ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the outstanding features of terrorists' rhetoric, features generated by the nature of terrorism. It outlines some rhetorical tensions which typically emerge. The chapter argues that the terrorist's half of the dialogue typically consists of bipolar exhortation. In McLuhanesque fashion, the medium of violence becomes the message, suggesting by its very nature that the established order is illegitimate. Typically, terrorists defend their violence by constructing a bipolar world which cleanly divides good from evil. Terrorism is legitimate because it "responds" to an evil, illegitimate enemy. Terrorists' violence is justified because of how inhumanely the system treats the body politic. The inhumanity of the system legitimates the act of terrorism, and terrorists then employ language connoting legitimacy to describe their own actions. The terrorist's emotional exhortation finds its release in something called "action." The system's inhumanity, and the zero sum struggle that results, requires that the terrorist act.
