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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7594481" data-attributes="member: 177">Which does not appear in any canon source.  Sorry.  It isn't arbitrary - military targets are generally considered legitimate targets in a war.  Civilian populations are usually not.  Terrorism is not just about being violent.  It is about who is the target of that violence - terrorism is about instilling fear within a population in order to influence political actions.  I ask, again, whether we ever see, in canon, any terrorist acts done by the Rebels or Resistance.  Where do we ever see them intentionally try to influence the population by fear?  If it happens, it shouldn't be hard to point out.  The Empire and First Order are guilty of outright terrorism and genocide with the destruction of entire planets and their populations.  They repeatedly make weapons of mass destruction.  They authorize gunning down whole villages to find one enemy agent, and consider mental conditioning for a soldier who does not fire upon civilians *after* the enemy agent is taken.We don't see them controlling/governing any territory, either.  They are a small military organization, seemingly without the resources or infrastructure to "help the people of the galaxy" with humanitarian efforts on any scale.Bzzt!  Stop right there.  At the time of the Rebellion, the organization is not overtly religious in nature.  IIRC, the only believers we see are Force practitioners (Luke, Obi-Wan, Vader and Palpatine - if we are using these as a measure, both sides are theocracies*) and Admiral Ackbar (who says, "May the Force be with you" - do you want to try to argue that statement alone qualifies as evidence wanting to establish a theocracy?).  Our everyman stand-in is Han Solo, and he openly and disdainfully mocks belief in the Force.I don't see strong indication of theocratic intent in the whole organization, there.  War is violent.  You have as yet not been able to directly document even a single in-cannon terrorist act by the Rebellion or Resistance.  Your best is handwaving at things the characters say they aren't proud of - but there is no clear indication that those we terrorist acts, specifically.  They could easily have been assassinations, or actions with civilian casualties that were not actually targeted at civilians to intimidate them.Meanwhile, the Empire/First Order destroy five inhabited worlds, and was stopped in an attempt on a sixth, if I recall correctly.  Kind of wagging a finger at a plump dog while there's an elephant in the room, no?  Agreed.  And for sake of discussion, we can expect most of us have seen all the movies.  The EU is a large body of work, and I don't think we can expect many are familiar with most of it.*Technically, the term "theocracy" doesn't really apply, as the Force is not a theistic deity.  But I'll accept use of the term for now.</blockquote>

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