When Words Are Weapons....

Philip K Dick, 1978 :

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. George Orwell made this clear in his novel 1984. But another way to control the minds of people is to control their perceptions. If you can get them to see the world as you do, they will think as you do. Comprehension follows perception."

Interesting piece on how governments, media and political enemies use the word "terrorism" for any number of agendas, from vilification to simply jazzing up an otherwise confusing news story.

...more is at stake here than semantics or petty point-scoring in the blogosphere. Political violence has two elements: the act, and the meaning attached to it. Long after the smoke of an explosion has cleared, the battle over language goes on, as contending sides seek to aggrandize the act or dismiss it, portray it as noble or denounce it as vile.

“The use of the term terrorism delegitimizes the opponent,” said Martha Crenshaw, a scholar at Stanford who wrote her first essay wrestling with the definition of terrorism in 1972. “It’s not just the tactics that are discredited, it’s the cause, as well.”

US President Ronald Reagan, in 1986, on the adage 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' :

"That’s a catchy phrase, but also misleading. Freedom fighters do not need to terrorize a population into submission. Freedom fighters target the military forces and the organized instruments of repression keeping dictatorial regimes in power. Freedom fighters struggle to liberate their citizens from oppression and to establish a form of government that reflects the will of the people.”

Of course, Reagan's freedom fighters in the Afghanistan War againnt the Soviets went on to form the Taliban and found (with the help and hype of US intelligence agencies) the terrorist outfit now known as Al Qaeda.