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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35799
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

There are quite a few examples of media where the protagonists are terrorists. Whether the characters will be acceptable to your readers will depend on what you do with them. There are several options, among them:

- Your protagonists use bad methods (terrorism) for a good goal (freedom). In the course of the story they realize that their methods are wrong and fail at their goal.

- Your protagonists are the morally superior suppressed slaves of an evil majority and have tried peaceful ways for centuries to no avail, and now they have to resort to violence before being finally wiped out entirely.

- You write relief escapism that allows your readers to indulge all their bad sides (think games like GTA).

- Your protagonists are the good guys, but you give equal screen time to the terrorist antagonists and portray them as essentially good people that have taken a wrong turn (see point one above).

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Here are some lists of movies where the heroes are terrorists, if you want to look at examples:

- [https://www.quora.com/In-which-movies-is-the-terrorist-the-hero](https://www.quora.com/In-which-movies-is-the-terrorist-the-hero)
- [https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2qs0bh/are\_there\_any\_good\_movies\_from\_the\_terrorist/](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2qs0bh/are_there_any_good_movies_from_the_terrorist/)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/movies/24dargis.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/movies/24dargis.html)
- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films\_about\_terrorism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_terrorism) (includes movies with terrorist antagonists)

Original score: 4