Fun and games with the "terrorism" label

[Jefferson23]

By Glenn Greenwald


(updated below - Update II)

I've written numerous times about how "terrorism" is the most meaningless and most manipulated word in the political lexicon; the best demonstration of this dynamic is the work of NYU's Remi Brulin, whose dissertation documents how Western governments and media outlets have applied the term so inconsistently and self-servingly. One of the principal dangers of the Supreme Court's recent, free-speech-decimating decision in Humanitarian Law Project -- which held that the Government has a sufficiently compelling interest to restrict citizens' First Amendment rights by criminalizing even political speech made to designated Terrorist groups -- is that Terrorism means whatever the U.S. Government says it means: they create the list of off-limit Terrorist groups and they essentially have unfettered, un-reviewable discretion to do so. That's because the word is so ill-defined and manipulated that it's impoverished of any real meaning.

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I happened to come across a typical though highly illustrative example of this manipulation when reading this NYT interview yesterday with Israeli politician Tzipi Livni. After railing against the Terrorists in Gaza, Livni said this:


NYT: Your parents were among the country’s founders.

Livni: They were the first couple to marry in Israel, the very first. Both of them were in the Irgun. They were freedom fighters, and they met while boarding a British train. When the British Mandate was here, they robbed a train to get the money in order to buy weapons.


in full: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/28/terrorism/index.html