The United States Department of Defense defines terrorism as “the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.” Within this definition, there are three key elements—violence, fear, and intimidation—and each element produces terror in its victims. The FBI uses this definition: "Terrorism is the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." The U.S. Department of State defines terrorism to be "premeditated politically-motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience".

Outside the United States Government, there are greater variations in what features of terrorism are emphasized in definitions. The United Nations produced the following definition of terrorism in 1992; "An anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby - in contrast to assassination - the direct targets of violence are not the main targets."

The most commonly accepted academic definition starts with the U.N. definition quoted above, and adds two sentences totalling another 77 words on the end; containing such verbose concepts as "message generators" and "violence based communication processes". Less specific and considerably less verbose, the British Government definition of terrorism from 1974 is "...the use of violence for political ends, and includes any use of violence for the purpose of putting the public, or any section of the public, in fear."


Terrorism is a criminal act that influences an audience beyond the immediate victim. The strategy of terrorists is to commit acts of violence that draws the attention of the local populace, the government, and the world to their cause. The terrorists plan their attack to obtain the greatest publicity, choosing targets that symbolize what they oppose. The effectiveness of the terrorist act lies not in the act itself, but in the public’s or government’s reaction to the act.

For example, in 1972 at the Munich Olympics, the Black September Organization killed 11 Israelis. The Israelis were the immediate victims. But the true target was the estimated 1 billion people watching the televised event. Those billion people watching were to be introduced to fear - which is terrorism's ultimate goal.

The introduction of this fear can be from the threat of physical harm/a grizzly death, financial terrorism from the fear of losing money or negative effects on the economy, cyber terrorism harming the critical technological infrastructures of society and psychological terrorism designed to influence people's behaviour. Terrorism is designed to produce an overreaction and anecdotally, it succeeds at that almost all the time.


“the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.”[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif] Within this definition, there are three key elements—violence, fear, and intimidation[/FONT]

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Saviours meet all 3 elements[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Violence - Killing people (bashing in their heads) to simply make a point, sending assassins to assassinate a political leader[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Fear - By using violence they keep communities fearful of retaliation, there's no room for negotiation as seen when the Hilltop explained there wasn't more supplies for them.
Intimidation - Pretty sure the baseball bat and demanding your leader's head is pretty damn intimidating

[/FONT]intended to coerce

yes.


Now compare with Rick's group
They negotiate, offer trading
They are tough negotiators for sure, but Rick never threatens to kill them if they don't agree. Only tells them that their problems are only going to get worse unless they take the help.

Now they've been hired to eliminate the threat, and they agreed.

 

I think that's an oversimplification of the way the world is today. Countries aren't self-sufficient. If a country that makes a product or material that another country needs, it can result in people dying. Jimmy Carter in one of his speeches to the nation said that if anyone blocked off the Persian Gulf the U.S. would use military force to reopen it. So sanctions aren't just taking your ball back, depending on how essential the sanctioned goods are, they can be anything from annoying to almost an act of war.

 

Do you note the terrorist group is "the Black September Organization", NOT "Russia" or "China" or "England". The point is terrorists are small groups within a larger group. If the larger group itself attacks, that's NOT terrorism.

 

You're asking for too much. Many can't even see that the Saviors are the clear bad guys on a show that clearly paints them as such.

 

Being larger or smaller than the community you are terrorizing has nothing to do with what is terrorism.
You really struggle with this.

 

shhhh, don't give it away. Its too much fun watching Morgotha try to dig herself out of the holes of nonsense she falls into...

 

Great post.

 

lol, so bigger and stronger terrorism makes it not terrorism. That's your main factor of distinction. So basically, we have terrorism, only bigger.

 

@Zalanii @Neuropyramidal @Ionut

 

Law? What law! lol

 

I've been watching this thread unfold, good debate.

While I work, I keep TWD on in my office and one of the episode's streaming for me today was Season 5 "The Distance". "Just because we're good people," Rick says to Aaron, "doesn't mean we won't kill you."

I always think of this episode as when we really see for the first time the turn Rick has taken, when it comes to protecting his people from strangers, and how much more cynical many of them are as a whole after their experiences with the Governor, Terminus, etc.

Glenn talks pretty tough too, and when he and the others go out to see about Aaron's cars. "Eyes open, everybody. Weapons up. If you see someone coming at us, fire.' Abraham just nods, "Copy that." It was Michonne who questions that kind of response, followed by Maggie. Then Glenn explains, "If it's someone like us, we should be afraid of them. He said he was watching us, right? I think he saw us yesterday. And after everything we've done, why would he want us to join his group?"

Anyway, it was a long road for them to get to the point where they learned their lesson and stopped being so trusting. I think the "good group/bad group" way of thinking is blurred but Rick and Co. are definitely not to the point where they will TERRORIZE another group for entertainment or for supplies.

 

Hence, my specific analogy to the Allies and The Axis a few pages back, if people are going to equalize all killing with murder, such as one poster. The terrorism analogy also works fine when its meaning is not tainted by over-politicization and misuse. As we can see, that makes it hard to apply smoothly to another example. As for WWII, the Allies and The Axis easily convert to the governing bodies of Rick's Group and The Hilltop versus the Saviors, while strategizing similarly against the very identifiable "bad guys" in our history.

