Their campaign fought not only their oppression by the Nazi occupation, but the collaborationist Vichy government. A collection of groups of guerrilla fighters from all different backgrounds operated in underground networks to derail the occupation and publish newspapers, destabilising their occupiers from within. Without them, it’s hard to say the war wouldn’t’ have continued for longer.
The French resistance also killed civilians, informers and collaborators. They forcefully shaved the heads of hundreds of French women who had committed ‘horizontal collaboration’ - sleeping with the enemy. These punishments were enacted with little regard for circumstance: a woman acting under coercion, attempting to protect her family, or surviving sexual violence was treated no differently from a willing participant. Following the liberation of France, many who were accused of collaborating or assisting the Nazi/Vichy regime were executed without trial.
We see the French resistance as one part of a heroic front, because it can be mutually agreed by all that the Nazi party was an evil and genocidal organisation. Apart from the words of some tinfoil hat conspiracists and racists, the world agrees that Hitler’s faction erased the lives of millions, primarily Jewish people killed in concentration camps and labour camps. Nazi ideology sought domination and eradication. Not just Jewish people, but those who did not fit their agenda- homosexuals, people of colour, Romani people, etc. Their list of victims is endless over what is, in the grand scheme of things, a frighteningly short period of time. The defeat of Nazi Germany was thanks to, in part, the actions of freedom fighters and armed civilians. The word ‘terrorist’ is not used to name them.
The IRA is almost always on reflex described as a terrorist organisation. This is despite the fact that its campaign during The Troubles emerged from a context of political exclusion, sectarian violence, and British state control. Like the French Resistance, the IRA used guerrilla tactics, targeted infrastructure, and killed those it believed to be collaborators. Like the Resistance, it also killed civilians - sometimes deliberately, sometimes as a consequence of its methods.
So, where is the line? If civilian deaths are the defining line, then both fall on the same side of it. If the use of fear, violence, and coercion defines terrorism, then again, both qualify. Yet one is mostly condemned, whereas the other is memorialised. This is not because their actions were fundamentally different. It’s because their causes are judged differently - and, crucially, because one aligns more comfortably with dominant political narratives than the other. Why then can it be ignored as long as the cause is worth the cost in the eyes of the majority? Must all oppressed parties gain the favour and approval of a world audience before we can start using terms like ‘necessary evil’ and ‘casualties of war’? Must Winston Churchill smoke a cigar and declare over crackling radio waves that world salvation is worth their sins?
The history of the British Empire and its expansion undermines that. In Ireland, its legacy includes famine and systemic political and cultural suppression. During the 20th century, policies such as internment without trial and documented instances of collusion with loyalist paramilitaries further entrenched division and violence. And that’s just in Ireland - how much suffering was caused elsewhere? Imperial expansion was built on the theft of resource and relic, the reconstruction of societies to fit a British value, and violence to enact control. Despite that, the violence of an empire is rarely described in the same moral language as the violence used to resist it. Is their violence less important because it has existed over centuries instead of just a couple of years? Must we see genocidal rhetoric in pure, undiluted form - gas chambers and camps - before we name them for what they are?
“Terrorism” has come to mean something very specific in the modern imagination: indiscriminate, senseless violence inflicted on civilians - the bombing of an Ariana Grande concert attended primarily by children, a man in a Las Vegas hotel room firing indiscriminately into a crowd. These are acts designed purely to instil fear, absent of any coherent political struggle that most observers are willing to recognise as legitimate.
But when the same word is applied to groups engaged in political warfare, it stops clarifying and starts obscuring. It flattens fundamentally different contexts into a single moral category, allowing state and the public to avoid engaging with the conditions that produce violence in the first place.
The word “terrorism” is applied swiftly and decisively, often without the same scrutiny of context or proportionality. It’s a pattern we can recognise - violence by non state actors is instantly labelled as terrorism, whereas violence by the state is framed as a necessity for defence and security. I don’t see that as a neutral distinction, but as a political one.
None of this justifies the killing of civilians. It does not absolve organisations like the IRA of responsibility for their actions. But if we are willing to accept moral ambiguity in the case of the French Resistance - if we can acknowledge that a just cause can coexist with unjustifiable acts - then we cannot selectively deny that complexity elsewhere. Moral clarity has to come with some measure of consistency.
If the same actions can be condemned in one context and justified in another, then the word “terrorist” does not describe a fixed category of violence. It describes a judgement - one shaped by power, perspective, and, ultimately, whose side the world chooses to be on.
I don’t desire to dictate what people call organisations like the French resistance, or the Irish Republican Army. Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing, and I cannot speak over the voices of those whose lives were brutally impacted by actions committed during the Troubles. I merely mean to ask, by what action can we differentiate between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? Must it be a quick and inhumane extermination for people to take notice? The thousands of children dead by the hands of school shootings would suggest not. The people in power will turn their eyes away whether it’s a violent death or a slow one.
This inconsistency is not an abstract idea on some humanitarian soapbox. It is happening now.
In 1945, the world reached a consensus that the systematic destruction of a people was intolerable. In the 1960s-90s, the conflict in Northern Ireland produced a far more divided opinion. In 2026, the ongoing ending of Palestinian life - widely described by UN experts and human rights organisations as constituting genocide - is largely denied or is met with no outcry at all.
An eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind.
The French resistance also killed civilians, informers and collaborators. They forcefully shaved the heads of hundreds of French women who had committed ‘horizontal collaboration’ - sleeping with the enemy. These punishments were enacted with little regard for circumstance: a woman acting under coercion, attempting to protect her family, or surviving sexual violence was treated no differently from a willing participant. Following the liberation of France, many who were accused of collaborating or assisting the Nazi/Vichy regime were executed without trial.
We see the French resistance as one part of a heroic front, because it can be mutually agreed by all that the Nazi party was an evil and genocidal organisation. Apart from the words of some tinfoil hat conspiracists and racists, the world agrees that Hitler’s faction erased the lives of millions, primarily Jewish people killed in concentration camps and labour camps. Nazi ideology sought domination and eradication. Not just Jewish people, but those who did not fit their agenda- homosexuals, people of colour, Romani people, etc. Their list of victims is endless over what is, in the grand scheme of things, a frighteningly short period of time. The defeat of Nazi Germany was thanks to, in part, the actions of freedom fighters and armed civilians. The word ‘terrorist’ is not used to name them.
The IRA is almost always on reflex described as a terrorist organisation. This is despite the fact that its campaign during The Troubles emerged from a context of political exclusion, sectarian violence, and British state control. Like the French Resistance, the IRA used guerrilla tactics, targeted infrastructure, and killed those it believed to be collaborators. Like the Resistance, it also killed civilians - sometimes deliberately, sometimes as a consequence of its methods.
So, where is the line? If civilian deaths are the defining line, then both fall on the same side of it. If the use of fear, violence, and coercion defines terrorism, then again, both qualify. Yet one is mostly condemned, whereas the other is memorialised. This is not because their actions were fundamentally different. It’s because their causes are judged differently - and, crucially, because one aligns more comfortably with dominant political narratives than the other. Why then can it be ignored as long as the cause is worth the cost in the eyes of the majority? Must all oppressed parties gain the favour and approval of a world audience before we can start using terms like ‘necessary evil’ and ‘casualties of war’? Must Winston Churchill smoke a cigar and declare over crackling radio waves that world salvation is worth their sins?
The history of the British Empire and its expansion undermines that. In Ireland, its legacy includes famine and systemic political and cultural suppression. During the 20th century, policies such as internment without trial and documented instances of collusion with loyalist paramilitaries further entrenched division and violence. And that’s just in Ireland - how much suffering was caused elsewhere? Imperial expansion was built on the theft of resource and relic, the reconstruction of societies to fit a British value, and violence to enact control. Despite that, the violence of an empire is rarely described in the same moral language as the violence used to resist it. Is their violence less important because it has existed over centuries instead of just a couple of years? Must we see genocidal rhetoric in pure, undiluted form - gas chambers and camps - before we name them for what they are?
“Terrorism” has come to mean something very specific in the modern imagination: indiscriminate, senseless violence inflicted on civilians - the bombing of an Ariana Grande concert attended primarily by children, a man in a Las Vegas hotel room firing indiscriminately into a crowd. These are acts designed purely to instil fear, absent of any coherent political struggle that most observers are willing to recognise as legitimate.
But when the same word is applied to groups engaged in political warfare, it stops clarifying and starts obscuring. It flattens fundamentally different contexts into a single moral category, allowing state and the public to avoid engaging with the conditions that produce violence in the first place.
The word “terrorism” is applied swiftly and decisively, often without the same scrutiny of context or proportionality. It’s a pattern we can recognise - violence by non state actors is instantly labelled as terrorism, whereas violence by the state is framed as a necessity for defence and security. I don’t see that as a neutral distinction, but as a political one.
None of this justifies the killing of civilians. It does not absolve organisations like the IRA of responsibility for their actions. But if we are willing to accept moral ambiguity in the case of the French Resistance - if we can acknowledge that a just cause can coexist with unjustifiable acts - then we cannot selectively deny that complexity elsewhere. Moral clarity has to come with some measure of consistency.
If the same actions can be condemned in one context and justified in another, then the word “terrorist” does not describe a fixed category of violence. It describes a judgement - one shaped by power, perspective, and, ultimately, whose side the world chooses to be on.
I don’t desire to dictate what people call organisations like the French resistance, or the Irish Republican Army. Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing, and I cannot speak over the voices of those whose lives were brutally impacted by actions committed during the Troubles. I merely mean to ask, by what action can we differentiate between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? Must it be a quick and inhumane extermination for people to take notice? The thousands of children dead by the hands of school shootings would suggest not. The people in power will turn their eyes away whether it’s a violent death or a slow one.
This inconsistency is not an abstract idea on some humanitarian soapbox. It is happening now.
In 1945, the world reached a consensus that the systematic destruction of a people was intolerable. In the 1960s-90s, the conflict in Northern Ireland produced a far more divided opinion. In 2026, the ongoing ending of Palestinian life - widely described by UN experts and human rights organisations as constituting genocide - is largely denied or is met with no outcry at all.
An eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind.
⏩Kate Rice is a peace baby.
