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> I think bombers broadcasting warning messages is somewhat more common with certain types of political violence. I know weather underground bombings tried to c

• vkou 6y ago
  Your definition is not quite accurate. Some forms of violence performed to promote an ideology are called war. In fact, war is by far the most common, and the most destructive form of 'violence used to promote an ideology'.
  • fwip 6y ago
    Perhaps war is a form of terrorism.
    • klipt 6y ago
      One difference is war has rules, terrorism doesn't. Deliberately targeting civilians in war is usually considered a war crime, while deliberately targeting civilians in a terrorist attack is considered ... a standard terrorist attack.
      • vageli 6y ago
        > One difference is war has rules, terrorism doesn't. Citation needed? Unless every party to a war ever signed the Geneva Convention or something (and even then, war crimes exist which are arguably acts of terrorism). See: the use of agent orange, the bombing of Dresden, etc.
        • cinquemb 6y ago
          Lol yeah, Total warfare[0] has no rules: "A war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war
      • vkou 6y ago
        What about terrorists that primarily target a government, or various government institutions? Note that nearly every government organization[1] is generally considered a perfectly acceptable target in a war. It should also be noted that government offices tend to be full of civilians. What about factories producing war materials? They are also staffed by civilians. Factories producing materials that are used by factories that produce war materials? The list goes on. The rules of war are not all that confining, and largely go out the window when one side starts losing. [1] With a few exceptions.
      • DSingularity 6y ago
        War has rules? Until it doesn’t. Look at the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It was concluded by an agreement for a total withdrawal of PLO forces from Lebanon with promises by the Israelis not to attack Palestinians. This was negotiated through US mediators. So what did the Israelis do? They lit the sky for their proxy forces to roam the newly defenseless refugee camps and carry out their killings [1]. In the end, I wonder which has destroyed more human lives? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
    • bigbubba 6y ago
      There is truth to this, particularly the sorts of war that target civilian populations to demoralize the enemy. Another term for 'strategic bombing' is 'terror bombing'. > One of the strategies of war is to demoralize the enemy so that peace or surrender becomes preferable to continuing the conflict. Strategic bombing has been used to this end. The phrase "terror bombing" entered the English lexicon towards the end of World War II and many strategic bombing campaigns and individual raids have been described as terror bombing by commentators and historians. Because the term has pejorative connotations, some, including the Allies of World War II, have preferred to use euphemisms such as "will to resist" and "morale bombings".[1][2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing
    • 6nf 6y ago
      You could define it like that but why?
  • vageli 6y ago
    Why do you think war is not terrorizing/terrorism?
    • ByteJockey 6y ago
      Generally speaking the definitions of terrorism preclude state actors from being included (kind of a cop out, but they literally have carve-outs for the state). See the US legal definition of terrorism: premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents Title 22 Chapter 38 U.S. Code § 2656f Generally speaking, wartime actions by one state against another don't seem to be included in this group. That being said, there's not exactly an agreed upon definition of terrorism, the best I can come up with is "acts of political violence that don't fall into the category of war" A good place to start for more reading on the differences between the legal definitions of terrorism in different countries is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_terrorism#In_national_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_terrorism#In_nat... It's not just the US, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_terrorism
      • Aeolun 6y ago
        Isn’t the part that makes it less like terrorism that you ‘declare war’ on a different nation first? That’s why pearl harbor is seen more like terrorism, and the rest of the war more like war.
        • fbarred 6y ago
          Pearl Harbor is not seen as terrorism. It's seen as a military attack on the United States, and an act of war. United States hasn't declared war since 1942: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_Unit... "The last time the United States formally declared war, using specific terminology, on any nation was in 1942, when war was declared against Axis-allied Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, because President Franklin Roosevelt thought it was improper to engage in hostilities against a country without a formal declaration of war. Since then, every American president has used military force without a declaration of war."
• whimsicalism 6y ago
  > violence performed in the commision of promoting an ideology is terrorism. Was the invasion of Iraq terrorism? What about the Boston tea party?
  • bigbubba 6y ago
    One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. There are certainly people who believe both or either of those were terrorism.
    • vageli 6y ago
      Terrorism is the use of violence to promote an ideology. Full stop. Nothing precludes a terrorist act from helping people. Even Pablo Escobar set up schools and other institutions in his neighborhood.
