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Comment by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF

2 days ago

> if you support a terrorist group

What does "support" mean in this context?

Commonly, when we talk about "support" for an organization (or a cause) it can mean any of the following:

1) financial (e.g. donations, membership fees, investments)

2) human resources (e.g. volunteers, staffing, training)

3) material & in-kind (e.g. equipment, office space, supplies)

4) knowledge & expertise (e.g advisory, R&D, workshops, training)

5) networking & partnerships (e.g. collaboration, referrals, advocacy alliances)

6) policy & institutional (applies to governments, not individuals, so not relevant "in this context")

7) community & social (e.g. public awareness, volunteer mobilization, cultural legitimacy)

  • I appreciate the answer. I guess "attending a protest" falls under "public awareness" or "cultural legitimacy" if the protest is specifically about the organization being unpopular or demonized. Sticking with the Gaza situation example, most protests are along the lines of "Israel shouldn't do that" and not "Hamas needs more support". Claiming otherwise seems massively disingenuous; it's obvious that people oppose terrorism and Israel's actions for largely the same reasons.

    • > Sticking with the Gaza situation example, most protests are along the lines of "Israel shouldn't do that" and not "Hamas needs more support".

      Yes, here is the nuance, which I concur with and I would hope most reasonable people could agree on.

      In practice, protests are a mix of people but onlookers take a binary stance. It is not going to be difficult to see at protest a poster or cameras capture someone shouting something like "globalize the infitada! or or death to America".

      Complicating matters further, protest organizers and the protesters themselves have more of a fluid behavior and motivations - it is not a club where membership is controlled and patrolled, a protest's mission is usually a little vague and fluid, etc.

      And that is, I think, where the real risk lies - you are at a protest and you can find yourself surrounded by others who ARE supporting Hamas even if you're not and you get lumped together.

      This happens on "the right" as well. You'll have some Neo-Nazi's in a conservative protest against XYZ, and now all of a sudden they're all Nazi's.

      It is deeply unfortunate.

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