Loftwings and Demons

I think the word 'terrorist' is a disingenuous and meaningless descriptor used primarily to dehumanize both the people who are described this way and even anyone who happens to be remotely proximate to them regardless of any actual association.

Rather than being a meaningful way to condemn violence, it's instead a way to legitimize the brutal violence of the state. A 'terrorist' action can be any action that results in meaningful resistance to a state, even if no one is killed. Meanwhile it's used to justify war, mass murder, and genocide against others.

This doesn't mean that you should take someone's side just because they're being called a terrorist. For example, from everything I understand, Osama bin Laden was committed to a vile ideology, and he certainly killed people. It just means the word 'terrorist' can't be used to justify the disproportionate violence used either against the people being labelled as such or against people who have absolutely nothing to do with them. It also means that there's no one particular ideology that 'terrorists' share--the only thing 'terrorists' have in common is that some state or other finds them inconvenient.

It's a word used to excuse countries from mass murder, from war crimes, from egregrious violations of international law, from genocide. In short, it's a word used to excuse terrorism.

Respect is such a fraught term, both in terms of how it's framed in the giving vs receiving aspect and in terms of how it is applied between people with power differentials.