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by Crito
4573 days ago
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I don't think there is much dispute over what Mandela did or did not do, but rather over what we call it and if we should approve of it. Whether you call somebody a "freedom fighter" or a "terrorist" in response to these sort of actions is a matter of perspective. Movements don't get called "terrorists" by people who side with them. We know this because, in other times in history against other wildly racist and tyrannical regimes, resistance movements have carried out similar violent attacks, but rarely do we hear those groups described as "terrorists". I have never heard somebody describe the French or Polish Resistance as terrorists; they receive the terminology "freedom fighters" because damn near everybody agrees that they were on the correct side of that fight. So what is the deal with people who chose the "terrorist" terminology, rather than "freedom fighter", for the ANC and Mandela? Do they merely lack perspective, or are there actually still a significant number of people who side with the Apartheid government? |
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I'm not in the camp of calling him a terrorist, but I do get a bit annoyed (sometimes) when the hero-worship seems to present a skewed perspective on reality. For example, I'm annoyed that many US politicians will dote over how awesome Mandela was in expressing their sympathies over his passing, but there is no talk of how we sided against him.
[1] For example, Mother Theresa explicitly withheld pain-killers from the people that she treated because she felt that the pain brought them closer to God. It's unquestionable (to me at least) that treating those people (even with this attitude) was a good thing because they would get no care otherwise. On the other hand, I don't put her up on a pedestal as a perfect human being like others do.