4 ms·

The difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is a matter of which side of the fence you stand on. They are basically the same thing, especially these

• JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is a matter of which side of the fence Oft repeated but untrue. Terrorism, empirically, doesn’t work. Non-violent protest, and armed insurrection (aimed at the state, not its population) do. Sometimes freedom fighters can benefit from terrorism. But they are distinct strategies with separate targets.
  • Mainan_Tagonist 4mo ago
    And freedom fighters are supposed to actually care about "freedom" while terrorists generally do not. I fail to see what great advancements in freedom for anyone involved have come out of the terror attacks performed over the past 25 years.
    • deanishe 4mo ago
      Islamists fight to be the oppressors, not to help the oppressed.
      • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > Islamists fight to be the oppressors Eh, the history of Islamism comes out of rebelling against secular dictators who had a habit of imprisoning their thought leaders.
        • Mainan_Tagonist 4mo ago
          or put simply, just rebelling against any attempt at modernising muslim societies. Anwar Sadat comes to mind.
    • b40d-48b2-979e 4mo ago
      25 years? Why stop there? How about the US terror attacks on other countries civilians since at least the 1960s?
      • Mainan_Tagonist 4mo ago
        Yeah... what about those? How many retaliatory terror attacks on americans performed by citizen of those countries? What point are you trying to make? US bad? Anything more thoughtful to offer? The US are an empire and they have behaved as an empire over the last 70 years (bombing, overthrowing governments, supporting dictators). By historical standard, they have proved less coercive than empires of proportionally comparable reach. Think of the Mongols, the Assyrians, the Japanese...
      • Jensson 4mo ago
        When did USA bomb a civilian house that wasn't a part of a larger operation? Terrorist attacks only target civilians, I have never seen such an attack by USA. They always try to target military or leaders. The last time I know USA did a terror attack was japan in ww2, but everyone did terror bombing during that war, and the first world stopped doing terror bombings since then. If USA still ran that doctrine you would have Tehran and the rest of major Iranian cities leveled to the ground now, that is what it looks like when the strongest military in the world perform terror attacks.
        • b40d-48b2-979e 4mo ago
          If you ignore our proxies. Or are Israel's attacks destroying the hospitals and apartment buildings in Gaza and Lebanon "part of a larger operation"? I guess it's okay we napalmed Vietnam and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians because it was "part of a larger operation"? American Exceptionalism is a disease.
        • tremon 4mo ago
          Are you sure your name isn't Jingo? > When did USA bomb a civilian house that wasn't a part of a larger operation Why does that matter? The attacks on the Twin Towers were also part of a larger operation, does that excuse the attacks in any way? > Terrorist attacks only target civilians Nope, terrorism can include literally anything when Power deems it convenient. https://stratnewsglobal.com/europe/united-kingdom/uk-charges-four-pro-palestinian-activists-over-airbase-break-in/ https://stratnewsglobal.com/europe/united-kingdom/uk-charges... : British MPs on Wednesday voted to declare pro-Palestinian group Palestine Action a terrorist organisation, after its activists broke into a military base and damaged two aircraft > I have never seen such an attack by USA That may very well be true, but the world is a lot bigger than what your eyes can capture. "I don't see it, therefore it doesn't exist" is a state of mind that most people grow out of around the age of 8 months. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre : When the soldiers got to the village, they did not find any NLF troops. Despite this, many soldiers began to kill the villagers, mainly elderly people, women, and children > [the USA] always try to target military or leaders Bless your heart. https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/02/politics/timeline-us-strikes-caribbean-pacific-vis https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/02/politics/timeline-us-strikes-... : The US military has killed at least 207 people in strikes that have destroyed 66 vessels > The last time I know USA did a terror attack was japan in ww2 Yet another example of "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/24/worlddispatch.iraq https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/24/worlddispatch.... : To some in the Arab and Muslim countries, Shock and Awe is terrorism by another name; to others, a crime that compares unfavourably with September 11 > the first world stopped doing terror bombings since then Nixon and Kissinger were not part of the first world, then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu : Apart from the large human toll, perhaps the most powerful and direct impact of the bombing was the political backlash it caused [..] The U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia was partly responsible for the rise of what had been a small-scale Khmer Rouge insurgency, which now grew capable of overthrowing the Lon Nol government Nixon decided to keep the bombing a secret from the American people as to admit to bombing an officially neutral nation would damage his credibility > that is what it looks like when the strongest military in the world perform terror attacks We know perfectly well what it looks like: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/12/22/2025-in-gaza-12-months-12-pictures https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/12/22/2025-in-gaza-12...
  • pepperoni_pizza 4mo ago
    Terrorism very much does work. The Basque and the Northern Irish terrorists / freedom fighters have gotten a so many of their demands for autonomy met that they disbanded (in one case formally, in the other almost) because they weren't needed anymore. Taliban also got the US out from Afghanistan pretty handily with mostly terrorism.
    • some_random 4mo ago
      The Taliban absolutely did not terrorism the US out of Afghanistan haha
      • pepperoni_pizza 4mo ago
        Why do you think they left, then?
        • s1artibartfast 4mo ago
          Because it was expensive and the local population did not care for the Kabul government we were protecting. It is hard to prop an unpopular government in a country of 40 million. The US military was averaging only 12 deaths in the years before withdraw. Most of what the taliban was doing is closer to asymmetric warfare than terrorism.
      • calgoo 4mo ago
        When the population was complaining that they had to go to the Taliban for help because the Americans could do nothing to help them when the local military was corrupt and abused the people.
