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Comment by jjgreen | Hacker News Reader

This seems to me to be rather worrying, conceptually. "Abuse of women" is (I would hope) something we can agree on, it's not subjective (except possibly for some psychopath abusers). But "terrorism" is demonstrably subjective, one day a freedom fighter, the next day a terrorist; Hamas being a terrorist organisation in the US but not in Norway. Identifying the two risks reducing "abuse of women" to being just a point of view.

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Terrorism is rule by fear. Liberation struggles inspire fear in those that rule, not among the ruled classes. Imagine yourself in nazi germany, would you be terrorized by the resistance movement blowing up trains and assassinating cops/officers? Or would you be terrorized by the political police?

The word terrorism has a nebulous meaning. Historically, it could refer to 19th anarchist bombers blowing up bourgeois cafés and police stations, which arguably nobody in the general population fears (and back in the days of the propaganda of the deed, had in fact a lot of popular support).

Or it can mean takfirist islam like Daech or Al Qaeda, considering the general population is not pure enough and mass assassinations are necessary to open its eyes... which is scary as fuck for anyone and everyone.

In that sense, studying the balance of power is important in order to label (or not) a movement a terrorist. Even when i disagree with its method, i will never label a resistance movement "terrorists", because that's precisely what the nazis did and what their ideological followers are still doing today in regards to palestinian/kurdish/indigenous resistance, anarchists and eco-warriors defending land against industry, racial minority groups mounting armed self-defense groups, etc..

Imagine yourself in nazi germany, would you be terrorized by the resistance movement blowing up trains and assassinating cops/officers? Or would you be terrorized by the political police?

If I were a Nazi in Nazi Germany, then very much the former.

Freedom fighters are the irregular military forces I support, terrorists are those that I don't.

Legal status is just an international politics bargaining chip and should not be considered a replacement for semantics. Terrorism - the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

Hm, I see it the other way around. To me, the "slippery slope" here is that men who repeatedly commit domestic violence could be labeled terrorists.

And, frankly, I'm ok with that.

Why? What does that serve other than to ruin the word?

One of the scariest things happening right now in a post-intellectual America is that words don’t have meaning anymore. It’s all just “good” or “bad”, “our team” or “your team”. It’s how a group that does manifestly unpatriotic things gets by calling themselves patriots with a straight face.

I’m not sure calling abusive criminals “terrorists” does a single good thing.

Calling someone who abuses women to rule them by fear a "terrorist" doesn't sound like a stretch to me. In contrast, the media calling anyone attacking a cop or a military officer a "terrorist" sounds like way more of a stretch, and much closer to Nazi Germany's understanding of the word where anything the government (NOT the people) feared was labeled a terrorist.

Spend some time around defense attorneys and the types of people who constantly get in trouble for domestics. This would just be one of the many other things politicians have foisted on the poor (who have less self-control, else they would not be poor) that put them into continual conflict with the legal system long after they have served their prison sentences.

If you want domestics to go to jail for 50 years, change the statutes so that there's mandatory minimums of 50 years in prison. Or life, who cares? The chickenshit stuff of larding lifelong restrictions on convicts related to domestic abuse results in the unending harrying of poor bums with complex post-sentencing requirements involving guns, cars, etc. that keeps lawyers busy, cops doing make-work, and poor people poor.

Adding terrorism nonsense to the mix will just encourage the FBI to employ thousands of CIs to induce working class couples to cheat on one another with their catfished agents to get one or both to commit 'terrorism' to lock them up.

Yes, 'domestic terrorist' could take on an extended meaning, and rightfully in this case.

(edit: judging by the downvotes, a decent amount of sympathy on HN for those engaged in domestic violence. Noted).

Yeah the article makes no sense

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