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And freedom fighters are by definition people committing freedom fighting. >What you cannot is to hope that any definition of 'terrorism' would include all 'ev
by ukj 6y ago
And freedom fighters are by definition people committing freedom fighting.
>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.
- skissane 6y ago> Ceteris paribus, it's 'terrorism' when you think it's 'evil', and it's freedom fighting' when you think it’s 'good' Is “good terrorism” impossible? What if the year is 1942 and you are trying to blow up a Nazi party meeting?
- ukj 6y agoSounds like freedom fighting to me (given my biases).
- skissane 6y agoWhy can’t it be both at the same time? I realise in some people’s usage the two terms are mutually exclusive, but not everyone agrees with that usage.
- ukj 6y agoSure. That is how perspectivism works. Or, if you want to stretch a metaphor you could say that terrorism/freedom-fighting are in superposition.
- skissane 6y agoOne person may adopt value-laden definitions, another person may adopt value-neutral ones. Arguably, the term “perspectivism” is more appropriate for the former than the later. 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.)
- zajio1am 6y ago> Precisely the problem. 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).