David Cameron Joining A Terrorist Group Analysis

What are the reasons for joining a terrorist group? What can we do about it? David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, tried to bring clarity to our minds. On the 3rd February of 2011 he held a speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he talks about the Islamist extremism and how important it is for us to act together. First of all, Cameron makes clear that one cannot describe terrorism with one certain ethnic group or religion (ll. 3-4). There are a lot of different origins for terrorist attacks, for example Anarchists or the Red Army Faction (ll.5-6). By giving these examples he wants to convince his audience how important it is for something like this to not happen again. To embrace this even more, he uses words like “biggest

In Cameron’s opinion it is all a question of identity (ll.27). Young men cannot identify with the Islam practiced at home since it is transplanted to western countries. As a result it is hard for them to identify with Britain as well (ll.29-32) and they start to feel “rootless” (ll.44). Moreover, Cameron states that immigrant’s problems were often ignored because they were too “fearful to stand up to them” (ll.40). All this leads to the conclusion, that it is partly our, the communities and the governments, fault that immigrants do not feel included or welcome in our society (ll. 33-37). In order to find a community they belong to, Muslims often turn to fanatic groups. Cameron uses the words “we have failed” on purpose. He wants to remind us that we all are part of a community; citizens and politicians like him, and therefore are part of the things happening around us. To support this he includes the anaphora “we have” (ll. 33 + 34-35 +

54-55 + 58-59) as well as a stronger society and identities (ll.60). To give his audience a better overview he structures both subjects by using “first”, “second” (ll.58 + 60) and adds further information. An important factor is the change from passive tolerance to a more active, muscular liberalism (ll. 60-62). Cameron wants to build a society in which everyone “feels free to say yes, I am a Muslim, I am a Hindu, I am a Christian but I am also a Londoner or a Berliner too” (ll.78-79). Cameron ends his speech by summarizing what he said before and even enhancing it by using the “Power of three” in line 87: “We need stamina, patience and endurance.”. He is sure of the fact that it will not be easy but as long as they stick together they have a change of stopping the terrorism. To conclude one can say that Cameron’s main goals are convincing the audience that something has to change and that they can only achieve this change it if they work together. In my opinion, he does a good job in doing so since he knows how to correctly speak to people about a critical and recent topic like this. He has a great balance between informing and winning the audience’s