essay on terrorism a great evil

The Baudrillardian Symbolic, 9/11, and the War of Good and Evil

In the end it was they who did it but we who wished it. If we do not take this into account, the event loses all symbolic dimension; it becomes a purely arbitrary act. . . . (A)nd in their strategic symbolism the terrorists knew they could count on this unconfessable complicity. Terrorism is the act that restores an irreducible singularity to the heart of a generalized system of exchange. The globe itself is resistant to globalization. --Jean Baudrillard[ 1 ]

Losing critical energy and growing apathetic himself, he ascribes apathy and inertia to the universe. Imploding into entropy, Baudrillard attributes implosion and entropy to the experience of (post) modernity. (180)

Embedded in Jean Baudrillard's almost incomprehensible prose is the shocking assertion that terrorism is justifiable, that the threat of globalization, as visualized by Baudrillard, justified the World Trade Center attack. (Kelly et al. 4)

Baudrillard's Symbolic and Death

it [the image] is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum. ( Simulacra 6)

The symbolic is neither a concept, an agency, a category, nor a "structure," but an act of exchange and a social relation which puts an end to the real , which resolves the real, and, at the same time, puts an end to the opposition between the real and the imaginary. (133)

the gift is unique, specified by the people exchanging and the unique moment of the exchange. It is arbitrary [in that it matters little what object is involved], and yet absolutely singular. As distinct from language, whose material can be disassociated from the subjects speaking it, the material of symbolic exchange, the objects given, are not autonomous, hence not codifiable as signs. ( Critique 64-65)

Behind all the superstructures of purchase, market, and private property, there is always the mechanism of social prestation which must be recognized in our choice, our accumulation, our manipulation and our consumption of objects. This mechanism of discrimination and prestige is at the very basis of the system of values and of integration into the hierarchical order of society. The Kula and the Potlatch have disappeared, but not their principle. (30)

If we take to dreaming once more--particularly today--of a world where signs are certain, of a strong "symbolic order," let's be under no illusions. For this order has existed, and it was a brutal hierarchy, since the sign's transparency is indissociably also its cruelty. ( Baudrillard Live 50)

At the very core of the "rationality" of our culture, however, is an exclusion that precedes every other, more radical than the exclusion of madmen, children or inferior races, an exclusion preceding all these and serving as their model: the exclusion of the dead and of death. ( Symbolic 126)

there is an irreversible evolution from savage societies to our own: little by little, the dead cease to exist. They are thrown out of the group's symbolic circulation. They are no longer beings with a full role to play, worthy partners in exchange....Today it is not normal to be dead, and this is new. . . . Death is a delinquency, and an incurable deviancy. (126)

We are all hostages, and that's the secret of hostage-taking, and we are all dreaming, instead of dying stupidly working oneself to the ground, of receiving death and of giving death. Giving and receiving constitute one symbolic act (the symbolic act par excellence), which rids death of all the indifferent negativity it holds for us in the "natural" order of capital. (166)

Nihilism and Terrorism

Implosion of meaning in the media. Implosion of the social in the masses. Infinite growth of the masses as a function of the acceleration of the system. Energetic impasse. Point of inertia. --Baudrillard ( Simulacra 161)

it [the image] is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum. (6)

postmodernity, which is the immense process of the destruction of meaning, equal to the earlier destruction of appearances. He who strikes with meaning is killed by meaning. (161)

is the trait of reversion that effaces the remainder, just as a single ironic smile effaces a whole discourse, just as a single flash of denial in a slave effaces all the power and pleasure of the master. The more hegemonic the system, the more the imagination is struck by the smallest of its reversals. The challenge, even infinitesimal, is the image of a chain failure. Only this reversibility without a counterpart is an event today, on the nihilistic and disaffected stage of the political. Only it mobilizes the imaginary.

