The cafe seige in Sydney I think was a lone gunman who did not have any affiliation with any terrorist group - in fact, I think he wasn't born as a Muslim.
The links or not of the Bondi shooters to terrorist organisations will come out in due course. Until the official information comes out, I don't take too much notice of social media hypothesis of whether there were terrorost organisation links or not.
Some of the Islamic attacks in the UK and Europe have been directly attributed to local terror cells of middle east based terrorist organisations - some to domestic terrorist organisations, and some to lone wolves. The fact is, as for example wit hthe Bondi klillings, these terrorist organisations are cheering and celebrating this, which sends a message to other wannabes that you will be immortalised. The second point is - from the video I posted above - unless you think the clips of the preacher-type calling for Jihan, murdfer of Jews, etc was faked, is that through, no doubt a minority, but a network of fanatical religious leaders they are calling their flock to war - for their flock to impose violence on others that don't hold the same values as beliefs as they do - in the name of dog all bitey - and he is biting at the moment. So, whether or not they are orfficially involved in a terrorist organisation is not really the issue - it is whether the movement as a whole - or a part of it - is grooming its flock and inciting violence. And the evidence seems to be, there is at least part of it that is doing so. Allu Akhbar seems to be a common chant when these things are happening..
This is not limited to Muslim extreism, by the way. The right wing, or lets call them for what they are - the neo-nazis are on the rise in the western world, too. We've seen the mosque shootings, and it is a frequent occurence that we are reaing or seeing on the news further mobilisation and swelling of numbers.
Yes, people are being opprtunistic to push their agenda, which further intensifies divisions in society and inflames those who, let's be honest, can't think for themselves.
However, trying to brush it under the carpet is not going to help. Trying to say it is not factual when it is is brushing it under the carpet. We have to confront it, amd work through the root causes of it to come to a solution. All it will do is give air to those that uise it for their agenda pushing and the longer we leave the problem to fester, the harder it will be to solve it, and the more air we give to those nutjobs pushing their agenda.
Failure to tackle and make very public that tackling of any hatred emboldens those whose hatreed is not being tackled. And tackling only one form of hatred (e.g. right wing nutjobs) and brushing under the carpet another form of hatred (e.g. islamic nutjobs) will further isolate and intensify the people who feel they are being singled out.
How the NSW Police came to the conclusion that the more fanatical Palestinian Action protesters were chating is "where's the Jews" is beyond me unless almost evey other non-bleeped out version that I saw was doctored. We have the issues over here with the grooming gangs in Rotheram - was too politically correct to call them out for what they were.. Only one person was - Tommy Robinson;l a right wing bit of a nutjob. Guess what? It finally came to light that the Pakistanu Muslim grooming gans were grooming 16 year old girls systematically to virtually enslave for their sexual pleasure. Apparently infidel wormen are worth less - to UK authorites, it would seem as they didn't even attempt to investigate - reportedly for fear of being labelled racist. (that is not the official reason - I don't think an official reason has been given). The ramifications of that are that more and more people are turning to those of Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage's ilk because they now have lost confidence of the traditional political parties on both sides of politics. If you don't confront it, you can't fix it. And you gove more air time to the nutjobs who sell snake oil fixes.
The UK government has now tried to put together some parliametnary inquiry for it (we don't have royal commissions - not that they seem to achieve anything anyway looking at the last 5 or 6 of them). They can't even get a chair to hang around for more than 10 minutes and the inuiry has yet to start, with victims being further left in limbo. Who do you think they will turn to, and a great deal more people.
Stephen Fry put it well.. the rise of the right is because of the failure of the left's fasilures. Bill Maher put it another way - you can be too woke (and i hate than term) and turn people to the right.
