I'll be much more horrified when Merriam-Webster begins defining terrorism the way that the Americans often use it in common discourse, i.e., the attacker's acts were terrifying and the victims and community were terrorised, therefore he's a terrorist.
Terror has been a tool of a number of political groups over the years. An easy example would be when the IRA bombing campaign moved outside of London after the ring of steel was constructed. The destruction of property, or the deaths of individuals themselves in London weren't the aims, it was the threat/fear/terror that anyone could become a victim. The terror was a lever to force government response.
However, would you for example include propaganda, which is specifically designed to spread fear? I always associated terrorism with physical violence.
Propaganda in the form of "$OUTGROUP are all murderers and rapists" is just fearmongering rather than terrorism, propaganda that threatens violence directly (eg. "Kill all $OUTGROUP") might be considered such, esp. if there is any reason to think that the propaganda is at all likely to be acted upon (so, if $OUTGROUP is "clowns" I don't think it would currently qualify, but "banksters" might).
I can't say for sure and would really need decent examples.
Randomly killing people for non-political reasons, such as done by some mass shooters or serial killers, is not terrorism, even if in some cases it kills more people than many acts of terrorism do.
The Christchurch mosque shooting was very consciously political - the perpetrator published a manifesto, he pre-announced and live streamed his crime to an online political discussion community dominated by the far right, he was hoping to inspire copycats through which to change society (he hoped to trigger the genocide of the Muslim minority in Western societies). Compare that to the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting - in the later case, the perpetrator didn’t prepare a manifesto. His motivations appeared to be primarily personal. Like everyone, he had some political views which investigators pieced together from writings and communications he left behind, but he made no attempt to communicate a clear political justification for his monstrous act.
Both shootings were horrific acts of evil. But only one was clearly intended as political. Only one was a clear case of terrorism
In the battlefield of narratives perspective matters.
Unfortunately, this definition is rarely used, because it doesn't match the political goals of states. First, it follows from the definition that there is widespread state terrorism. Second, countries that send military occupation forces to other countries have a vested interest to brand asymmetric warfare against their military as terrorism, but this is not covered by the definition.
Until you find yourself having to engage in terro^H^H^H^H^H freedom fighting to achieve your own political goals.
I am a freedom fighter.
You are conducting asymmetric warfare.
They are terrorists.
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
As for the Greek theatrical tradition
Which represents that summer's expedition
Not as a mere reconnaisance in force
By three brigades of foot and one of horse
(Their left flank covered by some obsolete
Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet)
But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt
To conquer Greece - they treat it with contempt;
And only incidentally refute
Major Greek claims, by stressing what repute
The Persian monarch and the Persian nation
Won by this salutary demonstration:
Despite a strong defence and adverse weather
All arms combined magnificently together.You can't define 'terrorism' in such a way so as to include all terrorists, and exclude all non-terrorists.
This is the essentialist dream.
Defining terrorism is not hard - public violence on civilians for ideological (political, religious) reasons. Or more narrow definition that would replace 'civilians' with 'general public' (t exclude attack on state structures).
What you cannot is to hope that any definition of 'terrorism' would include all 'evil' acts and exclude all 'good' acts, because distinction between these is complex.
>What you cannot is to hope that any definition of 'terrorism' would include all 'evil' acts and exclude all 'good' acts, because distinction between these is complex.
Precisely the problem.
Ceteris paribus, it's 'terrorism' when you think it's 'evil', and it's freedom fighting' when you think it's 'good'.
Two different descriptions of exactly the same facts.
No, problem is to try to assign a moral value to these words, instead of keeping them just descriptive. If you keep just descriptive meaning, you could see that there is not a contradiction between 'terrorism' and 'freedom fighting'.
Some 'terrorism' may be a part of 'freedom fighting', while some not (if the ideological end is different from freedom). And some 'freedom fighting' may be 'terrorism', while some not (if means does not include attacking civilian population, just military structures).
Is “good terrorism” impossible? What if the year is 1942 and you are trying to blow up a Nazi party meeting?
I realise in some people’s usage the two terms are mutually exclusive, but not everyone agrees with that usage.