If being a nihilist, is carrying, to the unbearable limit of hegemonic systems, this radical trait of derision and of violence, this challenge that the system is summoned to answer through its own death, then I am a terrorist and nihilist in theory as the others are with their weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only recourse left us. But such a sentiment is utopian. Because it would be beautiful to be a nihilist, if there were still a radicality--as it would be nice to be a terrorist, if death, including that of the terrorist, still had meaning.

The dead are annulled by indifference, that is where terrorism is the involuntary accomplice of the whole system, not politically, but in the accelerated form of indifference that it contributes to imposing. Death no longer has a stage, neither phantasmatic nor political, on which to represent itself, to play itself out, either a ceremonial or a violent one. And this is the victory of the other nihilism, of the other terrorism, that of the system. ( Simulacra 163-164)

There is no more hope for meaning. And without a doubt this is a good thing: meaning is mortal. But that on which it has imposed its ephemeral reign, what it hoped to liquidate in order to impose the reign of the Enlightenment, that is, appearances, they are immortal, invulnerable to the nihilism of meaning or of non-meaning itself. This is where seduction begins. (163-164)

is not simply the negation of economic value but rather its limit. It is the thinking of that loss, that relationship to the other, which at once allows exchange, opens it up, and means that it is never complete, never able to account for itself. (81-82)

9/11: Morning of the Living Dead

The spectacle of terrorism forces upon us the terrorism of the spectacle. -- Jean Baudrillard ("L'Esprit" 15)

It goes well beyond the hatred that the desolate and the exploited--those who ended up on the wrong side of the new world order--feel toward the dominant global power. This malicious desire resides in the hearts of even those who have shared in the spoils. The allergy to absolute order, to absolute power, is universal, and the two towers of the World Trade Center were, precisely because of their identicality, the perfect incarnation of this absolute order. ("L'Esprit" 13)

Never attack the system in terms of the balance of power. The balance of power is an imaginary (revolutionary) construct imposed by the system itself, a construct that exists in order to force those who attack it to fight on the battlefield of reality, the system's own terrain. Instead, move the struggle into the symbolic sphere, where defiance, reversion, and one-upmanship are the rule, so that the only way to respond to death is with an equivalent or even greater death. Defy the system with a gift to which it cannot reply except with its own death and its own downfall. . . . You have to make the enemy lose face. And you'll never achieve that through brute force, by merely eliminating the Other. (16)

at the level of images and information, it is impossible to distinguish between the spectacular and the symbolic, impossible to distinguish between crime and repression. And it is this uncontrollable outburst of reversibility that is the veritable victory of terrorism. (18)

What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our Nation (the Islamic world) has been tasting this humiliation and degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked and no one hears and no one heeds. Millions of innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq without committing any sins. . . . To America, I say only a few words to it and its people. I swear to God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it here in Palestine and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad peace be upon him. (Andreas 29)

response to globalization, which is itself immoral. We are therefore immoral ourselves, so if we hope to understand anything we will need to get beyond Good and Evil. . . . In the end, Good cannot vanquish Evil except by declining to be Good, since, in monopolizing global power, it entails a backfire of proportional violence. ( Simulacra 15)

It is not unthinkable that a society might attain such a consciousness of power that it could allow itself the noblest luxury possible to it--letting those who harm it go unpunished. "What are my parasites to me?:" it might say. "May they live and prosper: I am strong enough for that!" The justice which began with, "everything is dischargeable, everything must be discharged," ends by winking and letting those incapable of discharging their debt go free: it ends, as does every good thing on earth, by overcoming itself. This self-overcoming of justice: one knows the beautiful name it has given itself-- mercy ; it goes without saying that mercy remains the privilege of the most powerful man, or better, his--beyond the law. ( Genealogy 72-73)

