Guilded tombs do worms enfold: 'Pyrite concepts', Terrorism, and Extremism in a Pluralist UK

Human rights frameworks appeal to and are derived from the liberal values of tolerance and pluralism. But defence of those values has been pursued by reference to a series of superficially attractive concepts which when crystalised into hard legal norms obscure their internal incoherence. We propose that terrorism and extremism are such ‘pyrite concepts’ —  commonly fool’s gold —  operating within and damaging the pluralist basis of human rights legal frameworks today. Pyrite concepts are more than contested concepts, their glittering appeal masks the contagion their instability spreads to the normative human rights structures they are applied within. In this article we trace how the legal norm, ‘terrorism’ is vague and unwieldy, reliant on decision-maker discretion to temper its more perverse and rights-infringing applications. A similar pattern is identifiable with ‘extremism’, where a term once used rhetorically to sully political judgement about the acceptable boundaries of state action, morphs into an actionable norm through soft policy prescriptions which expand the sphere of criminal action without expected safeguards. Creating counter-terrorism and counter-extremism regimes within the gilded tombs of pyrite concepts undermines the pluralist foundations of democracy and the very notion of security which it is purportedly designed to defend.