In any case, the revolts were a direct consequence of his rhetoric. The guy was a revolutionary. The point is that the whole reformation thing wasn’t initiated by an oppressed peasant, but by a rich, highly educated guy, a lawyer.

The definition is something like ‘political hyper-activism’, ‘political extremism’. I think terrorism easily falls into this category. I don’t know much about Zarqawi: hard to separate facts from fiction at this time.

The Trotsky’s quote I am sure has something to do with one of the many splits between autoritarian communists (Marxists) and the anarchists around 1900.

Best make a start on it.

What makes you connect:

a clerical reformer like Luther, author of against the murderous theiving hordes of peasants.

an intellectual like Engels (who did actually fight in the 1848 revolution in Germany, but as part of an organised army)?

a revolutionary like Castro?

a terrorist like zarqawi (or pick any other one that is actually a terrorist, not a mislabelled ?

What definition covers those four, that doesn’t amount to ‘notable person’? A famous successful terrorist will probably share some traits with famous successful people in other fields (revolutionary, but also rock star, politician, actor, …), but I don’t think that explains much.

Whatever his other opinions, Trotsky was very sound on terrorism:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1909/tia09.htm
However, in order to murder a prominent official you need not have the organised masses behind you. The recipe for explosives is accessible to all, and a Browning can be obtained anywhere. In the first case, there is a social struggle, whose methods and means flow necessarily from the nature of the prevailing social order; and in the second, a purely mechanical reaction identical anywhere – in China as in France – very striking in its outward form (murder, explosions and so forth) but absolutely harmless as far as the social system goes.

soru

A common individual suffering oppression will cut a conveyor belt or throw rocks at a IDF jeep, he’ll shoot his supervisor at a post office or some jocks at his school. These actions don’t even count as ‘terrorism’. Common individuals usually have a very narrow perspective, IOW they blame and attack the immediate agent of their oppresson.

It’s easy to see why an educated, smart, well-read and especially well-travelled individual – assuming this very specific (intolerance for institutional injustice) psychological profile (or psychological disorder, if you wish) is much more likely to become a revolutionary or a terrorist. That’s been going on for ages and all over the place, from Luther to Garibaldi to Bakunin, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Castro, Che, etc, etc. That’s the rule rather than exception.

To most people—including many of the American people for whom you falsely pretend to speak against “the left”—“good” and “bad” are defined by actions and their consequences. If you don’t grasp this, you’re living in a comic book and frankly don’t deserve to be taken seriously.

And that IS a moral principle, morality having to do as much with what you’re trying to achieve, as the means you are using.

I’m sure Stalin would have agreed with you…

Postmodern ethics: One thing is certain, we cannot be certain when it comes to ethics … or anything else.

Traditional Christian ethics: I know good when I see it, and I know bad when I see it. Good, good. Bad, bad.

Street ethics: All is bad, and don’t blame me, you created this mess.

Terrorist ethics: I know good when I see it, and I know bad when I see it. Good, bad. Bad, good.

Bellmorian ethics: Some people are Bad. (It´s just obvious who). When they do stuff it is therefore bad, even if the same stuff wouldn´t have been bad if a “Good” person had done it.

Shorter Brett (a la Duchamp): Badness is whatever the Baddie spits out.

That would be a valid explanation for why some individuals suffer oppression and don’t become terrorists, and why some millionaires sons do. That’s not what is being pointed out, what you actually see is the equivalent of French people not getting lung cancer.

That should be a clue a less simplistic model is needed.

soru

For example, terrorism in Bolivia is fairly recent (last several decades), but I can’t believe that Bolivia was less repressive in the 1930’s or 1940’s.

To me terrorism is a slippery concept which is often used self-servingly in the Bellmore manner (“violence by bad people”).

Dr Smith said McVeigh was in many ways surprisingly normal – of above average intelligence and with good social skills.
[...]
“He’s a young man capable of feeling great anger particularly at people or institutions that he considers to be bullies.”

In Germany, Atta was registered as a citizen of the United Arab Emirates. His German friends describe him as an intelligent man with religious beliefs who grew angry over the Western policy toward the Middle East, including the Oslo Accords and the Gulf War. MSNBC in its special “The Making of the Death Pilots” interviewed German friend Ralph Bodenstein who traveled, worked and talked a lot with Mohamed Atta. Ralph said, “He was most imbued actually about Israeli politics in the region and about U.S. protection of these Israeli politics in the region. And he was to a degree personally suffering from that.”

• more lengthy pieces pointing out that criticism of any kind of quack remedy marks the critic as “objectively pro-cancer”
  The Cancer Conspiracy
  Another Cancer Conspiracy
  Many such pieces about AIDS can be found, too.
• lengthy pieces pointing out that the only thing we need to know about cancer cells is that they are malignant

Why cancer patients may ignore, ridicule, reject, & attack alternative cancer treatments—this one works well if you substitute liberals for doctors