The word "terrorist" doesn't have a single, universally-accepted definition. The most commonly accepted definition is "a person who uses violence to achieve a political end." The problem is this: people who engage in a guerrilla war against an oppressive government can also be described as using violence to achieve political ends. Of course, as one term (terrorism) represents a modus operandi and the other (freedom fighting) represents a goal, there is no reason apart from optics why the terms would be mutually exclusive.
Another definition of terrorist is "one who uses terror as a means to achieve a goal." The problem with that definition is that it includes things like any policeman who scares a witness into cooperating, or your Wounded Gazelle Gambit-loving little sister.
To add one more definition to the already-muddled pot, the UN defines terrorism as attempting to bring about change by deliberately targeting non-combatants. This is compared to legitimate warfare, where soldiers are at least supposedto only attack military targets. Or in plain English, its not what you're doing that makes you a terrorist, but who you're trying to do it to.
The ragtag band of plucky rebels fighting against the evil Empire will see themselves as "freedom fighters," although it looks like a lot like "terrorism" to the guys they are against.
There is basically no definition for "terrorist" that could not fit most modern state actions in some manner.
See also You Rebel Scum!. Tends to happen when dealing with a Villain with Good Publicity and/or a Hero with Bad Publicity. Related to Well Intentioned Extremists and is a subtrope of La Résistance. Likely to overlap with The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized. Which label gets applied long after the fact will most likely depend on which side won and how.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
Code Geass is a show about terrorism. If one does not consider the Black Knights this, the first members Zero recruited and other Japanese resistance groups certainly do qualify, what with theft of poison gas and hotel jackings.
Subversion because Zero has no problem calling himself a terrorist.
This happens in multiple Gundam series, such as the AEUG and Karaba of Zeta Gundam, and the League Militaire of Victory Gundam.
Gundam 00's first season averts this, as Celestial Being don't claim to be La Résistance. Season 2, however, has Celestial Being allied with Katharon, a Karaba-Expy organization who fit the trope better.
In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, the third and fourth World Wars have left Japan with a large population of refugees (probably Chinese and Korean), who live in camps made of ruined and abandoned cities enclosed by fences and guarded by the military. Forced to live in poverty and without any place to go, many of them resolve to take hostages, assassinate political officials, and perform suicide bombings to force the government to give them a new home. In the second season, one of the two main antagonists is a Japanese man who becomes one of the rebels greatest leaders and is considered a hero for the refugees, but the country's top terrorist by the government. Given that Ghost in the Shell deals heavily with conspiracies, things are a lot more complicated, though.
Then there are the Individual Eleven who claim to represent the will of the mainstream Japanese populace, and pursue "refugee liberation" (read: "kick them out of the country!"), who also commit terrorist acts in the name of their cause. In the first episode of the second season the Major in turn compares the Section 9 to a terrorist organization, since they're a secret armed group that lacks governmental recognition or supervision - they do get the said recognition later in the same episode, though.
One Piece plays with this concept a bit. The main characters are pirates who don't do pirate like things, instead taking out other pirates and corrupt organizations/local governments, but this hasn't stopped them from being labeled as highly dangerous pirates by the world government (it doesn't help that some enjoy being called pirates) and heavily feared by most citizens, although the citizens they've helped out seem really grateful and forever in their debt. Of course, the fact that a few of them were already on the run from the world government for political reasons (they knew something the world government didn't want the public to know) and the organizations had major ties to the world government, which is possible just as corrupt as the others they've encountered and employs some CompleteMonsters in their "fight against evil" doesn't change the fact that the average citizen fears the worst from them and not the world government and theirs.
In the Area 88 manga, Mickey meets Rishar Vashtal, Saki's brother and a leader among Asran's anti-government forces. Rishar explains the anti-government forces' reasons for engaging in the civil war, showing that both sides of the conflict have legitimate aims. Mickey feels conflicted after meeting Rishar but remains loyal to Area 88.
Mickey: "I didn't want to hear his problems. It'll be harder for me to fight now."
In DMZ, the terms terrorist and insurgent get thrown around pretty casually, and are frequently directed to innocent bystanders who just want to get on with their lives without taking either side in the USA's second civil war. Naturally this also happens in a more textbook fashion with regards to the rebelling faction of said Civil War.
Freedom Fighters uses this as a recurring theme with the team usually viewed in a negative light. Their earliest stories featured them as the only heroes on a world controlled underneath Nazi rule, which makes this trope very obvious. More recently they are antagonists of the black-ops government organization S.H.A.D.E. which leads to Uncle Sam, the living embodiment and spirit of the United States, being declared a threat to national security and put on their most wanted list.
