You essentially have made my point for me. The British government in this particular story IS tyrannical and the acts of blowing up the two buildings are grandiose statements of revolution, yet they are spun by the Chancellor as terrorist acts. The bombing and kidnapping of the people at the television station all stirred the people to action.
Yes, and Saddam Hussein spun his own actions as necessary when he was, in fact, a murderous dictator. The fact that someone "spins" something doesn't change its essential moral character. There is a right way to interpret it and there is a wrong way to interpret it. Let me go ahead and prove Godwin's Law yet again; the Nazi propaganda machine spun its actions in many ways, but this did not mean their regime was NOT, objectively, an evil dictatorship.
So you tell me, Phil. According to your statement above, if you overthrow a tyrannical government, you're a hero, but if you bomb a facility then you're a terrorist. Which, would you say, is V?
Setting a bomb is an act without moral value until we place it in context. Why is the bomb there? Whom will be the victims? What will the bombing accomplish? If placed underneath a Soviet invader's tank in
Red Dawn, the bombing is part of a guerilla freedom campaign. If placed on the chest of a teenage Muslim girl who walks onto a schoolbus full of Jews and blows herself up, the bombing is clearly and objectively an act of terrorism and murder.
In
V for Vendetta, the government is clearly tyrannical and clearly evil; it has rounded up and executed homosexuals in camps, conducted horrifying medical experiments on political prisoners, and abuses its power (the attempted rape by the government's stormtroopers, the Fingermen) with great regularity. These actions are not a matter of perspective; they are objectively evil because they violate natural legal principles of individual sovereignty and individual rights.
"V" is clearly waging a righteous war against this tyranny in the graphic novel by Alan Moore -- and Moore, never particularly subtle, does not even gift his fictional English government (based on his interpretation of the evils of the Thatcher administration, at the time of the graphic novel's writing) with any redeeming qualities. The story would be more realistic and more intriguing if the fascist regime actually had done some good for the country, in order to create more of a moral dilemma. As it is, the government is so evil that no moral question is possible. No one reading it would consider V anything but a freedom fighter, no matter how the evil government attempts to spin its actions.
Now, if V, in order to pursue his vengeance and his war, was waging a campaign wherein he recruited children to wear bombs into public places and blow up passers-by, he'd be a terrorist rather than a freedom fighter. In the novel and in the graphic novel, his targets are symbols of the government (and functionaries within that government, including people who were responsible for his torture and experimentation at the hands of that regime). He blows up the Old Bailey and Parliament in the movie, if I remember correctly; these are clearly government targets rather than civilian homes or areas.
His victims murder are so evil as to be cartoonish -- the Voice of London, himself in charge of the concentration camp in which V was held; the female doctor who conducted the experimentation; a priest who is a pedophile rapist; the leader of the fascist regime himself. Who could dispute such "victims" or their choosing? There is no moral choice here and the viewer is free to enjoy this tale of revenge and freedom fighting without having to worry that he or she is truly condoning terrorism. Throw in some more "collateral damage," make some of V's victims more "innocent" or give them some redeeming qualities (or plausible rationalizations for their actions) and you would make the whole thing more morally difficult.
Remember, I started out
defending V as a freedom fighter.
