ABSTRACT
Terrorism is a "politically loaded term", which should be discarded because one nation's terrorism is another people's national liberation. It is widely believed to be "left-wing" or "revolutionary" in character. Terrorists, it is true, have usually claimed to act on behalf of the masses but they also believe that the "liberation of the masses" is the historical mission of a chosen few. Terrorism was certainly true with regard to the nineteenth-century terrorist movements; the militants were usually of middle- or upper-class background, but as a group they were indeed without means. The most recent wave of terrorism offers a number of lessons to terrorists and governments alike, which run counter to conventional wisdom. Terrorists have been slow in accepting the obvious fact that terror is almost always more popular against foreigners than against their own countrymen. Terrorism appeared in the secret societies and revolutionary organizations of the nineteenth century fighting a tyranny against which there was no legal redress.
