asking), unforgivable and… what? Was that particular act unforgivable and irredeemably vile, unforgivable and contemptibly cynical, or unforgivable and horribly mistaken? Might it even, in some circumstances, be unforgivable but tragically constructive?

[Which makes me sound like some ghastly urban guerrilla wannabe, but think about it for a moment. I defy anyone to say that they can’t think of any example of cold-blooded murder whose effect was to improve the situation.]

Opposition to terror and terrorism is an honourable ethical stance – arguably it’s a necessary ethical stance – but it’s not a political position; if anyone offers us anti-terrorism as a political programme, we should be very wary of what we’re getting. If your opposition to terrorism has political implications – to reduce the amount of terror in the world, we should change this and this – the chances are that you’ve brought those conclusions to your stance on terror, not derived them from it.

(Sorry about the long quote.)

In short, what Blimpish won’t find in that piece is what he read into it – my politics. I think the huggy Guardian-reading culture-cringing fantasy-internationalism he attributes to me is something of a strawman – it seems to be defined more by being neither nationalist nor communitarian than by any positive content – but it’s not what I actually believe. More to the point, I don’t believe that this political position – or any other – follows necessarily from the ‘ethical humanist’ stance I outlined.