Author: M Barbu

A Matter of Citizenship: Shamima Begum, Islamic State and Natural Justice

Rarely do terms such as “Islamic State” and “natural justice” keep company. Both seem alien, uncomfortable, fundamentally ill-suited. For one, Islamic State’s own approach to natural justice, archaic and stone-age obscurantist, has tended to be distinctly unnatural and particularly brutal. But it has also invited, in response to its particular brand of terrorism, a troubling approach on the part of governments determined to excoriate it. For those taking to its sources of fanaticism, harsh measures are meted out.

Social media is the cornerstone of recruitment and planning for all militant networks

Bot image on Telegram suggesting that pro-white / Neo-Nazis create backup channels on Tam Tam encrypted platform.

Social media is the cornerstone of recruitment and planning for all militant networks; nothing more so than encrypted chat platforms. Recent media reports have been misleading regarding Neo-Nazi use of Telegram being hampered by security sweeps on the platform. While TRAC noted that a dozen or so accounts were taken down in late June 2020, since that time Telegram use has gone unabated on the encrypted platform. With over a billion users worldwide, Telegram now also attracts anarchists as well. Though European anarchists continue to prefer private blogs for communication, North American anarchists quietly entered the Telegram space in 2020. Islamic State and AQ both continue diffuse across multiple platforms, but their foreign language outlets remain unscathed on Telegram.

Beinart’s Final Solution: End Israel as Nation-State of the Jewish People

If Israel were to end its existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people — as Beinart advocates — and become a Jewish “homeland” in a single binational, bi-religious state, a demographic war would become inevitable, in which Jews and Muslims would compete to become a majority. As soon as a Muslim majority materialized, the Jewish “homeland” would become precisely the kind of “Bantustan” that Beinart has railed against in the context of South Africa.