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At which point, I would say we have successfully deflected off of the word "terrorist" and allowed ourselves to get stuck in in the non-impactful rut of fixatin

At which point, I would say we have successfully deflected off of the word "terrorist" and allowed ourselves to get stuck in in the non-impactful rut of fixating on "convicted". Which circles back to my original point that the fact-checkers often resort to manipulating language in order to arrive at the verdicts they present. I find this kind of misdirection incredibly dishonest - both intellectually and ethically.

allturtles 5y ago
I couldn't really disagree more. Convicted is the key point here. Anyone can throw around the word 'terrorist' to describe someone, but conviction is a concrete fact about the legal system. The people calling this woman a "convicted terrorist" are leaning on the convicted. Without it their claim would feel much less weighty. e.g. lots of people have called Kyle Rittenhouse a 'terrorist'. Say he had been convicted on one of the charges against him - would it be fair to call him a 'convicted terrorist' just because some people feel he is a terrorist, and he was convicted of something? Clearly not. "Rosenberg is a convicted criminal who planned terrorist acts" is a far more defensible claim, so why not just say that?
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  By your definition, no successful suicide bomber would ever be a terrorist, because the dead do not go to trials.
  - allturtles 5y ago
    Of course they would, they just wouldn't be a convicted terrorist.
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      Osama B.L. and I both belong to the same category of "not a convicted terrorist", yet that fact seems quite misleading.
      - allturtles 5y ago
        I don't see how it would be misleading. Despite various indictments, AFAIK bin Laden was never convicted of anything. There are many categories you share with him, e.g. "people who didn't live in the seventeenth century" and "people who have never been in my kitchen." In your view, do adjectives not matter for facticity, only nouns? Could we fairly call Osama bin Laden a Russian terrorist or a female terrorist?

allturtles 5y ago

I couldn't really disagree more. Convicted is the key point here. Anyone can throw around the word 'terrorist' to describe someone, but conviction is a concrete fact about the legal system. The people calling this woman a "convicted terrorist" are leaning on the convicted. Without it their claim would feel much less weighty. e.g. lots of people have called Kyle Rittenhouse a 'terrorist'. Say he had been convicted on one of the charges against him - would it be fair to call him a 'convicted terrorist' just because some people feel he is a terrorist, and he was convicted of something? Clearly not. "Rosenberg is a convicted criminal who planned terrorist acts" is a far more defensible claim, so why not just say that?

inglor_cz 5y ago
By your definition, no successful suicide bomber would ever be a terrorist, because the dead do not go to trials.
- allturtles 5y ago
  Of course they would, they just wouldn't be a convicted terrorist.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    Osama B.L. and I both belong to the same category of "not a convicted terrorist", yet that fact seems quite misleading.
    - allturtles 5y ago
      I don't see how it would be misleading. Despite various indictments, AFAIK bin Laden was never convicted of anything. There are many categories you share with him, e.g. "people who didn't live in the seventeenth century" and "people who have never been in my kitchen." In your view, do adjectives not matter for facticity, only nouns? Could we fairly call Osama bin Laden a Russian terrorist or a female terrorist?