We all know the old cliché about one man’s terrorist being another’s freedom fighter. Like many clichés, it packs a lot of truth. But what if the terrorist wears a suit and long red tie… and we’re an ally!
Take Nelson Mandela, who very much lived on both sides of the equation. Caged like an animal in a tiny 5m² concrete cell on Robben Island for 18 years for ‘terrorist’ crimes against the then-oppressing South African government. Then, freed with a change of political climate, lionised by the world at large for his stance (and by implication his previous actions) to the point he was probably the planet’s most respected man.
So what’s the actual difference between ‘terrorist’ and ‘freedom fighter’? Or does it all depend on the context. Given that these days the ‘terrorist’ tag is bandied around at the drop of a hat, and ‘freedom fighter’ not so much, it might be apposite to ask why.
Dictionary definitions of a terrorist go something like: “an individual who engages in or supports acts of violence, intimidation, or coercion to advance political, religious, or ideological goals, often targeting civilians or public infrastructure to create fear.” Presumably this also includes collectives of ‘individuals’, given reference is often made to terrorist ‘groups’ or ‘organisations’.
This definition describes perfectly, say, several historic Zionist organisations. To wit:
“Since the Great Palestine Revolt of 1936-39 and right until the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionist terrorism was used as a strategic military weapon to hasten the founding of an independent Jewish state. Numerous attacks were mounted against Palestinians to terrorise them and drive them out of their ancestral land, and against British army and police outposts. Many assassinations were carried out, as well as bombs planted in markets, ships and hotels. Heading these Zionist gangs were men who, in later years, became prime ministers of Israel, such as David Ben-Gurion, Menahem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.”
That’s a quote from the Institute for Palestine Studies, but few – not even rabid Zionists – would dispute it. Indeed, overwhelmingly Zionists would consider it a fitting description of righteous and valiant conduct, even though it included such activities as “on July 6, 1938, members of the Irgun gang detonated time bombs in a crowded Haifa market, killing 21 Palestinians and wounding 52.” Just one of hundreds of such Zionist operations which met standard definitions of terrorism.
They are examples of what might be called ‘activist terrorism’ – various collectives pursuing over-arching goals via violent means, and usually outside of the mandate of a recognised government. In both the case of Mandela’s ANC and the Zionists, they more or less achieved their primary immediate aims. But then what becomes the call when the usurpers use similar means – once they have the upper hand – to pursue continuing policy aims with equally ruthless force on the assumption they’re now legitimised by some degree of public mandate?
How goes the argument then? That criminal violent acts against civilians and public infrastructure suddenly somehow cease to be ‘terrorism’ but morph into, what? ‘Statecraft’?
Very occasionally the term “state terrorism” is trotted out, but seldom. In the case of, say, Russia invading Ukraine, the commentariat vocabulary – while usually condemnatory – usually employs terms like ‘war’, ‘invasion’, ‘hegemony’, ‘aggression’, and so forth. ‘State terrorism’, not so much – if at all. Indeed, Russian zealots might even argue that they’re ‘freedom fighters’, fighting for the freedom of once-Russian citizens now reclassified as Ukrainian because of re-drafted borders.
But let’s put aside for one minute (if possible) the Ukrainian situation and the long-term horrors in hell-holes like Sudan for the present on-going obscenities in the Middle East. In the case of Israeli actions in Gaza, whatever utu justified by the initial Hamas provocation has long been eclipsed by an armageddon-style response that has left a massive charnel house of civilian bones and rubble deserts where once bustling cities stood. Now they’ve decided it’s Lebanon’s turn, too, as well as kicking in a side-hustle with their USA patron and its Rambo-raid on Iran’s key personnel and infrastructure.
The reasons given for the USA’s Iran incursion are almost as flimsy as the completely bogus pretext put up for the invasion of Iraq, with all the subsequent massive civilian casualties and infrastructure vaporisation attendant to that. The pretext was that Iran posed an “imminent” nuclear threat to USA – hard to swallow given Iran lacks a single nuclear weapon, let alone the ability to launch one even as far as Hawaii. But as a result Iran has copped the full force of gratuitous American and Israeli military might, and not surprisingly is retaliating.
George Carlin, the late great American social commentator/comic in the bitingly acerbic Lenny Bruce tradition, had a great take on the comparable USA situation at the time of its George W Bush-led illegal trashing of Iraq just over a couple of decades ago.
