Can we as people on the broadest sense of the political left stop trying to widen the definition of terrorism and instead recognize the invested interest in making that word mean what it does Post-9/11? You all sound like fucking narcs.
i have no idea what this means can you specify?
like ? ? do you mean people calling spree killers terrorists, or people referring to covert direct action as terrorism, or something totally different? i am not trying to be hostile i just want to understand
Ok, first a bit on the meaning of terrorism.
A lot of people think terrorism means something like “to achieve your goals by frightening your opponent through excessive violence”. It doesn’t. A lot of armies frequently try to achieve their goals by frightening their opponent through excessive violence. When armies do it, it’s called ‘shock and awe’, ‘psychological warfare’, etc. So terrorism isn’t defined by terror.
What terrorism means, how it gets consistently used, is “violence/act-of-war employed with a political aim by someone not employed by a state.”
Now, why would you define such a thing? Well, most states have signed a thing called The Geneva Conventions which includes stuff like ‘soldiers have basic rights’ and ‘don’t torture’. If you want to not respect someones basic rights as a soldier and you do want to torture them, you need to call them something other than a soldier. ‘Criminal’ doesn’t work because criminals have rights too. So let’s invent a new word and let’s make it sound very scary… terrorist.
The word terrorist was invented to violate human rights. And it serves that function very efficiently. Most people feel a strong emotional response to the word ‘terrorist’, a response they do not feel when they hear the word ‘enemy soldier’ and as a result of that emotion they’re more willing to accept things they know are not ehtical. The word terrorist doesn’t just get used to torture the enemy, it gets used to strip us all of basic rights, to monitor our communication, to declare a state of emergency, to expand policing and make us less free and more controlled in may other ways.
So we have this word, invented to violate our human rights and increase our oppression. What do we do with it? Do we fight for equal recognition of white racist shooters as terrorists? Or do we recognize that the very word is a sham that is going to do nothing but further our oppression?
