ABSTRACT
Government activities in the French Revolution produced the concept and vocabulary of terror, though terrorism itself long preceded that event. The Russian Narodnaya Volya (The People’s Will) was the first rebel group to describe itself as terrorist in 1879, and the term referred to non-state groups for the next 50 years. In the 1930s terrorism referred again to state activities, as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union became significant world powers. During the 1960s, when many non-state groups used violence for political ends, terrorism was associated with rebels again, a link that grew firmer over time and which is our subject here. When Robespierre proclaimed ‘Either virtue or the terror’ during the French
Reign of Terror, he meant that only terror could produce true ‘democratic character’, the ‘Revolutionary Tribunals’ special task. Normal courts assess actions; but the Tribunals were concerned with those inclined to be lawbreakers. Because guilt or innocence was irrelevant, standard rules of evidence were dispensed with. The fate of prisoners was meant to be didactic lessons for the public. The Tribunals identified appropriate and inappropriate dispositions! In the spirit of its French predecessors, Narodnaya Volya also understood
terrorism as a temporary measure to ‘transform the consciousness of the masses’. Victims were chosen for didactic purposes, i.e. as symbols or political effects. Assailants concealed their weapons and signs identifying them as combatants. While the French discarded existing rules of punishment, the Russian terrorists declared the laws of war irrelevant. Not surprisingly, in time the term accumulated so many abusive connotations
that terrorists stopped calling themselves terrorists. The last group to designate itself as terrorist was Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, referred to as the ‘Stern Gang’ by the British) a splinter group of the Irgun (Organization for the Defence of the People). Earlier, Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, focusing on purpose not means, described his followers as ‘freedom fighters’ who were only struggling against government terror (Begin, 1997). Groups everywhere adopted his language, and the claims that they were fighting government terror sometimes resonated internationally, because combatants tend to use similar tactics. Many viewed struggles against colonial rule as legitimate, and the public
discourse during the 1960s made the terms terrorist and freedom fighter mutually
exclusive, which meant that those using violence against a Western power were always ‘freedom fighters’. By the 1970s the media, presumably to protect its reputation for ‘impartiality’, had corrupted the language further. American newspapers often described identical persons in the same account alternatively as terrorists, guerrillas, militants and soldiers! Similar inconsistencies plague academic accounts. The unspoken assumption was that if one sympathized with its cause, one could not describe a group as terrorist. The linguistic confusions impeded international counter-terror efforts. The confusion intensified when some terrorists became legitimate political
leaders-in Ireland, Israel, Kenya, Algeria, etc. Four former terrorists even received Nobel Peace Prizes. Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat shared one (1978) for the Camp David Accords. Nelson Mandela (1994) was indispensable in reconciling fiercely hostile South African elements. After signing the Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat received one (1995), but he was the only recipient unable to make the appropriate final commitment. Most scholars understand terror as a means not an end. But some do not
discriminate between terror and other forms of political violence, making it difficult to distinguish rebel soldiers like George Washington and Robert E. Lee from their terrorist contemporaries in the Sons of Liberty and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The original definition, moreover, makes it easier to understand the special problem terrorism creates for the perpetrators and the assaulted, problems discussed in the counter-terror section below.
