What is terrorism?

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As the title sais - what characterises terrorism? Methods? Ideology? A goal? Violence? Please try to define what you think terrorism actually is.

 

Any attempt commited by a state, an organization or an individual, which aims to spread fear to a specific group of people through physical or psychological violence in order to achieve political, national, economical or religious goals.

However it's impossible to define who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter. One nation's hero is another nation's butcher.

 

You know, Ragusa, it seems to me that terrorism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Guerilla tactics are a way for a weaker group to successfully engage a stronger target. The Americans sanctify characters like Zorro, the Swamp Fox, and others like them because they hid out and struck from surprise. The villify the Japanese, the Islamics, etc because they strike from surprise. Hmm.

Now, in my mind, it's not that simple -- there should be a recognized conflict in progress -- striking without the other side even knowing seems to me to be cowardly. But there's problems there too. Killing innocents? well, collateral damage, as they call it, happens to everyone. Deliberately targetting civilians? That's pretty bad, but once again, it's been done by the "good guys" -- in fact, a lot of talk going around Bomber command during WW2 involved "bomb their schools, or those kids'll grow up and kill your kids" -- my Dad said there was lots of talk like that (he was a tail gunner on a Lancaster bomber)

Hmm. deep thoughts.

 

When a particular group or faction tries to prove an idealogical, political, or theological point by the deliberate murder or destruction of innocent people and their way of life, especially when those killed had nothing to do with what the aggressors claim to be fighting (ie, blowing up a shopping mall or school cafeteria when it's a nation's government or regime you're pissed off at).

 

A colorful view:

A terrorist is a guy who doesn't play by your rules and doesn't play in your team (otherwise he's often called "freedom fighter").
His objectives, frame of mind and methods don't match yours, hence he's "evil".

He's the guy that must be stopped no matter the cost, no matter how many people die, no matter how much your basic rights are restricted, no matter how much taxpayer's money is wasted, no matter how much pipelines must be constructed after you are finished with him, no matter how much money private companies of people in your government can make from it...

He's the guy one should never try to understand because he's closer to an animal than anything else, one should accept that his actions come out of pure, unfounded hatred and never look at why he's doing what he's doing.

Sidenote: "communist" used to fulfill that role for a while in western language, if you're reading older documents the above definition can be adapted easily.

 

I like your point, Rabbit -- striking deliberately at people who have little or nothing to do with your particular beef seems to me to be terroristic.

 

Terrorists usually have "bigger" goals, they, in their mind, want to change the world for the better. Therefore they attempt to produce chaos, which forces the ones in power to change the status quo. This will reveal the "evil" nature of for example the actual goverment. This will bring people to realize how wrong everything is and start to support the terroristic group.

A seriously failed attempt was the Luxor attacks. It should have destroyed the most important money-source of Egypt, tourism, by delibaretly killing as many tourists as possible. This should have weakenend the goverment financially and force it to take extreme measures, which would make them look like despots to the majority of the people. Luckily, this failed. Most Egyptians were pissed off by loosing the money from tourism and supported the govermental crackdown on extremists, instead of starting to resist the goverment. And tourism in Egypt recoverd after one year, actually grew.

In short -> Terrorism aims at killing innocent bystanders to provoke a reaction. The reaction leads to chaos. Chaos leads to the change of the status quo.

 

In one word: cowards. If you wanna add one word to that, it'll be faceless cowards. Whenever they arrest one, whether he's IRA, ETA, RAF, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, or whatever, they should be executed without trial.

No mercy, they don't show any to their victims either.

 

Pac-man,
goog aproach ... wouldn't there be the neglectable aspect that terrorists operate clandestine so you can't always be sure who you have there. As usual with death penalty, silly when you've been wrong - resurrection doesn't work IRL.

"Sorry, but your name, as written on this shield *is* Bin Laden, so say your customary prayers while I load" "But I work for UPS you retard, and as well, I'm loading, and btw, my name is Schmitz and we're in germany!" (for germans only)

As the coward line of thought hardly works - even the goody good western special forces do ambushes and strike out of the blue. Underground warefare was, as we know it today, teached by the british to the resistance and the balkanese guerrillas, and the russians had schools of their own for their people. They used the same coward methods, but were heroes. Of course, the germans saw it different. The methods and tactics alione can't make one a terrorist - otherwise the US better injail the whole garrison of Fort Bragg - and that, of course, would be nonsense.