This is a prominent theme in Savage, with the title character considered a heroic freedom fighter by the British, but a brutal terrorist by the occupying Volgans.
Film
In V for Vendetta, V is labeled a terrorist by the fascistic government of Great Britain he is trying to overthrow. He calls himself a terrorist in the original comic. The question the comic is asking is essentially "is a good cause corrupted when reprehensible methods are used to achieve it?" Even the author, Alan Moore, a outspoken proponent of anarchy, says that the anarchistic V is not supposed to be a clear cut, definite hero. His main issue with the movie was that the film painted V as unquestionably being a freedom fighter and the hero of the story. Ironically, that means the movie is an unintentional meta-application of this trope.
The Rebel Alliance in Star Wars. Debates on its morality and the innocents have cropped up everywhere, most memorably Clerks and the question of independent contractors killed on the Death Star*
They knew the risks. They could have refused, but it's still their livelihood.
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In the Expanded Universe novel Sacrifice, Luke Skywalker's own son acknowledges a lot of innocent people died when the Death Star(s) exploded. Luke himself noted that it had more than a million people on board, not counting the droids.
There's also Star Wars: TIE Fighter, where you are a star fighter pilot in service to the Empire, which is presented as the guardian of order, and the Rebels are portrayed as terrorists (though Vader still scares everyone and you don't actually fight Rebels that much). In fact, most of the early missions consist of legitimate work like scanning freighters for contraband and defending military installations from attack. The Opening Scroll and cutscene in TIE Fighter specifically refer to "Rebel terrorists" and "Rebel insurgents."
All of the Star Wars flight sims, and their companion comics and novels, play with this trope in regard to capital ship names. Those stories told from the Rebel perspective are likely to include Alliance ships named after ideals - "Independence," "Liberty," "Freedom" - while enemy ships have names with definite negative connotations - "Inquisitor," for example, or even "Eviscerator." If, however, the protagonists fly for the Empire, suddenly all the Star Destroyers have names like "Protector" or "Stalwart", while the ships of their Rebel opponents have non-evocative names.
The Zionite Rebels in The Matrix are active terrorists who go so far as to advise new recruits that every living human still within the Matrix is a potential enemy, since the bad guys could teleport in by taking over the bodies of any still living bystanders, despite the fact that they are nominally fighting for the exclusive benefit of these humans. The Matrix Online took this idea and ran with it, establishing the new conflict as solely for control of the Matrix, because everyone needs it. Morpheus was unwilling to admit it and staged terrorist attacks with the end goal of crashing the entire thing; he was left to do it largely alone, with even Zion distancing itself from him.
In Steven Soderbergh's two-part series about the real life Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Che (played by Benicio del Toro) is a mostly shown as a freedom fighter in Part 1. In Part 2, his revolutionary movement doesn't catch on and he's seen as a terrorist.
Defied in Die Another Day. When Bond is told one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, he states 'Zao (the man he's hunting) has no interest in other people's freedom.'
In National Treasure, Benjamin Gates, when at a gala in the nation's capitol, makes a toast to treason, pointing out that that's what all the founding fathers would have been charged with if the Revolution had failed.
Literature
Good Omens contains this exchange, between an angel and a demon:
"Maybe some terrorist—?" Aziraphale began. "Not one of ours," said Crowley. "Or ours," said Aziraphale. "Although ours are freedom fighters, of course."
To further drive the point home, when they compare their respective lists of terrorists/freedom fighters in their employ, half of them turn out to 'work' for both sides.
The Discworld Companion, also by Terry Pratchett, notes that the subtle distinction between gods and demons on the Discworld is 'like that between terrorists and freedom fighters'.
The Varden in The Inheritance Trilogy are a very good example of this trope. They make it very clear they consider themselves freedom fighters, and the empire as harmful, but the Empire's supporters (and pre -villainisation Murtagh) occasionally call them out for their less than stellar behaviour, so obviously some people think of them as terrorists.
The non-fiction work Going Nucular discusses politics in language, and pretty much shows how this trope is Newer Than They Think. The author notes how just as the French Revolution's government called themselves the "Reign of Terror" in the sense of being a "holy terror" that defeated their evil enemies, lots of resistance groups of the Bomb Throwing Anarchists type were quite happy to call themselves terrorists, since it didn't carry the implication of being the bad guys. Pretty much the last to self-identify as terrorist were the Irgun in Israel's war of independence.
Interesting variation: Elphaba in Wickedis a terrorist. The word never comes up, but the issue is similar. Your Wicked Witches Are Our Freedom Fighters?
