Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries .
Interpretation
Terrorism is often more effective for authoritarian regimes than for those seeking genuine liberation.
Christopher Hitchens emphasizes that while terrorism is a tactic employed by various groups, it tends to favor oppressive governments or those aspiring to power rather than genuine revolutionary movements. This suggests that oppressive regimes can manipulate terror to maintain control, while true revolutionaries often struggle to gain support and legitimacy through violent means.
In practice
Discussing the impact of terrorism in a political science class.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.
The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party.
He told us he was going to take crime out of the streets. He did. He took it into the damn White House.
By union the smallest states thrive. By discord the greatest are destroyed.
It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.
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