Thread by @Doc_0

Whatever their long-term goals might be, the short-term objective of terrorists is always gaining legitimacy. The tiniest scrap of legitimacy - attention paid to their grievances, excuses made for their depredations - is enough to sustain a brutal terrorist movement.

This is one reason for the old-fashioned insistence that "we do not negotiate with terrorists." Such negotiations inevitably confer legitimacy. Absolute rejection of terrorism - the punishment is destruction, the method invalidates the "cause" - is the only way to defeat it.

A common technique for grabbing quick infusions of legitimacy is for the terrorists to associate themselves with a larger population. If you oppose the terrorists, then you must hate the people. If you care about the people, you must go easy on the terrorists.

Making excuses for the actions of the terrorists or memory-holing their atrocities also confers legitimacy. If they can get away with committing unspeakable acts and then return to bargaining tables as legitimate parties with valid demands, they will commit more such acts.

Terrorists reject the very foundations of civilization by perpetrating horrendous atrocities, and then demand to be let back through the gates. If this demand is met, the terrorist has achieved a vital objective: proving his enemies aren't really committed to their principles.

If someone marches into your house and announces they're the real owner, then shoots your dog when you refuse to comply with their demands, and you don't put them down or expel them, you have conferred legitimacy upon them. They've established a claim.

Suppose the intruder begins telling you about all of his grievances, everything he regards as an injustice, and you nod along and say he's got some fair points. More legitimacy is conferred. Shooting your dog is no longer inexplicable or unforgivable.

Every terrorist wants to reach that point in the short term: to be treated as legitimate representatives of an aggrieved group, to get away with murder and prove "thou shalt not kill" isn't really carved in stone, to act repulsively and yet garner sympathy.

This is why terrorism flourishes in the toxic stew of oppression theology. If the terrorist has no agency, if he's just a freedom fighter striking back at oppressors the only way he can, then his actions cost no legitimacy. Everything he does is really the oppressor's fault.

At a certain point, terrorism becomes coldly LOGICAL. It's almost inevitable. It is very difficult to collapse a civilization that believes in itself. The first chip in the armor of belief is to challenge civilization's right to defend itself.

If the terrorist commits unspeakable acts - the more heinous, the better - and yet he is granted concessions and seats at bargaining tables, he has effectively forced the civilization he hates to concede it has no right to protect itself against him.

That's the short-term goal of terrorism, the fuel in its engine. It's also the goal of movements that seek to destabilize civilizations with methods a bit short of suicide-bomb attacks. Destroying you is much easier once you concede that maybe you don't deserve to live. /end