In the terrorist attack the event eclipsed all of our interpretive models, whereas in this mindlessly military and technological war we see the opposite: the interpretive model eclipsing the event. (18) Baudrillard would have us recognize that the attack on 9/11 succeeded in poking a hole in the U.S.'s mighty shield, thus opening a space "where seduction begins," and in provoking a murderous response. The terrorists therefore succeeded (are succeeding) in making the U.S. look bad on the symbolic battlefield, and in pushing the system further toward its limit and its implosion, a goal Baudrillard expressly favors. It seems most reasonable to conclude, however, that such violent, physical provocations serve no one, not even Baudrillard, and need not be equated with the kind of theoretical terrorism and aesthetic violence advocated by him (though one can always accuse him of being the first to blur the lines between the real and the imaginary). Given his cynicism about the system's ability to neutralize every opposition, however, Baudrillard sees such dramatic gestures (as 9/11) as naïve in their utopianism. And yet he too has his utopianism, which can be found in the silent evocation of the only decent, beautiful solution to the challenge of 9/11. Unlike naïve terrorists and secondary critics, however, Baudrillard will not speak his utopia,[ 8 ] which in this case is the possibility of forgiveness as a world-historical symbolic event. This utopian moment in Baudrillard, this idea that the U.S. might forgive its debtors, is obviously unrealistic as yet, but every challenge opens up a new space in the universe. This is where seduction begins. As for death, it is still un-American. We live mostly, as Ernest Becker claimed, in denial of death, which our marketing specialists have yet to fully package. We live in ignorance of the death and misery caused by our military and its industry. No one knows how many lives, or anything about the individuals killed. We see only TV spectacles. We do not see the real, or know the real, but we are a culture fascinated by its simulacrum. Approximately 3,000 more people joined the ranks of the dead on 9/11 and for most of us they were only abstractions, but the fascination we felt, the release, is something everyone is now anticipating, every false alarm a tease. Whether we see it in Baudrillardian or Freudian terms, this is the death drive. The most recent Gallup poll shows 53% of Americans in favor of the U.S. invading Iraq alone. Toward the end of Symbolic Exchange and Death , Baudrillard states what he believes is on all of our minds: Death itself demands to be experienced immediately, in total blindness and total ambivalence. But is it revolutionary? If political economy is the most rigorous attempt to put an end to death, it is clear that only death can put an end to political economy. (86-87)

For the system is master: like God it can bind or unbind energies; what it is incapable of (and what it can no longer avoid) is reversibility. Reversibility alone therefore, rather than unbinding or drifting, is fatal to it. This is exactly what the term symbolic "exchange" means.

Department of English University of Wisconsin, La Crosse [email protected]

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1 . From "L'Esprit du Terrorisme" (13, 14, 18).

2 . See Symbolic Exchange and Death (5, n. 2), which I discuss in the final section of this essay.

3 . It is likely that Baudrillard's theory of the primitive and his whole theory of the symbolic (as gift) derive more from a history of colonial projection than from the truth about the colonized. In The Potlatch Papers: A Colonial Case History , Christopher Bracken argues that the potlatch in twentieth-century European anthropology and philosophy is the invention of a nineteenth-century Canadian law meant to outlaw it. Bracken does not mention Baudrillard, but Lyotard does along these same lines: "How is it that he does not see that the whole problematic of the gift, of symbolic exchange, such as he receives it from Mauss...belongs in its entirety to Western racism and imperialism--that it is still ethnology's good savage, slightly libidinalized, which he inherits with the concept?" (106). No longer believing in true origins, however, Baudrillard would like to be free of the distinction between the real and the imaginary savage so as to focus on the concept of symbolic exchange, a concept containing a compelling, if understated, ethic: that one must respond, and is responsible, to the other; that one's honor depends on what one gives; and that the value of the gift is not quantifiable but is symbolic. One will get nowhere trying to verify his speculations about the "real primitives," and I could not speak for indigenous people as to whether they should value his "gift" to them as a compliment or an insult. See Piper for discussion of Baudrillard's place in the new primitivist counter-culture, "the drop-out culture of the sixties redefined as both indigenous and postmodern" (177).

4 . See for instance "Homer's Contest" ( Portable 32-39).

5 . See Stille and Alden.

