No, not according to a reasonable definition of terrorism. It's terrorism if a group is intentionally attacking civilians (non-combatants) for political goals. Freedom fighters may or may not be terrorists, depending on whether they intentionally attack civilians or only hit military targets. What it means to intentionally attack someone is regulated by the Doctrine of Double Effect, is based on distinguishing between side effects and intentional goals of an action. It's a tricky topic and there is leeway for interpretation, but It's not as if a definition in this area could or should never lead to controversies.
Unfortunately, this definition is rarely used, because it doesn't match the political goals of states. First, it follows from the definition that there is widespread state terrorism. Second, countries that send military occupation forces to other countries have a vested interest to brand asymmetric warfare against their military as terrorism, but this is not covered by the definition.
I agree, what you describe is what terrorists think. Obviously, at some point in their life they persuade themselves that their political goals justify the intentional killing of innocent civilians. They go at great lengths with these justifications precisely because they are so obviously flawed. Attempts to justify their actions involve a mix of denying the Doctrine of Double Effects, speaking of necessary sacrifices, and of portraying innocent victims as guilty collaborators.
I am a freedom fighter.
You are conducting asymmetric warfare.
They are terrorists.
By the author of I, Claudius:
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
As for the Greek theatrical tradition
Which represents that summer's expedition
Not as a mere reconnaisance in force
By three brigades of foot and one of horse
(Their left flank covered by some obsolete
Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet)
But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt
To conquer Greece - they treat it with contempt;
And only incidentally refute
Major Greek claims, by stressing what repute
The Persian monarch and the Persian nation
Won by this salutary demonstration:
Despite a strong defence and adverse weather
All arms combined magnificently together.
Sure, but I think this meme is actually not so clearly true in practice. Freedom fighters may engage in terrorist acts (see Algeria for example) but that doesn’t seem like a quality of “fighting for freedom”, merely a correlative practice.
Why not? 'terrorists' are by definition people committing terrorism. Any definition of 'terrorismu' whould define a set of terrorists, bud different definitions would lead to different people considered terrorists.
Defining terrorism is not hard - public violence on civilians for ideological (political, religious) reasons. Or more narrow definition that would replace 'civilians' with 'general public' (t exclude attack on state structures).
What you cannot is to hope that any definition of 'terrorism' would include all 'evil' acts and exclude all 'good' acts, because distinction between these is complex.
And freedom fighters are by definition people committing freedom fighting.
>What you cannot is to hope that any definition of 'terrorism' would include all 'evil' acts and exclude all 'good' acts, because distinction between these is complex.
Precisely the problem.
Ceteris paribus, it's 'terrorism' when you think it's 'evil', and it's freedom fighting' when you think it's 'good'.
Two different descriptions of exactly the same facts.
No, problem is to try to assign a moral value to these words, instead of keeping them just descriptive. If you keep just descriptive meaning, you could see that there is not a contradiction between 'terrorism' and 'freedom fighting'.
Some 'terrorism' may be a part of 'freedom fighting', while some not (if the ideological end is different from freedom). And some 'freedom fighting' may be 'terrorism', while some not (if means does not include attacking civilian population, just military structures).
One person may adopt value-laden definitions, another person may adopt value-neutral ones. Arguably, the term “perspectivism” is more appropriate for the former than the later.
The fact that an act occurred, and the question of what its announced motivations are, is not (usually) something that depends on your perspective. People with widely different moral and political views can agree on those descriptive facts even if they make completely opposite value judgements of them.
(Conspiracy theorists sometimes dispute the fact that an attack occurs and the real motivations behind it. But there are plenty of terrorist attacks which they don’t bother doing this to.)
I’m not a linguist, but the main issue here seems to be the desire to make adjectives into nouns, as it’s easier for humans to conceptually understand.
Instead of X is [noun], we could say X is Person who engaged in X [acts.]
I don’t think this is accurate or a charitable interpretation of what I said.
I am making a distinction between actions and nouns. I hold that it is not controversial to say certain actions are considered terroristic actions and certain actions are considered freedom fighting actions. Often, the same people engage in both, and combined with our tendency to want to assign people in noun classes (He is an X), this results in the perceived equivalence you are speaking about.
At some point, you still have to define what the actions are, which is my argument. By actions I mean specific things, not the broad amorphous label of "terrorizing."
As I said, if you narrow it down to specific actions (shooting, bombing, protest, etc.) the distinction between the two seems far more clear. I don't think anyone would claim that killing a crowd of civilians is somehow a freedom-fighting act, even if it is done by someone who mostly engages in freedom-fighting actions.
I mean, you can define words however you want, but as I just said, I have a hard time believing that anyone would categorize "blowing up a bus filled with civilians" as a freedom-fighting act. Are you arguing that some people are justified in saying it is?
The person who blew up the bus and everybody who supports their actions defined it as 'freedom fighting'.
That is how they justified killing civilians to themselves. Casualties of war.
Just a short excursion into recent history: Nelson Mandela was once classified as a terrorist. It's because the ANC was involved in a number of bombings while engaging in 'freedom-fighting'.
The issue isn't what particular actors think to justify their beliefs, but whether society-wide definitions are justified. This is a practical matter.
As I said initially: if you stick to describing actions, rather than intents or consequences, the difficulty of defining things is much easier.
Your example is also illustrating my point perfectly. Under my system, Nelson Mandela would not be a terrorist or a freedom fighter, he would be a man who engaged in both (separately) terroristic acts and freedom-fighting acts. That seems far less controversial of a statement to me.
It seems like you aren't really reading my comments, because as I have said a few times now, this would clearly be an act of terrorism.
If your next question will be, "Is the ANC then a terrorist organization?" I refer you to my previous comment where I said we should avoid labeling nouns, but instead label actions.
You can decide that up is down and left is right, but again, as a practical matter, this is really quite irrelevant. Unless you convince a sizable portion of the population / those with power to agree with you, your aberrant labeling is simply meaningless.
You can, see my definition above. The crucial feature is whether civilians are intentionally targeted or not. You can add all kinds of clauses (e.g. to conveniently exclude military forces of nation states), but that's the morally relevant criterion. A group that is intentionally targeting civilians for political reasons is a terrorist organization.
In the battlefield of narratives perspective matters.