Britain wants to redefine ‘terrorism’ for the social media age, but it risks going too broad

UK officials worry that social media is contributing to a rise in terrorism. Bloomberg

The scourge of terrorism has been increasingly commonplace in the modern world for more than 50 years. Yet a new debate has been raging at the top of the UK political agenda in the past week over how to define terrorism. The underlying question facing those now engaged in the argument is how to tackle threats to the public.

What triggered the push to discuss the most fundamental reforms of terrorism policy and counter-extremism was the recent sentencing of a teenager of Rwandan heritage Axel Rudakubana, who killed three young girls in Southport last summer. He was sentenced to at least 52 years for a rampage that included the murders, as well as attacks on eight other children and two adults.

Rudakubana had a direct family connection to the 1990s genocide in Rwanda, and his online history showed a deep obsession with mass killings. The whole episode was described as pure evil. But prosecutors said he could not be linked to any specific terrorist cause that sought to use force to influence the government. The judge overruled this submission to say the motivation behind the atrocity was not the point, what mattered was the “shock and revulsion” it caused.

When it comes to terrorism there is both the international basis of the crime, largely situated in UN resolutions, as well as particular national designations that vary from state to state. For some, it is a matter of “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter”, while others draw fine and entirely partial distinctions between terrorists and militants.

In these divides, there is friction and the differing interpretations are sources of divisions in themselves. Now we must factor in the impact of extreme violence, too. What is clear from the latest issues raised in London is that much is at stake in how these arguments play out.

A leaked version of internal deliberations by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s staff was circulated by Policy Exchange, a think tank, on Monday. It said that counter extremism reviews into individuals reported as concerning could no longer be based on “ideologies of concern” but instead cover a range of behavioural patterns. Some of the further discussion of how this would work looks like a hit parade of some of the ugliest aspects of social media, covering extreme misogyny, men’s rights activists, environmental anarchists and single-issue grievances. The last groupings now have their own acronym, Lasi ( Left-Wing, Anarchist and Single-Issue).

The 2024 review of the UK terrorism threat from PoolRe, the UK government backed terrorism reinsurance body, warns that global terrorism remains the greatest identifiable danger posed by extremists to the country.

“It is highly likely that the predominant threat currently posed by global terrorist actors is from their ability to radicalise vulnerable UK-based individuals online and subsequently inspire those individuals to conduct low sophistication attacks in the UK,” the recently published document said. “It is highly likely that overt and covert online media provides a global network through which UK individuals can be radicalised and inspired to conduct attacks. It is highly likely that this applies to all terrorism ideologies in the UK, but particularly Extreme Right-Wing and Islamist terrorism ideologies."

PoolRe’s boss Tom Clementi acknowledges the need to look at the definition because terrorism does not stand still and in recent years we have seen a trend towards terrorism acts becoming increasingly unsophisticated, detaching from the view these acts are carried out by “highly organised groups with a clear political or ideological intent”. He also says that in the current threat environment there is an increased risk of state involvement in attacks. Where states orchestrate atrocities or fund them they have the potential to cause much more damage but these events, unless the state involvement is relatively minimal, should be seen as acts of war not terrorism.

That is not to say that Lasi-style drivers should be diminished but the whole question of whether the terrorism definition should be stretched to its broadest points is opened.

In publishing the internal deliberations of the government, Policy Exchange warns the new government is taking a radically different approach from that of the last review carried out into the country’s flagship counter-extremism policy, Prevent.

Rudakubana had been referred to Prevent three times and had slipped through the cracks. Ms Cooper has already told MPs she is looking beyond that review, carried out by William Shawcross, having adopted all but one of its more than 30 recommendations.

“I will gently point out, however, that the approach that the Shawcross review took was to say that the Prevent programme should be narrowed and should focus particularly on the cases around terrorism,” she told her Conservative shadow spokesman last week. “That could have risked including fewer cases like this one, where ideology is less clear.”

Much is at stake in how these arguments play out

The Shawcross call for Prevent to focus on stopping people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism is “implicitly rejected” in the briefing papers for Ms Cooper. Former policeman Neil Basu, who headed counter-terrorism operations for the Metropolitan Police, is quoted by Policy Exchange calling for a “non-extremist” version of Prevent that tackles these problems outside the core or leading ideological issues.

There is a resources concern for many British officials on the frontline of the terrorism threat. Jonathan Hall, the reviewer of terrorism legislation and the man leading the Ms Cooper’s inquiry, said he worried that following every attack that terrorised people was the wrong approach. While the difference in impacts of various attacks could be wafer thin, the upstream diversion of resources could serve to increase dangers in some areas. He worried specialist law and order agencies and security services would be overwhelmed by a change, especially at time when the threats from states like Iran has grown rapidly.

Terrorism needs a clearcut distinction, while in the social media age the volume of deadly grievances that can spill over into atrocity is equally a terrible danger to society. The danger is the focus on tackling the spread of ideological drivers will now be wrongly relegated to a secondary role.