Winds of the Forelands brings up the issue in that the lower-ranking rebels consider themselves freedom fighters. Mind you, their leader is a genocidal Complete Monster, so the counterinsurgents can keep A Lighter Shade Of Gray and avoid having to address the Fantastic Racism that led to the rebellion.
The thin line between special operations and terrorism is a key theme of the Dale Brown book Shadows of Steel. In Warrior Class, the Turkish general visiting Nellis AFB denounces Kurds as evildoers, to which American Colonel Rebecca Furness notes that the American public would find (public knowledge of) bombing Kurds distasteful. Not too much later, the German and Russian foreign ministers discuss how Muslim terrorists creating havoc for both their peoples are abetted by American funding.
The Audubon Ballroom in Honor Harrington is the galaxy's most notorious band of terrorists, or freedom fighters, depending on how you feel about the Manpower Corporation, and genetic slavery.
And of course, there are few things as brutally violent as Havenite grassroots political movements. Eventually it becomes apparent that the leading cause of death in Nouveu Paris is having an interest in politics.
Several other examples begin to pop up in the later books.
In Alexander Yang's Midnight World Vampire Hunters are branded as terrorists - because the world is ruled by vampires.
In Blacklisted by Gena Showalter, this trope is explored with drugs. It's more like "Your Illegal Drug Dealers are our Pharmacists". In a future America, aliens are commonplace, but most of them have to take a drug to breathe. This drug, however, is illegal. The main character's love interest sells them, and is hunted by the government.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo is an early example: he adopts the Ocean as his new homeland and finances the Cretan rebellion because he hates despots. However, the Nautilus permits him destroy any of The Empire’s ship with total impunity (no Nation could chase him in the bottom of the sea). His superior technology means that even the military is as helpless as ordinary civilians.
In The Tomorrow Series, Ellie and her friends are considered terrorists by the enemy...and in a lot of ways, like not wearing uniforms or having a clear chain-of-command, they do fit the bill remarkably well.
Live-Action TV
In the Stargate SG-1 episode "2010", the team's efforts to change the timeline into one where humanity doesn't go extinct is called a "terrorist attack".
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The High Ground dealt with the "you say terrorists, we say freedom fighters" issue. The Ansata separatists are trying to overthrow their Rutian oppressors "by any means necessary", including suicide bombers.
During this episode, Data states the "historical fact" that "Ireland was reunified in 2024 after a successful terrorist campaign". (Which is why this episode wasn't broadcast in its entirety in Britain until years after.)
The Bajoran freedom fighters in the backstory of Deep Space Nine used whatever means necessary to free their home planet from Cardassian rule, though it seems that suicide bombings were not standard procedure. The Cardassians (with some justification) prefer to call the Bajoran Freedom Fighters terrorists. Gul Dukat even called Major Kira a terrorist to her face... and she didn't deny it. Indeed, she's kinda proud of it. There's a point where Kira finds the Cardassian file on herself, and she's actually upset that they only considered her personally as minor nuisance. In "The Darkness And The Light", Kira outright screams her defense of terrorism - at least when it comes to Occupiers Out of Our Country:
"None of you belonged on Bajor. It wasn't your world. For fifty years you raped our planet, and you killed our people. You lived on our land and you took the food out of our mouths, and I don't care whether you held a phaser in your hand or you ironed shirts for a living. You were all guilty andyou were all legitimate targets!"
The same can be said of the Maquis and their tactics against the Cardassians.
The Cardassians themselves used terror tactics against the Dominion when the latter occupied the Cardassian homeworld. Kira even went to the Cardassians to teach them how to properly set up a terrorist cell. They actually called them that: terrorist cells. Yes, DS9 is a pre-9/11 show; why do you ask?
In Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica (the revamped version), Colonel Tigh flatly states "Which side are we on? We're on the side of the demons, Chief. We're evil men in the gardens of paradise, sent by the forces of death to spread devastation and destruction wherever we go. I'm surprised you didn't know that." when confronted by Chief Tyrol over the use of suicide bombers and terrorism against the Cylons and the humans who work for them.
Although their only targets (that we know of) were military bases, never civilians... Blake aimed to weaken the Federation, not cause terror. The only time he came close to the Moral Event Horizon, at Star One, an Alien Ex Machina got there first.
In the Heroes episode "Five Years Gone", Hiro and Ando are shocked to find that Future Hiro has been labeled a terrorist by the government.
In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, when accused of acting like some kind of terrorist organization, Sarah flat out states "We are some kind of terrorist organization."