      • bigbubba 6y ago
        I agree that's the coherent prescribed definition of terrorism. In practice, whether somebody admits something was terrorism depends largely on which side they agree with. When they agree with the terrorist, euphemisms like 'freedom fighter' are often used instead. There are probably some Columbians who were on the receiving side of Escobar's gifting and called him a humanitarian for it.
        • Natales 6y ago
          True. I visited Medellin a couple of times between 97 and 2006 when I was doing business in LATAM, and I recall clearly that many locals had tremendous admiration for Escobar, constantly praising all he did for the city and the community, while de-emphasizing, and sometimes justifying, the true nature and methods of his business.
      • whimsicalism 6y ago
        Sure, but "terrorism" explicitly implies a value judgement. Why else would you take issue with the term "political violence", which is equally technically correct? It is violence for political aims. You were clearly trying to make a point beyond the prescriptive definition of the word, so this comment reads like backtracking to me.
• anonymouse008 6y ago
  I’m convinced there are a handful of accounts designed to suppress thought and discussion — they hit you with a few downvotes... see how you respond, then downvote up to 10 votes. (Note this only from my experience... it would help immensely to know who downvoted)
  • monoideism 6y ago
    I know this is true. There are a handful of bots, or possibly HN itself, that immediately downvotes comments that HN will find popular, but that aren't "politically correct". Happens to me frequently that I receive an immediate 3-4 downvotes, only to end up with 10-20 upvotes and few subsequent downvotes. The only alternative -- that there are a handful of avid HNers who are on here 24 hours a day, who really hate discussion of certain topics, seems...actually maybe it's just people. I don't know.
    • gxnxcxcx 6y ago
      Once an open platform becomes crowded enough, downvoting without further interaction to show disagreement is fully expected. It's unhealthy because it turns discourse into a popularity contest, but that's the world we live in. Maybe your opinion is just a tad less popular than what you expect it to be.
      • monoideism 6y ago
        > Maybe your opinion is just a tad less popular than what you expect it to be. Perhaps you didn't read all of my comment. I said I end up with 10-20 upvotes. I also mentioned that these are opinions that HN as a whole finds popular. It's the discrepancy between the initial voting within the first few minutes and the later voting that is strange. And it's always an initial 2-3 immediate downvotes, followed by dozens of upvotes. That said, any discussion of downvotes or upvotes on HN will draw downvotes. That's a given.
        • jlokier 6y ago
          > It's the discrepancy between the initial voting within the first few minutes and the later voting that is strange. And it's always an initial 2-3 immediate downvotes, followed by dozens of upvotes. There's no need to invoke a "cabal" theory because it's not odd, it's a natural and expected artefact of the system dynamics. First you get downvoted because someone didn't like your comment. Or even by accident, mis-clicking the wrong arrow. Probably something about your comment is seen as downvote-worthy by some people but not most. After some time, your comment is seen greyed out because of the downvote(s); just 1 downvote is enough for this. But your comment isn't that bad, there are mixed reactions. So people seeing it greyed out think "that doesn't deserve a downvote" and give it a compensatory upvote to remove the grey. Those upvoters don't see the effect of each other's upvotes for a while because of the time between loading a page of comments and reading it, so multiple compensatory upvotes take place even though just 1-2 would be enough. And they can't react to the grey as early as the downvote(s) for the same reason. The viewing figures go through an exponential rise phase, and if your first downvote(s) and subsequent trickle of downvote(s), and compensate-for-grey-because-it-wasn't-that-bad upvote(s) all fall on the exponential rise, you see the effect you've described: A small number of downvotes early followed by a lot more upvotes after a time delay. If your comment elicits enough mixed responses from different people, it will still get a trickle of downvotes while the viewing figures are high. But you can't see downvotes easily while there are a burst of upvotes. So in this case, you see a small number of initial downvote(s), a larger number of upvotes, followed by a small number of downvotes again as the compensatory-upvote burst comes to an end.
• monoideism 6y ago
  Didn't downvote, but terrorism is a subcategory of political violence. So the term, while somewhat vague, is not inaccurate. 9/11 was a particularly horrific example of political violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_violence
• j4yav 6y ago
  People are responding. The downvotes usually really come if you add an edit complaining about downvotes.
• dang 6y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25540820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25540820.