6 . Matthew Kelly of Brooklyn writes "I choked on the quotation marks buffeting the word 'real' . . . which, in his view, the September 11 violence was not" (86).

7 . As I write, President Bush has declared a new, "preventive" unilateralism in U.S. military policy, and the Senate has authorized the President to proceed with an invasion of Iraq at his own discretion, regardless of international opinion. This current push toward global domination by force must strike all but the most authoritarian Americans as deeply ignoble. After all, it flies in the face of our TV and Hollywood upbringing, which teaches us that it's only bad guys who want to rule the world and that nobody should end up as "lord of the rings." Indeed, the contradiction between image and reality is becoming so apparent that, in keeping with the Orwellian nature of the Bush administration, we might almost expect revisionist remakes to start replacing the standard Hollywood movies. We'll find that Austin Powers and Dr. Evil have somehow changed roles, and that we're cheering for good guys who rule the world with an iron hand while egalitarian villains plot against them.

8 . In The Illusion of the End , Baudrillard cites Adorno to this effect: "Every ecstasy ultimately prefers to take the path of renunciation rather than sin against its own concept by realizing itself" (104).

9 . There's a powerful narrative implied in this photo; an annoyed resident of the so-called "third world" holds a box of Joy for the camera, and suddenly we don't feel so happy about Joy. When we are made conscious of the implicit, metaphysical insult of a class-based global village, we are made aware of the symbolic standing between the first world and the third. The anti-commercial is a symbolic challenge to the real commercial, posing one image against another, demanding a response. Baudrillardian symbolic exchange is based on this principle of reversal and seduction, and so has much in common with Guy Debord's and the Situationists' concept of " detournement " and with what Kalle Lasn and Adbusters call "culture jamming" (see Lasn 103-109).

Works Cited

Alden, Dianne. "History is the Root Cause of Everything." NewsMax.com 11 Oct. 2002. 29 Aug. 2002. <http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/terrorism/root_cause.htm> .

Andreas, Joel. Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can't Kick Militarism. Oakland: AK, 2002.

Baudrillard, Jean. Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews. Ed. Mike Gane. New York: Routledge, 1993.

---. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. Trans. Charles Levin. St. Louis, MO: Telos, 1981.

---. The Illusion of the End. Trans. Chris Turner. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994.

---. "L'Esprit du Terrorisme." Trans. Donovan Hohn. Harper's Magazine (February 2002): 13-18.

---. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994.

---. Symbolic Exchange and Death. Trans. Iain Hamilton Grant. London: Sage, 1993.

Bracken, Christopher. The Potlatch Papers: A Colonial Case History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997.

Butler, Rex. Jean Baudrillard: The Defense of the Real. London: Sage, 1999.

Kellner, Douglas. Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1989.

Kelly, Mathew; Schlesinger, Edward B.; Wersan, Sarah A. "Letters to the Editor." Harper's Magazine (May 2002): 4.

Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America™. New York: Eagle Brook, 1999.

Lyotard, Jean-François. Libidinal Economy. Trans. Iain Hamilton Grant. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993.

Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: the Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Trans. W.D. Halls. New York: Norton, 1990.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1967.

---. The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. and Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin, 1954.

Piper, Karen. Cartographic Fictions: Maps, Race, and Identity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2002.

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Podcast Transcript

The Bright Line Between Good and Evil

This is a transcript of a  recorded podcast . 

Well, it’s been a month since Hamas attacked Israel, killing around 1500 people and taking over 200 hostages. And it’s been a week since Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza began. Like many people, I’m concerned that the extensive bombing (and now invasion) of Gaza could be a mistake. I’m not saying Israel doesn’t have to retaliate and destroy Hamas, they clearly do. And I would say that they have to destroy Hezbollah too—and ultimately, they and we have to dismantle every jihadist organization that could impact our security in the future. But there may have been other ways to have gone about destroying Hamas that would better serve Israel’s interests and produced fewer casualties on the Palestinian side.