In a recent episode of Leverage, a group of militiamen claim to be 'anti-government freedom fighters', which gives them the right to kill two IRS agents as enemy combatants. Later they are revealed to be making a bomb to blow up a civilian target.
Elliot: That's the difference between real soldiers and your halloween group. Soldiers are willing to die for other's beliefs, where you are willing to kill for your own.
In 1776, Ben Franklin observes, "Treason is a charge invented by winners as an excuse for hanging the losers." This quote has been wrongly attributed to Franklin himself, but was just used in the play(and later movie).
Videogames
A good example of this trope is from Tales Of Phantasia because they actually mention the trope almost word for word in some translations and adaptations! For those who don't know, Dhaos is only on Midgard to save his own people since his people need Mana to survive, while Midgardians don't. So the party and player views Dhaos as a terrorist and your group of five (or six) as the Freedom Fighters, yet by killing Dhaos, the party realizes that they doomed his people, making them the terrorists, while Dhaos was the Freedom Fighter. But it's implied Dhaos became a mana seed anyways.
In Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars the Brotherhood of Nod, despite being the canonical bad guys, have achieved a status were they are the only hint of civilization, law and order in the war torn and ecologically collapsed yellow zones, where 80% of the world population lives, nevertheless, they are terrorists in the eyes of GDI, who happen to be the remaining 20% of the population, and have control over the pristine and wealthy blue zones.
Its even more messed up. Even in Tiberian Dawn, the Brotherhood has a slim majority of world support. Even in first world countries like the United States, they have a huge following (including sensitive entities like defense contractors) - they are the only bastion left to support your -isms that a one-world-order UN regime took away. Further complicated in that you often will see GDI killing innocents/civilians. In retrospect, it is easy to see why the majority of the world is Nod affiliated (which only grows with every game).
Upheld in Deus Ex, where the NSF, Luminous Path Triad, Silhouette, and various other groups fight the global law enforcement organization the player works for, which is the military arm of an Ancient Conspiracy manipulating crises to take over the world. They're certainly terrorists, thugs, and often common criminals to boot, but they do genuinely want freedom, at least from the other guy.
This trope also ended up biting Majestic 12 in the ass: they created the Daedalus AI with the purpose of cracking down on any group that could oppose their rule, which included all terrorist groups. Once the AI was switched on, it quickly came to the conclusion that Majestic 12 itself fit the definition of a terrorist group and turned against them.
A point passes in Chrono Trigger after which you cannot enter Guardia Castle in the year 1000 AD. Due to the corrupt Chancellor's actions, the government in that year classifies your party as "terrorists"the same party whose goal is to eliminate an evil extraterrestrial being whose presence dooms the world.
In Final Fantasy VII, Avalanche is labeled a terrorist group. They're the heroes. Not that hard to understand, as your first objective in the game is a bombing mission on a power reactor, with the group planning to bomb the others. Towards the end of the game, you even get called out on it.
To be fair, members of AVALANCHE are unquestionably terrorists. The fact that they happen to be right about Shinra killing the planet doesn't change that fact one bit.
Final Fantasy XII - Ghis: "No different than any mean member of the insurgence." Ashe: "The Resistance!"
Freelancer has The Order, which is first presented as a shady group of terrorists, then as a group of heroic freedom fighters.
Their whole purpose is to protect the Sirius sector from Nomad invasion and destruction.
In the Metal Gear series, Solid Snake and Otacon's Philanthropy is an illegal combatant organization at the very best, and it might have been a plain terrorist organization if they had let civilians appear in the game.
The titular Sons Of Liberty (MGS2) call themselves freedom fighters. They certainly are terrorists too. Same for FoxHound.
During the Big Shell Incident? Certainly. Beforehand, at least with the Dead Cell members? That's debatable, as Vamp implies that they were actually framed for the terrorist actions by the Patriots.
Philanthropy started as a UN organization; fringe though they may have been, they presumably kept that backing because Snake is very very good at what he does and it's not hard to imagine that their attacks were executed without any casualties. It is, after all, Snake being framed for sinking the USS Discovery and killing the US Marines on board that gets Philanthropy kicked to the curb by the UN and turns them into an illegal combatant organization, one that is ironically later backed by UN official Roy Campbell under the table. Snake never intended to destroy Metal Gear RAY in such an environment, the tanker mission was done solely to plaster evidence of its existence all over the Internet (of course, even if he did intend to do so, the only real affect it would have had on the environment is yet another sunken ship at the bottom of the harbor, as the Tanker in question was a fake tanker that didn't contain any crude).
