Tagged With: definition
Terrorist is the wrong label for some people.
People are misusing the words terrorist lately, they are miss-using the word as a label for “bad people that cause lots of death”. There are already labels for such cases, labels like murderer, evil, mass killer. The label is sometimes miss-applied to shooters in America and today it was used as a slur on Tony Blair . The word is being used to to whip up emotion for injustices because people are angry.
The word terrorist means “one that uses terror as a weapon”. A person who’s tactic is to cause terror in order to achieve some other goal. A person who’s purpose is to terrorize people into changing. A terrorist thinks less about the people they kill and more about the impact of their act on the observers.
Words are mightier than the sword only if they are wielded with care and choice. We reduce ourselves to cavemen when words are thrown around like blunt stones. We all need to choose our words better because our goal should be to communicate, to share and to educate.
In George Orwell’s book “1984” the government organization “newspeak” strives to reduce the vocabulary of the population. Done because by removing words, by blurring them together, you weaken those that might use them. We need to sharpen our vocabulary because it is our power. We need to use the right words for the right things.