As everyone expected, collateral damage in Gaza has convinced much of the world that Israel is the real aggressor here. Of course, many on the Left began saying this before Israel had dropped a single bomb, at a moment when it was clear that Hamas had committed atrocities of a sort that one scarcely imagines possible in the modern world. The fact that millions of people can’t do the moral arithmetic here, or have confidently produced the wrong answer, is itself an enormous problem for open societies everywhere—because this should not have been confusing. Hamas took a sadistic pleasure in torturing and killing noncombatants that should have made it instantly clear, to everyone, certainly everyone on a college campus, that jihadist groups like Hamas are the permanent enemies of civilization.

So, Israel really does have a war to fight, but I worry that the ground invasion of Gaza could be a mistake. A different approach has been discussed in a few contexts: I believe Jocko Willink suggested something like this on his podcast (as many of you know Jocko is a Navy Seal who led the Seals in the battle of Ramadi. So he knows a lot about urban warfare and counterinsurgency). A similar idea was recently described in an article by Bret Stephens in the New York Times, recommending that Israel provide humanitarian corridors for civilians to leave northern Gaza, and safe zones in the South and perhaps in Israel itself where people can be protected. And then the IDF could simply starve Hamas in their tunnels, without much more extensive bombing, much less a full ground invasion. Perhaps there are reasons why this just wouldn’t work—that’s totally possible. It would certainly take a long time, because Hamas has spent most of Gaza’s resources—billions of dollars in humanitarian aid meant for the Palestinians—building hundreds of miles of tunnels and fortifying them with food, water, and fuel so that they could wage jihad, all the while the world holds Israel responsible for the deprivations of the Palestinian people. The Palestinians of Gaza have been deprived of food, water, and fuel—and most other good things—by Hamas.

So, I can’t say whether this siege idea really is a good one. But if a siege of this sort were possible, it would have obvious advantages. It would signal a clear commitment to not harming innocent civilians—though some would inevitably be harmed, because Hamas is using their entire society as human shields—and there is no question that some not-so-innocent civilians would arrive at humanitarian checkpoints as suicide bombers, and there would an infuriating loss of civilian life there, even as Israel took great pains to protect it. But an approach like this would have denied Hamas a long series of propaganda victories, based on the terrible imagery that has been coming out of Gaza. However, all of this may just be moot, in the end. Because, as I said, much of the world took Hamas’s side before a single Israeli bomb fell. And that is what is so astonishing and so dangerous and so in need of criticism.

As the war continues, I’m sure I’ll do podcasts that attempt to understand how we got here and where all this is heading. There is a lot to talk about: including the bewildering failure of the IDF that left Israel so unprotected, and the commensurate failures of the Netanyahu government. There’s the pressing question of how America and our allies can support Israel while avoiding WW3. I certainly wonder whether a war with Iran is now more or less inevitable—and, of course, Iran is directly allied with Russia. And there are longer-term questions about whether peace between Israel and the Palestinians is even conceivable: Is a 2-state solution possible? Is a 1-state solution possible? I really have no idea what one could rationally hope for at this point.

However, I want to say something about the extreme moral confusion we have witnessed in recent weeks. Some of it has been just frank anti-Semitism, which I’ll also talk about, but much is actual confusion. Most people in the West still don’t understand the problem of jihadism. We often speak about “terrorism” and “violent extremism” generically. And we are told that any linkage between these evils and the doctrine of Islam is spurious, and nothing more than an expression “Islamophobia.” Incidentally, the term “Islamophobia” was invented in the 1970s by Iranian theocrats, to do just this: prevent any criticism of Islam and to cast secularism itself as a form of bigotry. Islam is a system of ideas, subscribed to by people of every race and ethnicity. It’s just like Christianity in that regard. Unlike Judaism, Christianity and Islam are both aggressively missionary faiths, and they win converts from everywhere. People criticize the doctrines of the Christianity all the time and worry about their political and social influences—but no one confuses this for bigotry against Christians as people, much less racism. There’s no such thing as “Christophobia.” As someone once said (it was not Christopher Hitchens, but it sure sounds like him): “Islamophobia is a term created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”