On the other hand, Solid Snake himself does not deny that he is a terrorist as well, when Raiden pointed out that what he and Philanthropy is doing is more comparable to that than grassroots resistance, meaning they may have done some much less innocent stuff to get rid of Metal Gear in the past. Now, the Patriots are an interesting variation: Although they rule the country and are also implied to be the very essence of American ideology, they also frequently stage Terrorist attacks on their own soil and frame the "official" terrorist group for committing them. Metal Gear Solid 4 also implies that it was actually the Patriots who rammed Arsenal Gear onto Manhattan, presumably due to GW being corrupted.
The Renegades in Tales Of Symphonia are a good example of La Résistance being made up of Well Intentioned Extremists - they start out the game by killing a bunch of innocent bystanders and attempting to kill the female lead to prevent her being used in the Big Bad's schemes. They consistently have their own goals and methods throughout the game; sometimes these goals coincide with the party's, and sometimes they're opposed.
The Red Faction series - especially in the third game.
Played with in Supreme Commander: In a three-side war between the militaristic UEF, religious Aeon, and anarchist Cybrans, everyone gets called "oppressors," "fanatics," and "terrorists." The strange thing is that this propaganda turns out to be true for the other two sides, while the one you pick is holding the Sanity Ball throughout. This goes as far as having the same characters be honorable and just when they're on your side, and psychopathic maniacs when they fight against you. For example, when you play for the Aeon, the Princess is genuinely concerned about enemy civilian population and instructs her commanders to avoid needless casualties, whereas in the UEF campaign she clearly tries to brainwash you and her commanders do the standard Evil Trash Talk about cleansing the entire galaxy of unbelievers.
The Anti-Nationalism Influence United faction in Ace Online is this to a T. For its supporters, it's the Last, Best Hope for Humanity Decaians, Philonites and Vatalluses. To the reigning Bygeniou City United, they're pesky terrorists. Both sides regularly commit Kick the Dog moments with one of the pre-set character avatars' history hinting to the ones done by the ANI faction.
In Starcraft, the player is rescued by and subsequently joins Mengsk's "Sons of Korhal," portrayed by the Confederacy as terrorists. In later missions, you will engage in what can only be described as acts of terrorism against your own kind, and Mengsk is eventually proven to be out to make himself Evil Overlord.
Later on in the storyline, Tassadar and Jim Raynor are portrayed this way by just about everyone else.
Taken to a literal degree in Freedom Fighters, where the eponymous freedom fighters are referred to as terrorist on the Soviet-controlled television network. Lamentably, in spite of this, Black and White Morality is in full effect in the course of the game itself.
The Freedom faction in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. They fight for free access to the Zone (in all fairness, they only fight Duty, bandits, and the military, the latter two of which fight everyone), believing it could help advance humanity, while their rival faction, Duty, view them as a bunch of terrorists who want the Zone to expand.
Played straight in Tachyon: The Fringe, where whichever side you join treats the other as evil. GalSpan openly calls the Bora "terrorists," while the Bora consider themselves to be freedom fighters. Both are true. The Bora fight GalSpan for trying to kick them out of their homes, but they use guerilla tactics to achieve their goal. Of course, they are never shown openly attacking civilian targets, as opposed to GalSpan who blow up hospitals just to avoid a drop in stock prices.
Homefront follows your adventures as part of the resistance against the KPA (the armies of a United Korea). One of your men, Conners is just this side of Ax Crazy but even he balks at the efforts of another group of resistance fighters who behave like the KKK.
In EVE Online, the Amarr use "terrorist" to characterize Minmatar who liberate slaves by force, or even simply attack Amarr military forces. The former definition includes a large section of the Minmatar roleplaying community, particularly the Ushra'Khan alliance. The latter includes virtually any player allied to the Republic, as well as the Republic Fleet itself. Needless to say, the Minmatar consider these same people to be freedom fighters, or simply soldiers.
In The Witcher skoia'tael, non-human guerilla brigades, attack human settlements at will, not bothering themselves overmuch with distinction between civilians and and armed forces. They kinda have a point though, because anti-non-human racism is rampant and appalling everywhere, so hardly anyone (certainly no human community) is truly "civilian".
Well if they kill humans at random just for being human even if they aren't against elves, doesn't that help fuel the racism? So its a vicious cycle.
The Stormcloaks in Skyrim are considered murderous traitors and dissidents by some and heroes fighting for Nord freedom by others. And then there's the Forsworn, whom even the Stormcloaks think go too far.
