|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
Terrorism: The Wrong Terminology |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sam Smith, The Progressive Review
(No verified email address) |
26 Sep 2001
Modified: 27 Sep 2001 |
|
"Terrorism" is an inaccurate and politically charged word. |
REUTERS news service for deciding not to use the term "terrorist" or "terrorism" to describe those who attacked the World Trade Center. As we have pointed out, these terms have always been prime examples of agitprop, designed not to describe but inflame. And as Bill Blum has noted, a terrorist is simply someone who uses bombs but doesn't have an air force.
The correct term in "guerilla." Not only is this journalistically more professional, it better informs the reader or viewer of the nature of the problem, the tactics used, and the political origins of the violence. Although we use the term "terrorist" when quoting other sources, we try to avoid it in our own writing. |
See also:
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
|
|
Terrorism the Wrong Word? |
by Lee Erwin
lindalee (nospam) emirates.net.ae (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
27 Sep 2001
|
I'm not sure I agree. Of course the term "terrorism" has often been used against legitimate guerrilla movements, but I don't think that's what we're seeing here. I can't help seeing this attack as a kind of neo-fascist cultural performance (on the part of disaffected middle-class males) which, while rooted in deeply disrupted and humiliated societies, nonetheless bears no more than the most heavily mediated and asymptotic relation to the actual on-the-ground struggles of the Palestinians, for example. (But then come to think of it perhaps that's still not terrorism, either, since terrorism usually does have a goal.)
At any rate, to suggest that this attack was indeed attributable to a national movement of any sort seems to me to be feeding into exactly the discourse of war and military attack-and-response that I think we should be struggling to refute. |
