It’s not terrorism if you’re trying to save the planet from those trying to destroy it.
It is terrorism if you do violent acts to push your political goals https://www.britannica.com/topic/terrorism
"Saving humanity from the sins of the west and their ideological indoctrination is also not political. "
- Osama Bin Laden (probably)
Just call it what it is then say it’s justified if you think it is. If you can dress this up as not terrorism then nothing is.
Violence is a key word in that definition.
Violence: Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury.
So, starving a group of people isn’t terrorism because you’re not exerting physical force.
Not easily stopping a fire when you know it’s going to spread towards an occupied house isn’t violence because you’re not exerting physical force.
Poisoning drinking water isn’t violence because you’re not exerting physical force.
Real question: what do you call those things? It can’t be defined as terrorism. What is it?
I don’t think “physical force” is a necesarry component of violence. Take, for example, domestic violence. The US DOJ gives these criteria for if an action is DV or not:
Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.
I think a more apt definition of violence would be “coercive behavior”
Have you not heard the terms eco-terrorism or eco-facsism? Anyone can use environmentalism to justify their philosophy, don’t be so naive that anything pro-environment is a good thing.
From your link on eco-terrorism:
Eco-terrorism is an act of violence which is committed in support of environmental causes, against people or property.[1][2]
Not sure that I count violence against property as valid. If destruction of material values are classified as violence and eco-terrorism, are then not oil companies and other capitalists destroying the environment eco-terrorists too?
are then not oil companies and other capitalists destroying the environment eco-terrorists too?
Objectively, no they are not by the definition you quoted. The definition stated the violence is for the environment; those people execute violence for capital against the environment. I’m sure there’s another definition that would cover those people and the whole they cause, but this one ain’t it.
It’s not terrorism if you’re helping Allah slay the evil nonbelievers who are destroying the Earth!
Is it terrorism in the law tho? Obviously keeping in mind who writes it and whose point of view is codified. That conversation may be more nuanced than you think. Especially if all other things we can call terrorism are considered.
I agree and I understand. However, we are talking about the collapse of humanity, the environment, most species, etc for the next 10 million years. So at this point, who are the real eco terrorists?
It’s a problem of perceiving terror as something having a negative connotation by itself. It is a tool. Like a gun, or a knife. And having a moral high ground (like there, or in many more controversial cases) doesn’t erase the fact it is perceived as or is an act of terror.
Guerilla warfare against occupational forces is terrorism. Political assasinations of opressors are too. Taking kneecaps of an oil baron who levels forests and poisons nature is it as well.
And, you name it, there are even more ways of terrorism you’d see as dumb, senseless, inhumane. Take wrapping a civilian child in explosives to blow up a guarded checkpoint. It’s fucked up, right? And it’s not the act of terror itself that makes you puke at a thought of it, but this tool used for insane reasons and how fucking far they took it. If it was a croatian jew taking nazis with themselfes, it would be portrayed as a heroic self-sacrificing act. As a bystander, you see these extreme acts of violence through your lenses and judge reasoning behind it first. That’s why eco-terrorism doesn’t ring any bells. It’s an attack that is rationally justified to you, usually pretty victimless. And it’s relativism at it’s extremes.
At some point you see you can’t escape but thinking of terrorist tactics to achieve that one goal, because nothing else seems as effective. It is muddy waters. It needs slow and thoughtful consideration. If it means saving natives’ land, would you consider torching building equipment, an office or shooting a corporate shithead in their face? You probably can. But would you? And would it be better than whatever comes to mind when you hear the T-word? Would you take all responsibility and all the consequences of what you did on yourself? Wouldn’t you regret it?
On Lemmy we can speak like we are all super based, and there are just causes. Talk is cheap. What matters is if you even feel yourself applauding such acts, you need to be double sure you aren’t a dumbass hypocrite and you really know what are you after. Not mirroring ‘they are killing my world, so they are to be killed’, yada-yada, because kids upvote that shit like crazy, but really meaning it if you say so, being responsible about it.
I feel like I’d end up on some lists for speaking that out loud lmao, but a lot of historical figures we adore are terrorists. Gaining independence of USA was that to brits, Robin Hood myths were that to crown, revolutionaires weren’t shy from actually calling their actions a targeted terrorism against the state. By learning about good and bad terrorism, you can see where you yourself put it and how you relate to it. Usually, as I said, it ends up in deciding if the goal justifies the means, in a dissociated machiavellian way of thinking. Usually. But you are to form your own framework to handle it, obv.
It’s just, I mumble, why eco-terrorism isn’t terrorism because it’s somehow just? And why it can’t be called a justified terrorism instead? What’s the point of whitewashing it besides wining a public support, likely lying about what it really is? Does it change anything but media coverage? Why would it matter in the end?
