Defining Terrorism

[ish mailian]

And God (s). God(s) are not only, traditionally, terrorists, but genocidal,
monomaniacal murders.

On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 3:22 PM, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com
> wrote:

> Another mass shooting reported in San Bernardino, California. Any
> definition if terrorism that doesn't encompass the NRA is inadequate, IMO.
>
> LK
>
>
> Danny Weltman <danny.weltman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Joseph, I'm not sure that your definition based on "obvious root meanings"
> is very convincing, because "terror" is not, as you put it, "extreme fear
> induced by violence" - things can be terrifying even if they are not
> induced by violence. For instance, take the example given by Carl Wellman
> discussed in this article - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/terrorism/
> - "a professor threatens to fail students who submit their essays after the
> due date, causes panic in class, and thereby engages in terrorism." As the
> article notes, Wellman's definition is "idiosyncratic," but it's the sort
> of definition you're providing, so if we agree with you, we'll have to
> agree that the professor is engaged in terrorism, along with scary movies,
> black widow spiders, and so on. This is not to say that you are wrong
> (you've got Carl Wellman on your side at least), but there are definitely
> downsides to just saying "terrorism is the induction of terror."
>
> Danny
>
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 7:04 PM, Lemuel Underwing <luunderwing at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> As far as US Law goes, Terrorism is not strictly defined. This is
>> purposeful, apparently due to the protean nature of Terrorism. Literally
>> there is no definition. They like it that way.
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 8:40 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>
>>> There are serious problems with this long article trying to give a
>>> definitive answer to the question of what is terrorism.  He traces the
>>> history of the usage of the term which changes mostly depending on who
>>> gained power in violent struggles. The core of the writer’s dilemma is that
>>> he wants to exclude nation states as sponsors of terror but is faced with a
>>> great many examples of that very phenomenon: Stalin, Hitler, Pinochet, the
>>> post-revolution leaders of 18th Century France are a few he mentions. One
>>> can think of many others which are less politically safe to criticize. He
>>> never mentions the history of US policy toward native tribes, or British
>>> colonial violence.
>>>
>>> He ends by defining terrorism as the tactic of inducing terror by those
>>> with little power.  This is a betrayal of language. Terror is terror, no
>>> matter who wields it. If Stalin was not engaged in terrorizing his
>>> countrymen, if the Fascist powers did not engage in terrorism then why are
>>> these  examples of state terror held in universal moral abhorrence? Is it
>>> only because they ultimately failed? The writer wants to classify such
>>> tactics as war crimes. But that won’t hold up to logical scrutiny.  The
>>> tactic they used was terror, not breaking laws. The classification of war
>>> crime is after the fact when the wars were lost. What they did was not
>>> legitimized by the state power they had while they did it.
>>>
>>> The trouble with trying to make a word fit your favored political view
>>> of the world is that it leads to the Orwellian use of language portrayed in
>>> 1984.
>>>
>>> I much prefer the obvious root meanings that leave a word in the
>>> metaphoric realm that is the fundamental nature of language. Terror is
>>> extreme fear  induced by violence. Terrorism is the active induction of
>>> such fear.  Political terrorism is the active induction of fear for
>>> political goals.
>>>
>>> > On Nov 30, 2015, at 5:26 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > My apologies if this has been posted to the list before.
>>> >
>>> > What is terrorism? Few words have so insidiously worked their way into
>>> our everyday vocabulary. Like `Internet' -- another grossly over-used term
>>> that has similarly become an indispensable part of the argot of the late
>>> twentieth century -- most people have a vague idea or impression of what
>>> terrorism is, but lack a more precise, concrete and truly explanatory
>>> definition of the word. This imprecision has been abetted partly by the
>>> modern media, whose efforts to communicate an often complex and convoluted
>>> message in the briefest amount of airtime or print space possible have led
>>> to the promiscuous labelling of a range of violent acts as `terrorism'.
>>> Pick up a newspaper or turn on the television and -- even within the same
>>> broadcast or on the same page -- one can find such disparate acts as the
>>> bombing of a building, the assassination of a head of state, the massacre
>>> of civilians by a military unit, the poisoning of produce on supermarket
>>> shelves or the deliberate contamination of over-the-counter medication in a
>>> chemist's shop all described as incidents of terrorism. Indeed, virtually
>>> any especially abhorrent act of violence that is perceived as directed
>>> against society -- whether it involves the activities of anti-government
>>> dissidents or governments themselves, organized crime syndicates or common
>>> criminals, rioting mobs or persons engaged in militant protest, individual
>>> psychotics or lone extortionists -- is often labelled `terrorism'.
>>> >
>>> >     Dictionary definitions are of little help. The pre-eminent
>>> authority on the English language, the much-venerated Oxford English
>>> Dictionary,
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hoffman-terrorism.html
>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
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