so weird how we’ve mangled the word terrorism around to mean impeding a military machine or body. maybe this is just my brain turning to worm food but I could have swore it was explicitly when you kill civilians or destroy infrastructure in order to coerce a policy change. but that alteration probably wasn’t intentional or for any specific purpose.
Eh, terrorism has always been a bullshit term. You just didn’t notice it. Governments perform “terrorism” all the fucking time, but they get to call it something else. Terrorism is just when you do something the state doesn’t like. Often it’s violent, and the term is used to maintain the state’s monopoly on violence, but it isn’t always. They’ve been allowed to influence public opinion using the term for far too long.
(Just in case, this comment is not condoning violence, only stating that the term terrorism is purposefully used by the state to turn people against specific groups.)
oof. yeah. I don’t like pointing at 9/11 and desert storm as the time when it changed but it REALLY seems like that was when it changed. I was 9 and got in a lot of trouble for not saying the pledge of allegiance and even though I was way to young to have a real opinion bback then you really can’t fault anyone for coming to the conclusion that we might be the fucking baddies
Back then, people were cautioning against this lingusitic slight of hand, this overuse of rhetorically charged language… because they could lead to a world where ‘everything i dont like is a terrorist’.
But they weren’t listened to, PATRIOT ACT passed, and we now live in the world we were told we would, but even worse actually, because the internet is forever and the NSA has been doing its damndest to make a permanent hard backup of all internet traffic at its mega data center in Utah for over a decade.
Ironically what this means is that Osama Bin Laden won.
He goaded us into destroying ourselves, and we did, we went insane.
The ‘Great Satan’ is doing just a bangup job of carrying out the NeoCon plan for an American Century, what with electing an incompetent idiot rapist who has basically single handedly caused the second Great Depression, and caused us to lose almost all of our international allies.
It definitely started before then, but that’s probably when they realized they aren’t getting any push back from using it and can use it to slander anyone they want.
I know in Star Trek DS9 ('93-99) there’s a part that’s talking about the native people resisting the authoritarian faction taking over. It talks about how terrorism can be good if it’s used to do good. I don’t recall if it uses the word specifically, but I think it does, so by that time it had become obvious enough that it was being abused for the writers of DS9 to talk about it.
Again with the same dum dum “all countries are bad, it’s the same as invading a people half way across the globe and trying to wipe them out” talking point when all other arguments don’t hold up.
By an amazing coincidence over-broad legislation made on top of a legally undefined word ended up used against things and groups which weren’t at all the claimed targets of that legislation.
This was also totally unexpected and nobody could ever had foreseen how they could be leveraged for such uses when those laws were first drafted and approved.
Hopscotching backward time and time again into fascism because we laser focused on bad words and not the actual languages of power.
at least it looks like the guy in the video got off the hook by simply swapping a word around so there’s that. kind of funny in the context of what you said
Yeah it’s supposed to be the use of violence to spread fear, usually for some political aim. I guess we’re counting “violence” against property now too 🙄
so weird how we’ve mangled the word terrorism around to mean impeding a military machine or body. maybe this is just my brain turning to worm food but I could have swore it was explicitly when you kill civilians or destroy infrastructure in order to coerce a policy change. but that alteration probably wasn’t intentional or for any specific purpose.
Eh, terrorism has always been a bullshit term. You just didn’t notice it. Governments perform “terrorism” all the fucking time, but they get to call it something else. Terrorism is just when you do something the state doesn’t like. Often it’s violent, and the term is used to maintain the state’s monopoly on violence, but it isn’t always. They’ve been allowed to influence public opinion using the term for far too long.
(Just in case, this comment is not condoning violence, only stating that the term terrorism is purposefully used by the state to turn people against specific groups.)
25 years ago, the day I stopped watching TV news- the dramatic talking head told me that terrorists had attacked a US military base in Afganistan.
oof. yeah. I don’t like pointing at 9/11 and desert storm as the time when it changed but it REALLY seems like that was when it changed. I was 9 and got in a lot of trouble for not saying the pledge of allegiance and even though I was way to young to have a real opinion bback then you really can’t fault anyone for coming to the conclusion that we might be the fucking baddies
Yeah, that was the inflexion point.
Back then, people were cautioning against this lingusitic slight of hand, this overuse of rhetorically charged language… because they could lead to a world where ‘everything i dont like is a terrorist’.
But they weren’t listened to, PATRIOT ACT passed, and we now live in the world we were told we would, but even worse actually, because the internet is forever and the NSA has been doing its damndest to make a permanent hard backup of all internet traffic at its mega data center in Utah for over a decade.
Ironically what this means is that Osama Bin Laden won.
He goaded us into destroying ourselves, and we did, we went insane.
The ‘Great Satan’ is doing just a bangup job of carrying out the NeoCon plan for an American Century, what with electing an incompetent idiot rapist who has basically single handedly caused the second Great Depression, and caused us to lose almost all of our international allies.
That was when I first noticed that word being abused so egregiously. I wouldn’t be surprised if it started before that.
It definitely started before then, but that’s probably when they realized they aren’t getting any push back from using it and can use it to slander anyone they want.
I know in Star Trek DS9 ('93-99) there’s a part that’s talking about the native people resisting the authoritarian faction taking over. It talks about how terrorism can be good if it’s used to do good. I don’t recall if it uses the word specifically, but I think it does, so by that time it had become obvious enough that it was being abused for the writers of DS9 to talk about it.
It depends. Is it relative? Even then, sometimes we are and sometimes we aren’t.
There aren’t many nations that have their hands clean.
Again with the same dum dum “all countries are bad, it’s the same as invading a people half way across the globe and trying to wipe them out” talking point when all other arguments don’t hold up.
By an amazing coincidence over-broad legislation made on top of a legally undefined word ended up used against things and groups which weren’t at all the claimed targets of that legislation.
This was also totally unexpected and nobody could ever had foreseen how they could be leveraged for such uses when those laws were first drafted and approved.
Hopscotching backward time and time again into fascism because we laser focused on bad words and not the actual languages of power.
at least it looks like the guy in the video got off the hook by simply swapping a word around so there’s that. kind of funny in the context of what you said
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Yeah it’s supposed to be the use of violence to spread fear, usually for some political aim. I guess we’re counting “violence” against property now too 🙄
And specifically on civilian targets
Eh. 100 years ago, “terrorism” meant “assassinating royalty”.
did it actually? that is interesting.
ohhhh because it was coined during the French revolution. I should have guessed