    • wqaatwt 4mo ago
      > The Basque and the Northern Irish terrorists / freedom fighters have gotten a so many of their demands for autonomy met that they disbanded That’s certainly not how it works. They just became highly unpopular amongst the populations they were trying to liberate (which generally preferred more peaceful solutions) and lost their support base and had to disband.
  • catlifeonmars 4mo ago
    Terrorist is often a term used to describe freedom fighters, in order to delegitimize them. Basically this is such a common tactic that it is unsurprising that the two are sometimes conflated.
    • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > Terrorist is often a term used to describe freedom fighters Do you have an historical example?
      • bawolff 4mo ago
        Basically all of history. Terrorist is a term people use for people who use violence and intimidation to attempt to cause political change. Freedom fighter is a term used for people who use violence and intimidation to attempt to cause political change that you are sympathetic to. Both words have identical meanings, the only difference is if you happen to agree with the people commiting the violent acts or not.
        • wqaatwt 4mo ago
          No, not at all. Methods and targets/victims also matter. Using violence to achieve specific military objectives or as a response to violence is not the same as indiscriminate murder and terrorism.
          • bawolff 4mo ago
            > as a response to violence Literally every terrorist group ever claims they are responding to some sort of violence or oppression.
            • wqaatwt 4mo ago
              So what? It what they are actually doing that matters.
        • 4mo ago
  • basilikum 4mo ago
    The Taliban's terrorism very much did work.
    • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      Not really. The Taliban’s attacks on civilians didn’t help their cause. They found success when they started acting as a more-competent government than our fucks in Kabul. If we want to debate whether the Taliban under occupation had any success with its terrorist tactics, I guess I’d concede that one man’s terrorist is another’s guerrilla fighter. But even then, guerilla tactics rely on a sympathetic local population. So a guerrilla team bombing civilians is undermining its own cause.
      • basilikum 4mo ago
        I'm not exactly an expert on Afghan politics and the reason for the failure of the western backed government are surely multifaceted, but don't you think that destabilizing the country through terror attacks played a role in the sustained weakness of the government as well as the withdrawal of the West?
        • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
          > don't you think that destabilizing the country through terror attacks played a role in the sustained weakness of the government as well as the withdrawal of the West? Not an expert either. I haven’t seen one make this case. What I have seen is cross-conflict studies on the success of terrorism, and that sets my baseline for Afghanistan being a special case. (Domestic terrorism works a little bit more frequently than international terrorism. But they’re both very, very bad strategies that frequently blow back.)
      • bawolff 4mo ago
        > The Taliban’s attacks on civilians didn’t help their cause Umm, do you mean al-qaeda (if you are referring to 9/11). Al-qaeda and the Taliban are different groups. Neither are particularly nice, but only one did 9/11.
  • xorcist 4mo ago
    > Terrorism, empirically, doesn’t work In the context of 9/11, that seems like a strong statement to make. The terrorists (let us agree on this label a priori) got everything they could ever wish for and then some. Regular Americans in general lost freedoms of movement and communication. The whole political landscape shifted right. The US invaded and destabilized Iraq and Afghanistan. Pakistan and Syria got weaker than ever. The Saudis gained hugely in influence over the whole region. Wahhabism is now influential in areas where they hardly existed before! They almost controlled Egypt for a while. And when the US retreated and gave controlling power back to the Taliban they showed the whole world that a needle pick in the belly of the beast was all that was necessary. That has given new courage to similar terrorist cells, a situation the rest of the world is still struggling with. The whole world focused for almost two decades on their part of the world. Nobody can say that 9/11 wasn't an important catalyst for all that. And at a price that would not even cover catering had this been an organized intelligence operation. Terrorism can clearly and empirically be a very cost effective lever in ideological, political and religious struggle.
• Mainan_Tagonist 4mo ago
  yet you fail to account for the fact that said people wouldn't wouldn't be in power did terrorism not have occurred in the first place. How many bad leaders in the west resulting directly or indirectly from terror attacks?
  • klibertp 4mo ago
    About as many as bad terrorist groups that began due to catastrophically bad decisions of leaders in the West. I'm sorry to break it to you - the plural you - but all the terrorists that are not traditionally domestic (local leftist/rightist extremists are everywhere, after all) - and the fact they are against the West - is simply a consequence of Western politics. Imperialism and neocollonialism are real, actual policies, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that. If such policies hit locales where it's not culturally wrong to die for a cause, it's obvious you'll get terrorists after a while. I suspect this was calculated risk until it stopped being that: the locals got their own exploding sticks and decided to use them. It's so incredibly sad to watch: for decades, tons of people made mostly rational (from their point of view) decisions, yet each step inevitably brought us closer and closer to the current situation. Add a few cultural, social, and personal pathological cases into the mix, and what you have is basically a speedrun to 9/11. Note that I'm not justifying terror attacks, just saying they are a very predictable consequence of decades of policy-making.
    • Hikikomori 4mo ago
      Blockback is a "fun" podcast about this.
    • Mainan_Tagonist 4mo ago
      no, it's nothing specific to "The West" or the decisions it has taken. The typical "They hate us because our bad policies" does not explain why every empire (western or not) has had to contend with dissenters keen on overthrowing its "yoke". How would the Mongols, the Russians, the Egyptian empires have solved the israeli/palestine conflict? Do you know where the terms zealots and sicario come from? Did the Romans solve these terror attacks by reconsidering their "catastrophically bad policies"?