Dragon Age II ends with party member Anders, a fanatical supporter of mage freedom from imprisonment by the Templars, blowing up the Kirkwall Chantry with innocent clergy inside in order to prompt the Templars to snap and the mages to rebel.
Arc The Lad: During the first two episodes, the Power That Be are eager to present Arc and his companions as some sort of magically powered polytheistic Al Quaeda. Considering Arc and co deeds during Arc 2 (blowing up landmarks built in the middle of densely populated metropolis with little regard for the collateral damages, blowing up religious buildings preaching against them, even slaughtering kidnapped orphans, some of them genocide survivors...) most people in the world believe them
In Sluggy Freelance, in the story "That Which Redeems", demonsinvade an alternative dimension populated by ridiculously perfect pacifist people. Torg and a handful of others try to form a resistance movement. Since the demons move from conquest of arms to more subtle tactics and propaganda (while still tormenting and killing the humans because, well, they're demons), and because the locals are willing to accept anything no matter how ridiculous if it seems to reduce the appearance of conflict, and they abhor the least bit of violence as much as the worst of it, the resistance is labeled in the media as "a bunch of pro-violence bozos working against the demonic visions of peace."
Arthur, King of Time and Space: "If my terrorist is your freedom fighter, I hope the next thing he wants to be free of isn't you."
Web Originals
It is not explored in great detail, but this trope is definitely in play with Iraqi terrorist/freedom fighter Oran in Broken Saints. He has been raised to believe that rebellion against the Western invaders is his duty, although he frequently has periods of doubt, where his devout religiosity makes him question his violent methods. Because of this self-doubt, the plot kind of leaves him alone about the matter after a couple of chapters, and treats him like a traditional Anti-Hero. It is also worth noting that we never hear specifics of what horrible things Oran may or may not have done in "service to his country".
In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, the terrorist organization known as "Prime 8" is an army of gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans who all have a need to serious punish the humans. They are lead by a band of eight simian supervillains who a lot of the talking ape population consider heroes and freedom fighters, not criminals.
The Harry Potter ARG 'Magic is Might' has this set up, with the Order of the Phoenix being labeled 'The Rebellion' by the Voldemort-controlled Ministry of Magic.
Western Animation
Jet's Freedom Fighters in Avatar The Last Airbender, while well-intentioned, are clearly shown to be terrorists, very willing to kill innocent people to achieve their goals. The is clearer in the second season with the resistance of a recently fallen city of Omashu. Their introduction is composed of executing an assassination on the Fire Nation governor's family. But remember they are good guys.
The Equalists in the Sequel Series, The Legend Of Korra, could qualify. They see themselves as fighting back against benders who have been oppressing them.
Bullock: You gave away state secrets to a terrorist!? Stan:(sheepishly) Freedom fighter?
In Challenge Of The Go Bots, when Fi-Tor is captured by the heroes, he appears rather noble, and clearly believes in his own side's cause. When he tries to destroy the transport ship carrying him away for interrogation, which would kill both him and the crew manning it, the heroes call him a maniac. He responds, "You mean 'patriot!'"
Real Life
The Founding Fathers of the United States were considered criminals and lawbreakers by the British government. Several had warrants issued for their arrest, in nearly all cases for what were then capital crimes.
Ben Franklin: We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
"As a lawyer, you of all people should know that rebellion is always legal in the first person, as in 'OUR rebellion'. It's only in the third person, 'THEIR rebellion,' that it becomes illegal."
The pro-Independence colonists occasionally dipped into acts that today we would call terrorism when acting against their Tory neighbors and against the British occupiers.
Margaret Thatcher refused to grant the IRA political prisoner status and insisted that they be treated as regular criminals. So she wouldn't even call them terrorists, let alone freedom fighters. Which was lucky for the IRA, in a way. Had the British government decided to regard the situation as a war, IRA men committing acts of violence while in civilian clothes could technically have been eligible for military trial and executed.
Speaking of the IRA, even within Ireland public opinion on them has fluctuated, with the instigators of the 1916 rising being hated by the general public at first and then hailed as freedom fighters after they were executed. There was widespread support for the IRA after the republic was formed due to lingering resentment against Britain, but now they're mostly viewed as crazed terrorists.
Nelson Mandela is a Real Life embodiment of this trope, attributed with saying "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." The apartheid government viewed him and dissidents in general as terrorists (though to be honest, the definition of "terrorist" that the apartheid government used was "anyone we say is a terrorist"). Of course, when more peaceful actions were crushed, the ANC then engaged in certain actions that could be called terrorism by any standard (burning informants and police alive, torture, bombing civilian targets, etc.). The apartheid government, meanwhile, occupied neighboring countries and, preferring not to do too much dirty work personally, sponsored (or was allied with) other armed groups with similar techniques.