In any case, fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews don’t tend to be confused about the problem of jihadism because they understand the power of religious beliefs, however secular people generally are. We imagine that people everywhere, at bottom, want the same things: They want to live safe and prosperous lives. They want clean drinking water and good schools for their kids. And we imagine that if whole groups of people start behaving in extraordinarily destructive ways—practicing suicidal terrorism against noncombatants, for instance—they must have been pushed into extremis by others. What could turn ordinary human beings into suicide bombers, and what could get vast numbers of their neighbors to celebrate them as martyrs, other than their entire society being oppressed and humiliated to the point of madness by some malign power? So, in the case of Israel, many people imagine that the ghoulish history Palestinian terrorism simply indicates how profound the injustice has been on the Israeli side.

Now, there are many things to be said in criticism of Israel, in particular its expansion of settlements on contested land. But Israel’s behavior is not what explains the suicidal and genocidal inclinations of a group like Hamas. The Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad do.

These are religious beliefs, sincerely held. They are beliefs about the moral structure of the universe. And they explain how normal people—even good ones—can commit horrific acts of violence against innocent civilians—on purpose, not as collateral damage—and still consider themselves good. When you believe that life in this world has no value, apart from deciding who goes to hell and who goes to Paradise, it becomes possible to feel perfectly at ease killing noncombatants, or even using your own women and children as human shields, because you know that any Muslims who get killed will go to Paradise for eternity.

If you don’t understand that jihadists sincerely believe these things, you don’t understand the problem Israel faces. The problem isn’t merely Palestinian nationalism, or resource competition, or any other normal terrestrial grievance. In fact, the problem isn’t even hatred, though there is enough of that to go around. The problem is religious certainty.

It really is possible to be critical of Israel, and to be committed to the political rights of the Palestinian people, without being confused about the reality of Islamic religious fanaticism—or the threat that it poses not just to Israel, but to open societies everywhere. My friend Christopher Hitchens was extremely critical of Israel, and openly supportive of Palestinian statehood. But he wasn’t even slightly confused about the problem of jihad.

There have been nearly 50,000 acts of Islamic terrorism in the last 40 years—and the French group that maintains a database of these attacks [ https://www.fondapol.org/en/study/islamist-terrorist-attacks-in-the-world-1979-2021/ ] considers that to be an undercount. Ninety percent of them have occurred in Muslim countries. Most have nothing to do with Israel or the Jews. There have been 82 attacks in France and over 2000 in Pakistan during this period. You want France to be more like Pakistan? You just need more jihadists. You just need more people susceptible to becoming jihadists, which is a transformation that can happen very quickly—just as quickly as new beliefs can take root in a person’s mind. You just need a wider Muslim community that doesn’t condemn jihadism, but tacitly admits that the theology that inspires it will be true and perfect until the end of the world. You just need millions of people who will protest Israel for defending itself, or call for the deaths of cartoonists for depicting the prophet Muhammad, and yet not make a peep about the jihadist atrocities that occur daily, all over the world, in the name of their religion.

In the West, there is now a large industry of apology and obfuscation designed to protect Muslims from having to grapple with these facts. The humanities and social science departments of every university are filled with scholars and pseudo-scholars—deemed to be experts in terrorism, religion, Islamic jurisprudence, anthropology, political science, and other fields—who claim that Muslim extremism is never what it seems. These experts insist that we can never take jihadists at their word and that none of their declarations about God, paradise, martyrdom, and the evils of apostasy have anything to do with their real motivations.