Or, if you want to stretch a metaphor you could say that terrorism/freedom-fighting are in superposition.
The fact that an act occurred, and the question of what its announced motivations are, is not (usually) something that depends on your perspective. People with widely different moral and political views can agree on those descriptive facts even if they make completely opposite value judgements of them.
(Conspiracy theorists sometimes dispute the fact that an attack occurs and the real motivations behind it. But there are plenty of terrorist attacks which they don’t bother doing this to.)
Instead of X is [noun], we could say X is Person who engaged in X [acts.]
And then the debate is still exactly where we left off.
Was that person engaging in X, or was he engaging in Y?
X = Terrorism, Y = Freedom fighting
The main issue is that your attitude towards the activity/person is encoded in the language you are using to describe it.
I am making a distinction between actions and nouns. I hold that it is not controversial to say certain actions are considered terroristic actions and certain actions are considered freedom fighting actions. Often, the same people engage in both, and combined with our tendency to want to assign people in noun classes (He is an X), this results in the perceived equivalence you are speaking about.
An X is somebody who engages in X.
If you are engaging in terrorism then you are a terrorist. If you are engaging in freedom fighting then you are a freedom fighter.
You say you are engaging in freedom fighting. I say you are engaging in terrorism.
The distinction is merely your description of your behavior vs my description of your behavior.
Perspective.
Instead of calling you a 'terrorist' (noun). I can simply describe your actions/behaviour as 'terrorising' (verb).
Whether I classify you into a noun-class or a verb-class is moot.
I am still classifying your behaviour as terrorism, not freedom fighting.
As I said, if you narrow it down to specific actions (shooting, bombing, protest, etc.) the distinction between the two seems far more clear. I don't think anyone would claim that killing a crowd of civilians is somehow a freedom-fighting act, even if it is done by someone who mostly engages in freedom-fighting actions.
Person A defines the EXACT SAME precise sets of actions as 'terrorism'. Person B defines the EXACT SAME precise sets of actions as 'freedom fighting'.
They do it ostensively. THAT (points finger) is X.
Language doesn't work the way you think it works.
What you are trying to achieve is called Essentialism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism
That is how they justified killing civilians to themselves. Casualties of war.
Just a short excursion into recent history: Nelson Mandela was once classified as a terrorist. It's because the ANC was involved in a number of bombings while engaging in 'freedom-fighting'.
As I said initially: if you stick to describing actions, rather than intents or consequences, the difficulty of defining things is much easier.
Your example is also illustrating my point perfectly. Under my system, Nelson Mandela would not be a terrorist or a freedom fighter, he would be a man who engaged in both (separately) terroristic acts and freedom-fighting acts. That seems far less controversial of a statement to me.
Was that an act of terrorism or an act of freedom fighting?
If your next question will be, "Is the ANC then a terrorist organization?" I refer you to my previous comment where I said we should avoid labeling nouns, but instead label actions.
Labeling actions is exactly what I did.
The acton was "blowing up a bar full of civilians".
You labelled that action as 'terrorism'. The ANC labelled that action as 'freedom fighting'.
They defined themselves as 'human'. Those in power rejected that definition.
That's why they engaged in freedom fighting. Or as the National Party called it - terrorism.
Ted Bundy terrorised his community, but there was no political aim. He was a sociopath, but not a terrorist.
Anders Behring Breivik terrorised his community, and he had an explicit and clear ideological aim. He's a sociopath, and a terrorist.
Doesn't that also make things like war and police brutality terrorism?
Growing up in the US post-9/11, the word terrorism itself was very political. It was weaponized by successive presidential administrations as a catch-all term for "any person or group the government doesn't like" and repeated endlessly on news broadcasts and in other popular media. Terrorism is our only "justification" for holding people like Ramzi bin al-Shibh without trial for nearly 20 years.
The original meaning of the word was lost long ago in popular American discourse, and the state prefers it that way. We still see that today, as prominent American political figures label peaceful protesters terrorists.
Anyways, thanks for helping me chew through this. I'd never considered the meaning of the word closely before.
Gee, I hear it a lot. Northern New England, US.