this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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Malicious Compliance

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People conforming to the letter, but not the spirit, of a request. For now, this includes text posts, images, videos and links. Please ensure that the “malicious compliance” aspect is apparent - if you’re making a text post, be sure to explain this part; if it’s an image/video/link, use the “Body” field to elaborate.

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[–] sad_detective_man@leminal.space 49 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (4 children)

so weird how we've mangled the word terrorism around to mean impeding a military machine or body. maybe this is just my brain turning to worm food but I could have swore it was explicitly when you kill civilians or destroy infrastructure in order to coerce a policy change. but that alteration probably wasn't intentional or for any specific purpose.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 25 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

25 years ago, the day I stopped watching TV news- the dramatic talking head told me that terrorists had attacked a US military base in Afganistan.

[–] sad_detective_man@leminal.space 19 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (3 children)

oof. yeah. I don't like pointing at 9/11 and desert storm as the time when it changed but it REALLY seems like that was when it changed. I was 9 and got in a lot of trouble for not saying the pledge of allegiance and even though I was way to young to have a real opinion bback then you really can't fault anyone for coming to the conclusion that we might be the fucking baddies

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

we might be the fucking baddies

It depends. Is it relative? Even then, sometimes we are and sometimes we aren't.

There aren't many nations that have their hands clean.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Yeah, that was the inflexion point.

Back then, people were cautioning against this lingusitic slight of hand, this overuse of rhetorically charged language... because they could lead to a world where 'everything i dont like is a terrorist'.

But they weren't listened to, PATRIOT ACT passed, and we now live in the world we were told we would, but even worse actually, because the internet is forever and the NSA has been doing its damndest to make a permanent hard backup of all internet traffic at its mega data center in Utah for over a decade.

Ironically what this means is that Osama Bin Laden won.

He goaded us into destroying ourselves, and we did, we went insane.

The 'Great Satan' is doing just a bangup job of carrying out the NeoCon plan for an American Century, what with electing an incompetent idiot rapist who has basically single handedly caused the second Great Depression, and caused us to lose almost all of our international allies.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 5 points 14 hours ago

That was when I first noticed that word being abused so egregiously. I wouldn’t be surprised if it started before that.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 13 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah it's supposed to be the use of violence to spread fear, usually for some political aim. I guess we're counting "violence" against property now too 🙄

[–] Deathray5@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 11 hours ago

And specifically on civilian targets

[–] Aqarius@lemmy.world 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Eh. 100 years ago, "terrorism" meant "assassinating royalty".

[–] sad_detective_man@leminal.space 6 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

did it actually? that is interesting.

ohhhh because it was coined during the French revolution. I should have guessed

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

By an amazing coincidence over-broad legislation made on top of a legally undefined word ended up used against things and groups which weren't at all the claimed targets of that legislation.

This was also totally unexpected and nobody could ever had foreseen how they could be leveraged for such uses when those laws were first drafted and approved.

[–] sad_detective_man@leminal.space 6 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Hopscotching backward time and time again into fascism because we laser focused on bad words and not the actual languages of power.

at least it looks like the guy in the video got off the hook by simply swapping a word around so there's that. kind of funny in the context of what you said

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 3 points 15 hours ago

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