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 54 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (14 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 28 points 1 month ago (6 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 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 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

[–] Steve@startrek.website 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 weeks ago

It definitely started before then, but that's probably when they realized they aren't getting any push back from using it and can use it to slander anyone they want.

I know in Star Trek DS9 ('93-99) there's a part that's talking about the native people resisting the authoritarian faction taking over. It talks about how terrorism can be good if it's used to do good. I don't recall if it uses the word specifically, but I think it does, so by that time it had become obvious enough that it was being abused for the writers of DS9 to talk about it.

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