On 4/20/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/21/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
One should not negotiate with terrorists.
We don't do ourselves any good by applying such labels to those with whom we are in dispute.
I thought long and hard about whether the label was appropriate or hyperbole in this situation, and then decided to use it.
It's hard to describe a campaign to identify and widely publish the real-world identities of people operating pseudonymously online, and specific threats and attempts to cause termination of education or employment, as anything but terroristic online activities. The intention is to cause behavior changes in a community by wanton disproportionate destruction.
Whether we then label the perpetrator as a terrorist or not is just a matter of semantics.
There are plenty of ex-terrorists in the world who have moved on to better ways of life, both online and in real life. And online activities like this aren't comparable to the real-world life and death terrorists. But the term is a term of art for grand strategy of coersive individual and group acts, and doesn't require that the acts be loss of life.