The Japanese Government labelled two Greenpeace activists as terrorists after they stole a shipment of whale meat in protest.
In Whale Wars, Captain Watson claims proudly that in Japan, he's considered the Number Two terrorist in the world.
He is by any definition, at least a pirate.
Nearly all western nations consider Palestinan militant groups like Hamas to be terrorists, as they purposely target civilians and have calls for genocide in their charters. Some Palestians, and some Arabs see them as freedom fighters against Israeli state-sponsored terrorism.
Hizballah is a more complicated case. It's either a terrorist organization with a political movement and civil government attached (as viewed by USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and Israel), or a political movement and civil government in lawless lands with a terrorist organization attached (everyone else's view). The problem is that you can't cleanly separate the portions of Hizballah that provide medicine and education to Southern Lebanon from the portions that want to exterminate the Jews.
But to be fair, many of those Mujahadeen joined the Northern Alliance, which fought AGAINST the Taliban, and was still holding out when the United States entered the war.
The Taliban themselves were this this trope, at least pre-9/11. Originally formed by a Retired Badass in reaction to the spread of warlordism- most of the remaining Mujahadeen having degenerated into little more than gangsters- they brought law and order to a devastated country, initially meeting with popular support. While their theocratic rule was brutal and unrelenting, they were not as arbitrary in their atrocities as many of the warlords were, and at least tried to develop the nation's infrastructure, albeit for often unsavory ends. '90s Afghanistan was very much a place of Grey and Grey Morality.
For some, post 9/11 Taliban and Al Qaeda are an example of rising up against the Evil Empire of the United States of America. Your mileage may vary. Wildly.
Then there is the Arab Israeli conflict. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was lionized as a hero in wartime Berlin and post war Beirut, as his followers attacked the Jews in the Palestine Mandate and later Israel. Likewise his successors in the PLO. Yassir Arafat infamously addressed the UN while wearing a holtered pistol on his hip. Meanwhile, in the West, he was reviled for creating modern terrorism.
On the other side were the anti-British figethers from the Yishuv (Jewish community) in the Mandate, especially after World War 2. Irgun and Lehi (AKA the Stern Gang) were the the most notorious of these groups. As much as they were hated by the British authorites and the popular press in the UK, for the Jewish community of the world and their supporters who wanted to see a Jewish state, or at least somewhere where Displaced People could go, they were hailed as heroes. Screenwriter Ben Hecht infamously said, "Every time you blow up a British arsenal, or wreck a British jail, or send a British railroad sky high, or rob a British bank, or let go with your guns at the British betrayers and invaders of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts." He was subsequently blacklisted in the UK.
Ironically, Arafat and Menachem Begin (Irgun's leader) would both win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Also Probably the Trope Namer lets not forget about those Nicaraguan freedom fighters (The Contras) whom the Reagan administration financed by selling weapons to Shi'ite Iran (a terrorist nation) so it could fight Saddam's army (financed by guess who) so they could defeat the Sandinistas. The Contras then proved their reading comprehension skills by taking the words "freedom fighter" to their logical conclusion, by fighting against a democratically elected government.
Depending on where you stand on the issue, the Armenians who fought off the Turkish Army at Van during World War One were either terrorist traitors resisting the Ottoman government and siding with the invading Russians, or were only trying to defend themselves from being slaughtered along with the rest of the Armenians around the area. Either way, the fact that they're suspiciously missing from the area today tells you something.
You also have to wonder why Armenians would be tempted to side with the Russians in the first place if everything was supposedly 'fine and dandy' for them in Ottoman Turkey.
Subverted with the U.S. Civil War: The government and army of the Confederacy are rarely if ever referred to as terrorists even though their side lost. This was somewhat unusual, however, in that an entire section of the country seceded and kept all of its internal governance more or less consistent with what had been present before, and after the war ended, the governance again got transferred through despite having now swapped nationalities twice.
After the Civil War ended some ex-Confederates became outlaws, though, despite revisionist histories, few of them actually had any grand purpose of furthering the "Confederate cause".
And Nathan Bedford Forrest too, a CSA general who went on to found the Ku Klux Klan. Dozens of statues to Forrest and places named in his honor can be found around the south, particularly in his home state of Tennessee.
