Freedom fighter
The term freedom fighter denotes someone who rebels against the ruling power , which is considered to be oppressive and illegal. Since the terms freedom and oppression are strongly influenced by the political and cultural point of view, the term freedom fighter must always be viewed against this background. In parlance, the term mostly refers to armed struggle.
history
Antiquity
Without the word already existing, freedom fighters for antiquity can be identified, unfree slaves who defend themselves against harsh oppression. See: Spartacus .
middle Ages
Jeanne d'Arc is a very well-known French representative of this genre. Wilhelm Tell is similar in Switzerland to this day. Sometimes as the founder of national sovereignty, albeit with strong traits of patriotic legends and glorification .
reformation
Even with currents of the Reformation period , one can conditionally speak of freedom fighters. The Czech Hussites or the Dutch Geusen can be seen as religious-national freedom fighters , and the spiritualists as religious-social freedom fighters . See: Peasants' War , Thomas Müntzer .
Modern times
The actual term freedom fighter arose in 19th century Germany in the course of the diverse and emerging freedom movements of the time. According to the ideals of the French Revolution " freedom, equality, fraternity ", three types of freedom fighter can be roughly identified:
- the bourgeois revolutionary who came from the Enlightenment with the ideal of freedom , which he seeks to enforce both with consistent political violence ( Napoleon ) and with the weapon of the spirit ( Heinrich Heine );
- the national freedom fighter with the ideal of brotherhood . The goals of Romanticism shape its program of national rebirth. Germans with national movements show solidarity with patriotic Poles and Hungarians, Greeks and Italians, Czechs and Croats. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn is an important spokesman ;
- the social freedom fighter with the ideal of equality ( socialist , communist , social democrat ) directs his striving towards the elimination of social injustice in rising capitalism . Key theorists are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels .
All three groups see the concerns and goals of their freedom struggle in largely different and diverging programs. Sometimes the different fought fiercely, as evidenced by the derogatory statements by Heine and Jahn about one another.
Problems and Terminology
These contradictions show that struggles for the good of freedom are carried out with great pathos. Freedom fighters live with the risk of establishing renewed bondage at the goal of their struggle. (see totalitarianism )
To this day it has been shown that people who are called freedom fighters by their sympathizers are branded as murderers , rebels or terrorists by their opponents . During the Cold War , the West used the term freedom fighter for resistance fighters in the countries of the Eastern Bloc , including the insurgents in Hungary , such as the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua and the mujahideen in Afghanistan .
The East used the term analogously for resistance movements in countries under US influence such as Vietnam , Nicaragua and Colombia . These rebels often used guerrilla tactics . But, in general, asymmetrical warfare has been practiced on both sides and it is problematic to find a moral balance.
The term freedom fighter expresses sympathy for a certain political group, often without reflecting the actual political position of the fighters. Many people around the world saw the radical left Sandinista as freedom fighters. After their revolution, a new opposition funded by the CIA , the Contras , formed in Nicaragua ; the US government called these freedom fighters and called the Sandinista rioters and Soviet terrorists.
It follows from the ambiguity of the word freedom that the title freedom fighter can easily be used for propaganda purposes. It is quite easy to prove to the "enemy" any violation of liberty that allows a demagogue to fight for freedom from a morally higher level. In addition, propaganda often uses virtue terms such as freedom, which are capable of evoking positive images and feelings in the audience.
Today, the focus is increasingly shifting away from individual freedom fighters to organized liberation movements .
See also
Web links
- Let's kill words! ; Comment by taz columnist Deniz Yücel on the problem of the term “freedom fighter” (taz.de, March 15, 2014)