Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization, destabilization, division, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a saboteur. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identities because of the consequences of their actions and to avoid invoking legal and organizational requirements for addressing sabotage.
United States World War II-era poster warning against sabotage
Unauthorized stencil urging sabotage and picketing
World War II poster from the United States
Japanese experts inspect the scene of the "railway sabotage" on the South Manchurian Railway in 1931. The "railroad sabotage" was one of the events that led to the Mukden Incident and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.
Subversion refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to sabotage the established social order and its structures of power, authority, tradition, hierarchy, and social norms. Subversion can be described as an attack on the public morale and, "the will to resist intervention are the products of combined political and social or class loyalties which are usually attached to national symbols. Following penetration, and parallel with the forced disintegration of political and social institutions of the state, these tendencies may be detached and transferred to the political or ideological cause of the aggressor".
Image: Protest 0112