It went something like: “America’s a warLIKE nation. We LIKE war. Since our founding, we’ve averaged a major war about every twenty years. We’re not much good at anything else anymore, but we’re still f***ing good at bombing the crap out of other people! Especially BROWN people! When was the last time we bombed WHITE people?! Okay, there were the Germans in WWII, but that was only because they were trying to cut in on OUR action! Bombing the crap out of other people, that’s OUR job!!”
Sure enough, just over twenty years since the Iraq debacle the USA – along with its Israel proxy – is again bombing the crap out of brown people. Of course, for a large part of the interim between Iraq and Iran, the Land of the Free had kept its hand in with a lower-level operation in Afghanistan, a haven of numerous other brown people. No wonder many brown people end up feeling feeling bigly aggrieved and harbouring less than benevolent thoughts about Star Spangled Banner land.
Granted, present American actions have been complicated by the fact that the present leader of the so-called Free World, somehow elected not once but twice, is a narcissistic and power-crazed man-child who’s managed to simply side-step all the nation’s once-lauded constitutional prescriptions against just such despotism ever occurring. Surrounding himself with a coterie of fellow greedsters and grafters, including members of his own family, he managed to capture a swathe of public agencies and institutions up to and including the Supreme Court.
He’s then leveraged that into an orgiastic doom-looped display of egotistic presidential power, trashing a host of vital social and environmental agencies accompanied by a bloating of personal pelf that would do even the most corrupt Roman emperor proud.
Should anyone require further evidence, just for starters review the oil futures or S & P 500 graphs for the last month or so, and how they mysteriously hugely spike literally minutes before Trump posts a major statement affecting oil tanker movements in the Hormuz Strait. Or the extent to which the Trump family’s crypto coin businesses figure in White House transactions with various Gulf states. Conflict of interest? More like cataclysmic collision of interest!
Tragically, the US-initiated debacle now unfolding in Iran has already racked up a litany of categorical war crimes. This includes the initial invasion itself, mass civilian deaths, the destruction of all manner of public utilities and infrastructure, and not to mention the ‘extra-judicial executions’ (euphemisms for cold-blooded murder) of Iranian leaders.
These all meet the criteria for ‘state-sponsored terrorism’. Iran and its proxies certainly don’t have clean hands in this regard either. But there’s a difference. The USA ‘state terrorist’ is ostensibly our ‘ally’. Not a pretty Kiwi equation.
So there we have it. If we didn’t want to acknowledge it before, we’re nevertheless a willing ‘ally’ of a terrorist state by any other name. We know this because our political leaders obsequiously shuffle around any suggestion that a ‘friend’ of ours is also an active and pumped terrorist. They even still get excited at just a hint of a prospect of a greet-and-grin with US administration officials such as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other super-sycophants to the coiffed and kippered sociopathic sleaze machine that currently inhabits the Oval Office.
Like a grotesque parody-of-a-parody of the cult sixties show The Munsters, the toxic Trumpster clan have coalesced into an ongoing free-to-air kinetic installation perfectly encapsulating the 2nd thermodynamic law of entropy and its doomed trajectory. This law states that energy disperses over time, leading to irreversibly increasing disorder or entropy in the universe, whose ultimate fate is utter chaos.
As the Trumpsters do the Monster Mash in what might be the grotesque Grand Finale to the entropic American Empire, let us pray – although perhaps not to the seemingly biddable Abrahamic gods that the various parties in this God-awful mess commonly invoke, and whose prophets they supposedly share. They, too, seem to be suffering from serious conflicts of interest.
But if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck – and especially if the duck’s name is Donald – then you’ve pretty much got a bona fide duck. Which also happens to be running a terrorist state.
Not the only one, admittedly. And Donald might claim that he too is a ‘freedom fighter’ – heroically battling for the freedom to systematically game and loot his country’s political systems and treasury to his heart’s content.
In the meantime, be prepared to duck and cover, one and all.
Frank Greenall has been a copywriter, scriptwriter, artist, political cartoonist, adult literacy tutor and administrator, and Whanganui Chronicle columnist for many years, amongst numerous other sundry occupations. His cartoons and articles have appeared in most major NZ newspapers at various times. He has a BA in politics and a Masters in adult literacy/numeracy. https://stevebaron.co.nz/author/frankgreenall/