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About this quote

What does it mean?
Badiou claims the word terrorist is used to push a political agenda rather than to neutrally describe actions.
In plain terms
The word terrorist is biased and stops people from thinking clearly about politics.
What can you take from it?
Be skeptical of loaded terms like terrorist.

Where it applies

  • reading news
  • political debate
  • analyzing rhetoric

Putting it to work

  • check terms for bias
  • examine political causes

Questions to consider

  • What words stop you from thinking?
  • Who benefits from the word?

Another view

Sometimes the term describes specific violent acts regardless of intent.

More from Alain Badiou

  1. The cinema is a place of intrinsic indiscernibility between art and non-art.

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  2. If there exists one unique great imperial power which is always convinced that its most brutal interests coincide with the Good; if it is true that every year …

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  3. It is thus quite simply false that whereof one cannot speak (in the sense of 'there is nothing to say about it that specifies it and grants it separating prope…

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