Well, I have another attempt for a definition here :

That definition is, a concentrated form of the definition in the US patriot act. To intimidate or coerce any segment of gvt or population? Does that mean the the days of Fox News are counted? Hardly

That definition, broad already, was even expanded by those who drafted the texan Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act :

Hmm, Greenpeace comes to my mind

So, seemingly, terrorism always is aiming on a political goal. The violent methods (good point Yago) only support that, but the range of goals deemed worth to be considered varies: from toppling gvts, coercing gvts, over gvt participation of minorities, to dislike of ... hunting and oil drilling or convincing people by roadblocks that saving fuel is a smart thing.

I doubt that these official attempts to define terrorism alone are enough to help bring forth this topic. So what is terrorism? What is it about?

 

Yeah, they operate clandestine, but believe me, the secret services around the globe have a list with names and faces. The only thing missing is an adress and a phonenumber.

 

And there are always people that look "close enough". It's not that easy. Lists like that exist for 40 years now, and still we have terror.

 

That's because they have excellent hide outs, and don't forget, there are still a lot of governments who support them. Either with safe houses, money, explosives, or whatever.

Did you ever wonder how Carlos managed to stay out of the law's hands for so long ? His face was known to every streetcop in Europe, and still he travelled between East Germany, France, Hungary, Russia, and some other countries. It's the rotten system of some countries, that creates a perfect environment for terrorists. If it weren't for those governments, they would have no place to hide.

 

Well, the US just did that to Iraq (criminal act = war of agression/ to coerce = well, we don't need to go on) and are about to do it to iran as well.
Even though this would lead us I feel it's useful as an introduction.

So as countries do that all the time, the very thing that makes the difference to a terrorist must be something else: That he dares to mix in the international affairs or interstate affairs - without having been invited. It's not by chance that terrorists are primarily "grown" in unfair systems or systems perceived as repressive.
Oxymore made a good point when he wrote: "A terrorist is a guy who doesn't play by your rules and doesn't play in your team"

 

Pac-man,
you obviously misunderstood me: I referred to things like fair trial and stuff. When you kill someone who you consider to be a terrorist, better make sure he really is your man. Killing an innocent by accident is an unforgivable crime.

Something like that happend in Norway, in Lillehammer if I'm not completely mistaken, when the israeli mossad, by accident, killed the wrong man, some moroccan Ahmad Bouchikhi. A waiter who looked so dam much like a terrorist. Oops.

But we get astray, so let's focus on terrorism again.

 

"November 17" was a Greek terrorist organization operating from 1974 to 2002. All these years police had various lists with names of possible members of the organization, which were provided by the Greek K.Y.P., C.I.A., F.B.I., Scotland Yard as well as from the archives of S.T.A.Z.I. (they became available after the unification of Germany). When the members of this organization were arrested in the summer of 2002, just because a bomb exploded in the hands of a terrorist, no one of them was in one of these lists.

 

Terrorism has two meanings IMO. The first one been the actul meaning. Someone whether it be a country; and individual or a group of people, who commit a violent act against civilians to creat terror. Usually aimed at changing something.

But resently the meaning has more or less changed to Terrorism been anyone who commits a violent act which the USA does not like. Or in otherwords any one who stands against the United States of America!

 

I think that's wrong either - when the brits have a problem with the IRA the latter aren't terrorists because they are against the US, neither this applies to ETA. You cannot explain the phenomenon of terrorism by blaming the US to provoke it (even though that, to a point, may be true).

The palestinian terrorists in the last ten years have focused on bombing israelis - not the US, even though the US backs israel. Probably they did so for a reason.

 

IIRC some of them where in the lists and especially Yiotopoulos but he was living under another name.
Anyway terrorism IMHO is an action of violence phycological or physical that aims in the indulgence of political mainly demands that are not accepted by the given goverment. You may say they are cowards but you also may say that these people were forced in this course of actions by some wrong decisions made by the (ex-)goverment of the nation (any nation).
Can we accuse the terrorists only? I think not, i believe that everyone his share of blame for this and the goverments are sometimes the most responsible of all, but not always.

 

Mithrantir

None of them has ever been in the police lists. Yotopoulos was in a french police list of left-wingers students participated in the events of 1968 and his traces were lost before the first attack of November 17.

 

Terrorism is what the Establishment calls anyone trying to use force to effect change.

When the terrorists gain power, they get to change their name to "Freedom Fighters!"