It’s striking that several people in the movie call him [the Joker] a terrorist, an appropriate term only in a very loose sense. He certainly terrorises people, in the movie and in the cinema. But terrorism, strictly, is a political weapon, and the Joker doesn’t have any politics, any more than he has any morals. In this respect he resembles the slouching killer of the Coen brothers’ recent No Country for Old Men.
(Michael Wood at The London Review of Books, discussing The Dark Knight)
Another strained comparison of a classic villain with a terrorist can be found in this New Yorker piece about Milton:
In America, where God and the Devil live alongside Western rationalism, Milton seems right at home. After the attacks of September 11th, it was possible to find Milton invoked to remind us of the nature of absolute evil—his Satan really is a model terrorist, who, having abandoned hope of a happy home, devotes his energy to destroying the lives of others—and at the same time quoted to uphold the rights of individuals whose distasteful views might be curtailed during a time of war.
In Paradise Lost, Satan doesn't employ terror to bring about the damnation of Adam and Eve, he uses temptation and deceit. That passage is a lazy attempt at making Milton's work resonate with current concerns.
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