CDR: Re: McVeigh, Freedom Fighter or Kook?

[Tim May]

At 2:08 AM -0400 9/13/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>Interesting question, actually...  The difference between a
>"random crazy" and a "freedom fighter" can be awfully dang
>thin.  I think that in order to qualify as a "freedom fighter"
>there has to be a significant faction who support your actions
>and a nonzero chance of bringing about real change.

This is not a terribly interesting line of analysis.

I use "freedom fighter" in nearly all contexts in which the dominant 
paradigm uses the word "terrorist."

Consider some of the many thousands of examples:

* Those who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 
1947-8...terrorists, freedom fighters, or "random crazies"?

* Those who blew up the Air Cubana airliner off the coast of Florida 
in the late 60s... terrorists, freedom fighters, or "random crazies"?

* Those who blew up an aspirin factory in Khartoum... terrorists, 
freedom fighters, or "random crazies"?

* Those who blew up police stations in Northern Ireland... 
terrorists, freedom fighters, or "random crazies"?

* Those who blew up British soldiers and their families garrisoned in 
New England in 1776... terrorists, freedom fighters, or "random 
crazies"?

* Those who laid mines in a harbor in Nicaragua so that commercial 
ships would be blown up, even though no state of war existed... 
terrorists, freedom fighters, or "random crazies"? (BTW, done by the 
same nice folks who taught the secret police how to torture and kill, 
how to assassinate political opponents, and how to rig elections.)

* Those who blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983... 
terrorists, freedom fighters, or "random crazies"?

I think it's obvious that the "random crazy" analysis is flawed. Even 
the Unabomber was political. Perhaps the "Mad Bomber" of several 
decades ago was a "random crazy," but the actions of Baader-Meinhof, 
Red Army Faction, Cuban exile community, IRA, CIA, and so on, are 
clearly political. If McVeigh's actions were not political, nothing 
is. Whether one agrees or disagrees, his actions were politically 
motivated (and with various links I won't get into here with Elohim 
City, the German government, and dissident factions in the USG).

I thought it unexceptionable that I would use the standard shorthand 
of referring to a "terrorist" by a more descriptive name.

If they're our bombers, they're freedom fighters. If they're the 
other guy's bombers, they're terrorists.

The Hezbollah guerillas who offed a couple of hundred of U.S. Marines 
in Beirut in 1983 were dubbed "terrorists" by U.S. sources and U.S. 
reporters. Absurd. By any even slightly objective analysis, this was 
a military action. Yeah, some "innocents" died...some chambermaids, 
the children of the housekeepers and front desk clerks who were 
playing while their parents worked, gardeners and handymen, the usual 
bunch of innocents.

Just as innocents died when the U.S. firebombed Dresden and Tokyo. 
Just as when the U.S., in a battle which was not part of a declared 
war, routinely napalmed villages in Viet Nam and killed obvious 
nonparticipants (children, for example).

War is hell. The Federal Building in OKC was, to McVeigh and to many 
others, a military target.

Get used to it. Strong, untraceable crypto means the capability for 
coordinating far more impressive attacks.

And learn to deconstruct the underlying meaning of words like "terrorist."

If some "sand niggers" in Palestine fight back to keep Polish and 
French Jews from stealing their land, they're "terrorists." If 
Menachem Begin and the Stern Gang and similar gangs blow up a hotel 
filled with British soldiers trying to stop this theft from 
occurring, these Jews are hailed as noble freedom fighters.

Understand and internalize the reality that "terrorists," "freedom 
fighters," and "random crazies" are just loaded terms, set by masters 
of spin.

--Tim May
-- 
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon"             | black markets, collapse of governments.