Nelson Mandela did spend thirty years in prison for terrorism and was vindicated only in hindsight. This comes back to the terrorist vs. freedom fighter conversation; looking at the rightness of the cause, the appropriateness and necessity of the methods, the power relations context, the violence carried out by the other side, and then still being very reluctant to support the use of violence to achieve a political goal.
(What was the essential difference between, say, the occupation of the Malheur wildlife refuge in 2016 by armed extremists and the occupation of the Dublin GPO in 1916 by armed extremists? Which could be considered mentally ill and why?)
(I also find it interesting that the most basic, minimal kind of critique - asking what the effect of the work is on the audience - has generated such outrage. I haven't called for censorship, I haven't even called for self-censorship, not directly attributed moral responsibility. All I said was should think about whether there was moral responsibility or not.)
This is my impression of the comment chain so far:
The root said "The users of that forum have literally been linked to public shootings.", as part of an argument that /r/the_donald is a shithole and deserves to be banned. The reply was that all sorts of people find themselves in mass shooter manifestos, and that this doesn't imply any sort of culpability whatsoever.
You then replied saying that everyone who finds themselves in such a manifesto needs to reexamine their messaging. This would seem to imply agreement with the root - that since /r/the_donald was mentioned by mass shooters, it's bad.
(What was the essential difference between, say, the occupation of the Malheur wildlife refuge in 2016 by armed extremists and the occupation of the Dublin GPO in 1916 by armed extremists? Which could be considered mentally ill and why?)
(I also find it interesting that the most basic, minimal kind of critique - asking what the effect of the work is on the audience - has generated such outrage. I haven't called for censorship, I haven't even called for self-censorship, not directly attributed moral responsibility. All I said was should think about whether there was moral responsibility or not.)