The CSA also sent teams to rob banks in Vermont and burn buildings in New York City as well. Less well known was the plot to bring clothes infected by Yellow Fever from Bermuda to the US. Fortunately that was the wrong vector. By the modern definition these were acts of terrorism
Don't forget John Brown, who (before the secession) took over an army depot to try and start a massive slave revolt. It didn't happen and he was hanged, becoming a major folk hero among abolitionists and others practically overnight.
Well they wore uniforms and fought in the common military manner. If you start calling enemy soldiers terrorists, where do you stop?
Groups like the ERP (People's Revolutionary Army) and the Montoneros in Argentina (1970s) and the FPMR (Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front) in Chile (1980s) used less than ideal tactics to combat the savage repression they saw coming from their respective governments at the time.
Queen Elizabeth I is often celebrated for her sponsorship of dashing "Sea-Dogs" like Sir Francis Drake and John Hawkins. The romantic image often makes people forget that such men were, from a strictly legal and ethical standpoint, pirates, who killed men and looted valuables in flagrant violation of the then-understood precepts of international law.
Strictly speaking they were either military commanders who attacked enemy vessels or privateers (who were essentially state sponsored pirates... but only from the perspective of the nations their sponsors were opposed to, in-keeping with this trope). Spaniards (and every other European power with a navy) had them as well. Keeping the loot when you captured an enemy ship (yes, they only attacked enemy ships) was in fact acceptable (and still is under the modern rules of warfare).
Privateers were actually private military contractors, much like modern Xe (late Blackwater) operatives. Not to mention that in Elizabethan era mercenaries of any kind were much more common (and in heavily balkanized regions like Italian Peninsula they often dominated the battlefield).
However, the situation becomes even more grey when many privateers just turn to true piracy when the war is over, or that many privateers were actually pirates before they got the letter of march.
The Peruvian Maoist guerrilla organization Sendero Luminoso or "Shining Path". In their early days, opinion was greatly divided as to their nature, but in recent years, particularly after the capture of their Abimael Guzmán in 1992 and the fracturing of organizational unity, they've slid increasingly towards the "terrorist" side of things. In the 2000s, some factions did away with even that, becoming drug cartels with a thin ideological veneer.
"The revolution will cost a million dead" and "induce genocide" were among their tenets.
Notably averted by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, more commonly known as "the Zapatistas". Despite carrying all the hallmarks of such an organization- an armed far-left revolutionary secessionist group in an authoritarian Latin American nation- their history of legitimate warfare and preference for peaceful secession has made it hard for even their opponents to characterize them with any harsher term than "rebel". It probably helps that their opponents include far-right paramilitaries with a history of massacring indigenous refugees, thus averting this trope in the opposite manner.
When you think about it, it is very easy to be a terrorist and a freedom fighter at the same time. Because of course The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized.
You can take "freedom fighter" as shorthand for "fighting against oppression" and terrorist as "using unjustified methods". It is possible to be both, objectively one or the other, or neither, as they both have different literal meanings. The reason for this trope is that people focus attention on the aspect of your behaviour that suits their spin, whether it's your motives or your methods.
Extremists groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front, are often labeled as terrorists by civilians and the government alike due to their actions.
During WWII resistance fighters were called "Terrorists" or "Bandits" by Nazi propaganda.
It's complicated, especially considering that over the years it's gone from a secular effort to a weird attempt to build an Islamic caliphate when most civilians just want a normal democracy instead of a playground for Putin, but the unrest in the Caucasus is like this. The native populations of Ingushetia, Chechnya, Dagestan, etc. have little in common with Russians genetically, historically, linguistically, religiously, or culturally, so they're not very happy about being considered Russian republics instead of independent countries. On the ground, opinions of the freedom fighters slash terrorists vary depending on where you are and what year it is. Some people think they're all degenerates with drug problems who couldn't get a real job. Still, you would have to wake up pretty early in the morning to find a single Chechen that will ever admit to being a part of Russia. (This Troper went to a Muslim friendship/romance/networking site and just for fun searched for people in Grozny ... every last one of them had set their country as Georgia.) Never repeat this on Russian internet.
For anyone watching the British or American news in the summer of 2011, it was occasionally difficult to tell apart the footage of the "London riots" and the "Arab protests", except perhaps that the "riots" looked considerably less violent. Of course the wildly different political situations in the respective countries had a lot to do with this, but it was a particularly striking example of the trope just by virtue of the two stories being so closely juxtaposed.
Some people developed the habit of calling people who fought against the oppressive Brazilian dictatorship "terrorists", particularly then-candidate and now-President Dilma Rousseff. Considering that the Brazilian dictatorship was an illegitimate, illegal government, those that fought against it were every bit as much terrorists as the French Resistance. Make of that what you will.
