Page 188 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 167

PRESSURE-GROUP POLITICS
Among their tactics were the blocking of busy motorways with slow moving
agricultural vehicles, as well as traditional marches and rallies in London. In
2010 protests erupted in Greece as a consequence of austerity measures
adopted by the government. Though ostensibly non-violent, these protests,
like those which accompanied the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, became
violent as they were hijacked by anarchists and other anti-capitalist pro-
testers. In Athens in May 2010 three bank workers, including a pregnant
woman, died after petrol bombs were thrown into the building where they
worked. As this edition went to press it was widely anticipated that the
austerity measures being imposed by governments all over the world in
response to the credit crunch would revive forms of social and political
protest not seen since the 1980s.

TERRORISM AND THE OXYGEN OF PUBLICITY

We turn, finally, to that category of political organisation which pursues its
objectives by illegal, often violent means. As was acknowledged in Chapter
1, the word ‘terrorist’ is a loaded term, used to describe organisations whose
own members may prefer to think of themselves as ‘freedom fighters’,
‘guerrilla soldiers’ or ‘revolutionaries’. Noam Chomsky and others have
developed the concept of ‘state terrorism’ to describe the violence which has
been used by the US and other countries against civilians. We will use it here,
however, to refer to those non-state groups which pursue ‘terror’ tactics
against governments, soldiers and civilians of their own or other countries.
‘Terror’, in this context, includes bombings, assassination, kidnappings, and
hostage-taking – actions which will in most cases be of minor military value,
being designed rather to communicate political messages of various kinds.
Terror, in this sense, is a form of political communication, pursued outside
the realm of constitutional procedures. In the words of Thomas Thornton,
the terrorist act is ‘symbolic . . . designed to influence political behaviour by
extranormal means, entailing the use or threat of violence’ (quoted in Kelly
and Mitchell, 1984, p. 283). Baudrillard describes terrorism as a ‘Theatre of
Cruelty’ which ‘aims at the masses in their silence’ a political message – ‘in
the purest symbolic form’ – of challenge (1983, p. 31). For Schmid and de
Graaf, terrorism is a media-management strategy adopted by groups whose
members feel otherwise excluded from political discourse.

We see the genesis of contemporary insurgent terrorism, as it has
manifested itself in the Western world since the late 1960s, primarily
as the outgrowth of minority strategies to get into the news. Since
the Western media grant access to news-making to events that are
abnormal, unusual, dangerous, new, disruptive and violent, groups

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