Next (in response to someone a few pages back):

It doesn't matter if it's fiction or non-fiction; an analogy is simply meant to compare similarities between two concepts, e.g. "war" or "armies", to better understand a relationship "bad guys vs. good guys", etc. As long as it doesn't interfere with the specific example, you can throw in all the zombies, fishtanks of heads, or flying unicorns that you want.

It really is simple.

Annie out -

 

Don't have the time to go over all the posts, so excuse if this has already been mentioned. It's really not complicated. Yes, Rick and company are still the good guys. Why? Because violence is a last option for them. The bad guys, Governor, Wolves, Saviors, etc. - violence is the first choice.

In the world of TWD there is no way one can survive and not be violent, and even sometimes proactive in being violent. It is never something they 'like' doing and they avoid it whenever possible. The Governor showed Rick that leaving bad people alive means they will come back and try to take your lunch. I'm sure Rick looks at the Saviors and sees the Governor happening all over again. He learned that harsh lesson. Bad guys will come and get you unless you get them first.

 

^ So if they have to use violence proactively, that's not using violence as a last resort, right? I guess that means if the people are "bad" enough, proactive violence would be necessarily. In some cases, like with Terminus or the Wolves, it's easy to see how that would be the case. But even then, how you go about doing it says a lot. Remember in 4 Walls and a Roof, when the Terminus people came, they didn't take them out back and put them down, a few members bludgeoned them to death right there in the church in front of Father Gabriel, Glenn and Maggie (I forget who else). Even Maggie and Glenn looked horrified. Now Glenn is killing people in their sleep, with very little info on the hostiles, and Maggie bludgeoned Molls to death. I'd be willing to be bet that when they were watching the Terminus people getting slaughtered, they wouldn't have imagined that some day they would be using similar method to kill others. How time changes things.

It seemed to me like Carol was rethinking things herself in this last episode. Those women seemed like "regular" women before the ZA and have had to toughen up in order to survive. Even from the brief interaction they had with them, you could see these women were capable of love based on them revealing their prior histories. The guy they were with was a jerk, but Molls shared her cigarettes with Carol, which was a small kindness. And when Carol spilled the beans and told them their group killed the biker gang, Molls natural reaction was she thought these guys were putting on a show to scare people, not that they would actually kill them. We as the viewers saw differently, but her perception of her own people was that they had to come across like territorial tough guys in order to keep people fearful.

I also thought they seemed to be a little jealous and resentful of Carol and Maggie for having the "luxury" of being weepy (perhaps a partial act on Carol's part), or being pregnant. If most of the people they across out there were escaped convicts, murders and rapists prior to the ZA and weren't ever capable of empathy to begin with, and were now enjoying their glory days in the ZA where they can run rampant with no rules or laws that would be one thing. They have come across some groups like that (the guys in season 2 "Nebraska", Joe's gang). But not everyone started off that way. You could see it the look on Carol's face when Maggie was bludgeoning Molls and when Rick shot Primo mid-sentence. The look didn't say "wow, look what badasses I'm with", it said "who are we and what are we turning into". It's a slippery slope, and I don't think even she believes they are "the good guys" anymore.

 

The show is at its best when it adds shades of gray into the decisions people make. It's going to bring even more nuance to Negan now than we had in the comics. Really looking forward to it now. I've criticized Gimple in the past, but he's doing an excellent job with 6B.

 

I believe you were responding to my post, so let me clarify something, I was really only speaking on the difference between murder and justified homicide that was presented. The reason why I brought up the point of this being a fictional universe is because it is now completely dependent upon the viewer to decide how much of the preconceived notions of right and wrong that we have in our own reality they want to apply.

Personally I choose not to apply our current definitions of right and wrong to the TWD universe because it is one based on a post apocalyptic society that was created by a zombie virus, it's not like we're watching a crime drama here. This fictional universe created is so different than the reality we know. That is why I posted the test of placing yourself in the TWD universe based on what we know from the show (not the comics) and then deciding which group you would want to be a part of (I personally choose Rick's).

I do believe the fact that it is fiction does play a part in how much viewers apply the notions of right and wrong because you can't remove the context of this being a zombie apocalypse from the equation, that is something none of us have experienced obviously. So ME PERSONALLY, instead of trying to apply our reality to that fictional universe, I prefer to try and place myself in that universe. That is what makes fiction so enjoyable, it alows the viewer the discretion of deciding how much they want to apply what they're seeing to the reality they know.

 

Yes. Our group is DEFINITELY still the good guys. but it's impossible to be a saint in the city. The ZA is a world where good guys kill or be killed..

 

Wow, we came up with the same analogy even though I didn't read the entire thread so I initially missed your post. You did it much better than I did, wouldn't have even posted ^_^

Well, at this point it's become a semantics arguement. I don't think I"m disagreeing with your main point. hah.

 

Except there is order.

Hilltop, and Alexandria prove there is order, and semblance of civilization.

These communities have a proto-government structure, leadership, working to better their way of life with agriculture to support their hunting and gathering lifestyle