Page 379 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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360———Terrorism, Definition and History of

variety of reasons: to maintain political power, to put that no other action except terrorism by individuals or
down struggles of liberation, or to pacify populations small groups could cleanse the Russian soil. Later in
after an annexation. Under this rubric, the actions of 19th-century Russia, the anarchist organization known
the former South African regime in defending as Narodnaya Volya, or People’s Will, launched a wave
apartheid and the Argentinean “Dirty War” of the of bombings and assassinations. They targeted the czar,
1970s would qualify as terrorism. Some would even the royal family, and other government officials, whom
argue that the United States itself conducts terrorist they believed the embodiment of a corrupt regime.
activities against selected targets while attacking other Terrorism theory came to the United States with the
counties for promoting terrorist activities. This form arrival of German radicals such as Karl Heinzen and
of terrorism, usually called state terrorism, is dis- Johann Most, who advanced the philosophy of using
cussed in an entry under that name. The following is a weapons of mass destruction in a systematic campaign
historical discussion of terrorism in the more tradi- of terrorism. Both believed that science would empower
tional understanding of the term—violence against the masses with the invention of new weapons that could
civilian targets with the intent of instilling fear and then be used in terrorist enterprises, and they argued that
creating political or social change. bombs should be detonated where the enemy gathered,
be it a church or meeting place. Heinzen and Most did
not practice what their writings recommended, but others
HISTORICAL ROOTS OF TERRORISM
did. The most famous incident involving American
The word terrorism is an artifact of the French anarchists occurred in Chicago in 1886 during the
Revolution. The régime de la terreur, which took Haymarket riot, when a bomb killed eight policemen.
place from 1793 to 1794, was a systematic attempt to At the turn of the 19th century, terrorism in the form
unearth traitors and send them to the guillotine. At of political assassination became a major global pheno-
first the violence, or terror, had a positive connotation menon. Those assassinated included General Martinez
since it was used to punish subversives and other Campos in Barcelona, Spain, in 1892; French president
dissidents whom the new regime regarded as enemies Sari Carnot in 1894; Empress Elizabeth of Austria-
of the people. But in time the revolutionary leader Hungary in 1898; King Umberto of Italy in 1900; and
Maximilien Robespierre was executed along with the U.S. president William McKinley in 1901. Although a
40,000 others who were guillotined during the régime few of the assassins were anarchists, they all acted on
de la terreur. Soon thereafter, the Englishman Edmund their own, without the knowledge or support of the
Burke, a vocal critic of the revolution, described the groups to which they belonged.
proponents of the revolution as terrorists. World War I was ignited by the murder of the
Terrorism as a practice is thought to have begun in Austrian chancellor at the hands of a Serbian nation-
first-century Judea, where Jewish men would use a alist. Interestingly, few terrorist activities took place in
short dagger (sica) to slit the throats of occupying the period following the war, perhaps because politi-
Romans and their collaborators in full view of the pub- cal assassination paled against the backdrop of the
lic. Sicarri, as these dagger-men were called, would death of millions of individuals. How could the death
also attack wealthy Jews and kidnap their servants for of one man shock the millions of people suffering the
ransom. The Sicarri were part of a group known as ravages of war? After the war, Germany, Italy, Eastern
Zealots, who sought to overthrow the Romans. The Europe, the Balkans, and Palestine all witnessed a
term Zealot is derived from the name of this movement. dearth of individual acts of terrorism while experienc-
Later on in seventh-century India, members of the ing the growth of state terrorism. Individual terrorism
thuggee cult ritually strangled their victims in an appar- was anathema to both fascistic and communistic
ent act of sacrifice to the Hindu goddess Kali. (The points of view; instead these totalitarian ideologies
term thuggee and the modern term thug are derived employed the collective terrorism of the “state.”
from the Hindu thag, which referred to highwaymen
who made their living by robbery.) POST-WORLD WAR II TERRORISM
The philosophical antecedents of modern-day ter-
rorism were also formed by the Russian revolutionary In the post-World War II years, terrorism became a
Mikhail Bakunin in the middle of the 19th century. In strategy of choice for nationalist groups in the Middle
his Principles of Revolution (1869), Bakunin wrote East, North Africa, and Asia in their struggle for