this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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[–] Jaytreeman@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Violence is a key word in that definition.

Violence: Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury.

So, starving a group of people isn't terrorism because you're not exerting physical force.

Not easily stopping a fire when you know it's going to spread towards an occupied house isn't violence because you're not exerting physical force.

Poisoning drinking water isn't violence because you're not exerting physical force.

Real question: what do you call those things? It can't be defined as terrorism. What is it?

[–] spookedbyroaches@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Kinda missed the point here. The other guy was saying that eco terrorism is not terrorism. I said nothing about if starving people is violence or not.

[–] betheydocrime@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think "physical force" is a necesarry component of violence. Take, for example, domestic violence. The US DOJ gives these criteria for if an action is DV or not:

Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.

I think a more apt definition of violence would be "coercive behavior"

[–] Jaytreeman@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Coercive behavior doesn't quite work though.
Yours is better than either of the ones posted, but I do think the physical force aspect is important to differentiate from other aspects.

I was going to attempt to make a point about how stopping terrorism that isn't explicitly violent with violence isn't the same thing.

Starving a population isn't violence, but it is terrorism. Attempting to give that population food and being stopped by the state by legal means is terrorism.

The state is going to define things in specific ways to ensure that they're considered correct.

I had written out a response to the person I replied to and then didn't post after reading some of their other comments. They're probably just a troll, or one of those people that's legitimately kind of smart but hasn't been around people that are incredibly smart, so hasn't had a reason to adjust their opinions about things because they might be shallowly correct but are fundamentally wrong. Like Newton's laws.