Conclusion

A little more than a year after the 9/11 attacks, a conference titled “Terrorism, the Press, and the Social Sciences” was held at the University of Paris VII. As with so many symposia, this meeting opened with the keynote speaker addressing the participants and audience. A tall, handsome, and distinguished gentleman took the podium and began by announcing, “I am a terrorist.” This was neither a rhetorical flourish nor a statement of solidarity. Some 59 years earlier, nearly to the day, the keynote speaker, Raymond Aubrac, was liberated from a Gestapo prison where Klaus Barbie tortured him. Like his wife Lucie, who led the commandos that freed him, Aubrac was a member of the French Resistance. ¹ Aubrac explained to the conference audience how he and his colleagues plotted the assassinations of government officials, exploded bombs to disrupt truck and train traffic, cut power and communications lines, and conducted missions that sometimes could only be described as suicidal. To the German occupation authorities, to the Vichy government, to the Gestapo, and to the Milice (the Vichy government’s secret police), Aubrac was simply a terrorist. ²