Monday, July 07, 2008
One Man’s Terrorist…
The other day I wrote the following in this post.
That bottom article is from a Chinese, and therefore government approved, news source. Note the way they refer to demonstrators as those engaging in “riots and terror.” The use of the word terror has been very deliberate. The US declared its “war on terror” and the Chinese have used that justification to do the exact same thing. They just define terrorist in a slightly different meaning than we do. But the way demonstrators and rioters are presented in the news are as “terrorists.” And, after all, who can criticize China’s war on terrorists when we’re engaged in one of our own, right?
We’ve heard critics of the war against Islamic terrorists use the phrase “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines terrorism as “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” Personally I think this misses one crucial aspect of terrorism—terrorist groups specifically target civilians, with the hope that the fear of terrorism will inspire the terrorized population to push their governments to act towards the goal the terrorists wish to achieve. “Your government cannot keep you safe from us! The Movement for the Free Ejaculation of Palestine can strike you anywhere!” So it’s not necessarily the use of violence per se, it’s the use of violence against non-legitimate targets.
The reason I bring this up is because I want to highlight the following from Xinhua, China’s official news agency. There are four pictures and four captions. See if you notice anything interesting about them.
