I think that was one of those joke things I always hear about.

What? Humor? No such thing! This is the Internet, and it is serious business.

Anonymous aren't terrorists. Incredibly annoying, and I don't think they realize just how many people they have managed to seriously aggravate with their "high-minded" take-downs of servers and systems that people want to use. But not terrorists.

The internet brings out the worst in extremist name-calling, usually by groups that don't understand it well. Like Congress, the Senate, Joe Biden & his RIAA/MPAA puppet-masters, and so on. They don't understand it, so they attack it, and they think that by painting people in the most emotive terms they will achieve their goals of suppressing them. And make themselves look like morons.

My college humanities professor was a dedicated terrorist (his own terms). He proudly boasted of his membership in Earth First! and the only way to stop him would have been to lock him up forever or kill him. I enjoyed his classes, he enjoyed being challenged on is opinions and I always did well in his class despite rigorous discussions. He enjoyed disagreement and always encouraged people to bring their A game. Quite a few classes I can remember he made increasingly radical statements just trying to provoke (in a good way) people into responding and disagreeing. WAY too many people stood there and took notes and nodded along as he proposed radical idea after radical idea that they disagreed with. It really opened my eyes to how far people will go in following an authority figure instead of making waves. And that was sort of his point.

I give him a lot of credit in my education because he was one of the first people to really encourage me to thoroughly study my own opinions and stances as well as those I oppose and recognize the difference between rhetoric and truth. And also the value of those stances other people shrugged off as well. I've learned just as much from people I've disagreed with than those who share the same values/opinions than I do.

There are always going to be a certain number of people willing to do too much for their cause, the best we can do I think is to eliminate their bases and methods of support. Most of the big terrorist attacks require quite a lot of training, money, time, planning, etc. They're much less of a threat if they can't coordinate and do any long term planning.

A side note: the recent rise in terrorism is closely tied to the attention it creates. Their purpose is to change the situation (locally or globally), and for that they need to be heard. We live in an unprecedented situation, where killing few people can make your voice heard globally, and your opinion to be weighted by billions of people.

I think this phenomenon is what gives rise to the modern form of terrorism against random civilians, which as far as I know didn't happen before. Until late 20th century terrorism always targeted specific targets: politicians, rulers, opponents, because attacking random people was not effective.

I suspect that the 'recent rise in terrorism' has much more to do with a combination of increased reporting on such events and an increased willingness to label violent actions as terrorism.



I direct you to the concept of 'State Terrorism', wherein the governing power induces fear in large portions of the governed populace as a means of exerting control.

I recall a class I took which mentioned a war in Ancient Greece where a neutral city was attacked by one side to try and force it to join the fight on their side. They wound up losing the war, but in terms of historical precedent for attacking civilians see the Crusades, when you decide the other side's civilians aren't really human this sort of thing happens a lot throughout history.

Ok, I meant a much more narrow case of terrorism - not the state terrorism or war crimes. I doubt it's possible to invent one solution for all kinds of terrorism: Holocaust, Breivik, IEDs in Iraq, Drone strikes in Pakistan and bombing of Iran nuclear scientists can all be considered acts of terrorism. But there will hardly be a solution to prevent all of them at once. So it makes sense to narrow down the topic.

I think in case of terrorism performed by weak actors against random targets - publicity is a major consideration.

I'm not sure if I'd personally consider Anonymous as a terrorist organization, but from what I've seen of them, it's the situation of starting with a great cause, but too many bad seeds find a way t exploit the movement for their own purposes, turning it into essentially an immature replica of a pseudo-terrorist organization.

As far as terrorism goes, there will always be someone with an idea and a belief, who has the charisma to rally others to that cause. It can never be stopped. Even stopping it for any lengthy amount of time would likely require a massive genocide.

Which would likely itself qualify as terrorism against anyone you left alive.