Woolwich Murder and the problems of using the wrong word.

It's no secret that a lot of us have felt something in the wake of a soldier being murdered just outside of Woolwich Barracks in South London.  The story has some unique oddities to it anyway.  No criminal of any kind hangs around waiting for the Police to pick them up, and only the dumbest think that the police will kill them rather than capturing them.  Also, not since the days of the Northern Ireland troubles have the armed forces been a regular target for murder in this country.  So, this is an unusual case all told.

But the media, especially the press, and parts of social media have been bandying about the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" in relation to this murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, a member of the 2nd Batallion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. 

It is far too easy to use the words terrorist and terrorism, in situations where we just don't know the full back story.  The security services had picked up one of the suspects before, and one is believed to have converted to Islam.  However, no killing done in anyones name, never mind the name of God, is justified.  Calling it terrorism, or the perpetrators terrorists, is giving credence and credibility to their complaints, which is the last thing you need to do.  In some cases, it might actually glorify their actions and their motives, and that is a definite no-no.

And just as bad, is several facebook postings that crop up all over the social network from pages and organisations with agendas of their own, shared by well meaning people who do not realise what these postings really mean.  Some of these posts that get shared espouse racial hatrid, contain statements attributed to politicians that were in fact never made by those politicians, and do nothing to help solve the real problems of the world.  In fact, some of these posts are borderline incitement to violence against other people.  Be very careful what you share, some of these posts are close to or borderline illegal.

What happened was a murder.  That is emotive enough.  Calling it terrorism is too emotive, it provokes fear and anger, which is exactly what these people want.  They want us to be afraid, they want us to be angry.  It's irresponsible, especially for this Conservative government and the media, to do the radical's job for them.  They should be more responsible and not use over-emotive words, that do the radical's bidding.  For the Conservative government, that's their modus operandi, provoke fear, emotionalise everything, divide and conquer. For the media, it's all about sales, ratings, numbers. They think emotionalising the story will get better ratings, more sales.

The best thing to do, is actually to de-emotionalise and de-editorialise this story.  It was a murder.  The murder victim was a serving soldier, two men charged at police, they were arrested.  Those are the pure undiluted facts.  Calling it terrorism, or butchery as one columnist in the Telegraph did, is emotionalising and editorialising the story.  Now a newspaper columnist can do that if they want.  But if they feel like they should do things like that, then do it about a week or so afterwards, not in the relatively immediate aftermath, up to 72 hours after the event.  

The English Defence League amongst others are not helping this whole situation by declaring war on extremist preachers of Islam.  That will do nothing to decrease tensions.

In short, never call it terrorism.  Never call them terrorists.  You will give them what they want.