John Brown was a terrorist, Henry Dampier notes, who hoped to incite broader slave rebellions within the Southern states:
One of the reasons why his acts were politically significant was because his actions were condoned and supported by abolitionist newspapers and public opinion at the time. He had broad cultural and financial support throughout the North, even when he committed mass murders against civilians.
Almost instinctively, Americans return to old methods which worked in the past in order to grasp for more power over their fellow citizens. This is one of the problems that democracy often runs into: it’s more cost-effective just to kill and terrorize the other side than it is to perpetually electioneer against them. To paraphrase Stalin, “no man, no votes.” And if you can’t achieve your political ends through the conventional legal process, as in the Civil War, it’s sometimes just more direct to go to war with the people who are obstructing your political program until you’ve cracked the resistance.
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By inflaming this cycle of attack, reprisal, and counter-reprisal, the press behaves how it usually behaves, which is to recklessly provoke a war which might otherwise be avoided. Popular government means government by passion over reason — whatever evokes great, popular outpourings of emotion is what turns into policy. Violent acts are exciting and pleasurable to participate in vicariously, which is why action movies, video games, and comic books are so popular. Media activists can have all the joy of participating in violence without any of the personal risk. This is destabilizing (which is why incitement is a crime), but the particular form of the crime makes it difficult for the state to muster enough cohesion within itself to halt the process.
The press is fake. It is politics after all.
The press exist to promote politics, to make people think that their well being came from politics and not from technology. To make people invest in politics instead of knowledge.
Politics also by definition is a decision usually to take take from someone or to forbid something, so making someone lose and someone win.
Spartacus was a terrorist too I suppose.
A slave revolt is probably the most justified type of terrorism found in the annals of human history.