When one asks what the motivations of jihadists actually are, one encounters a tsunami of liberal delusion. Needless to say, the West is to blame for all the mayhem we see in Muslim societies. After all, how would we feel if outside powers and their mapmakers had divided our lands and stolen our oil? These beleaguered people just want what everyone else wants out of life. They want economic and political security. They want to be free to flourish in ways that would be fully compatible with a global civil society, if only they were given the chance. Secular liberals imagine that jihadists are acting as anyone else would given a similar history of unhappy encounters with the West. And they totally discount the role that religious beliefs play in inspiring groups like Hamas and al-Qaeda, or even the Islamic State—to the point where it would be impossible for a jihadist to prove that he was doing anything for religious reasons.

Apparently, it’s not enough for an educated person with economic opportunities to devote himself to the most extreme and austere version of Islam, to articulate his religious reasons for doing so ad nauseam, and even to go so far as to confess his certainty about martyrdom on video before blowing himself up in a crowd. Such demonstrations of religious fanaticism are somehow considered rhetorically insufficient to prove that he really believed what he said he believed. Of course, if a white supremacist goes on a killing spree in a black church, and says he did this because he hates black people and thinks the white race is under attack, this motive is accepted at face value without the slightest hesitation. This double standard is guaranteed to exonerate Islam every time. The game is rigged.

Do not mistake what I’m saying now for anti-Muslim bigotry. I’m talking about the consequences of ideas, not the ethnic origins of people. Not a word I’ve said, or will ever say on this topic has anything to do with race. And, the truth is, I’m not remotely xenophobic. I’m a xenophile. The Middle East has produced some of my favorite parts of culture—some of my favorite foods, and music, and architecture. Despite my better judgment, I absolutely love the sound of the Muslim call to prayer. Everything I’m saying about the problem of jihadism is about the problem of jihadism—the triumphal belief by some percentage of the world’s Muslims that they must conquer the world for the one true faith through force, and that Paradise awaits anyone who would sacrifice his or her life to that end.

Of course, many religions produce a fair amount of needless suffering. Consider the pedophile-priest scandal in the Catholic Church, which is something I’ve written and spoken about before, I hope with sufficient outrage. One can certainly argue, as I have, that Catholic teaching is partly to blame for these crimes against children. By making contraception and abortion taboo, the Church ensured that there would be many out-of-wedlock births among its faithful; and by stigmatizing unwed mothers, it further guaranteed that many children would be abandoned to Church-run orphanages where they could be preyed upon by sexually unhealthy men. I don’t think any of this was consciously planned—it’s just a grotesque consequence of some very bad ideas. And yet the truth is that there is no direct link between Christian scripture and child rape. However, imagine if there were. Just imagine if the New Testament contained multiple passages promising heaven to any priest who raped a child. And then imagine that in the aftermath of an endless series of child rapes within the Church, more or less every journalist and politician and academic denied that they had anything whatsoever to do with the “true” teachings of Catholicism. That is the uncanny situation we find ourselves in with respect to Islam.

The problem that we have to grapple with—and by “we” I mean Muslims and non-Muslims alike—is that the doctrines that directly support jihadist violence are very easy to find in the Quran, and the hadith, and in the biography of Muhammad. For Muslims, Muhammad is the greatest person who has ever lived. Unfortunately, he did not behave like Jesus or Buddha—at all. It sort of matters that he tortured people and cut their heads off and took sex slaves, because his example is meant to inspire his followers for all time.

There are many, many verses in the Quran that urge Muslims to wage jihad—jihad as holy war against apostates and unbelievers—and the most violent of these are thought to supersede any that seem more benign. But the truth is, there isn’t much that is benign in the Quran—there is certainly no Jesus as we find him in Matthew urging people to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. All the decapitation we see being practiced by jihadists isn’t an accident—it’s in the Quran and in the larger record of the life of the Prophet.

Worse, in my view, is the moral logic one gets from the doctrine of martyrdom and Paradise. If you take martyrdom and Paradise seriously, it becomes impossible to make moral errors. As I said, if you blow yourself up in a crowd, your fellow Muslims will go straight to Paradise. You’ve actually done them a favor. Unbelievers will go to hell, where they belong. However many lives you destroy, it’s all good.

Again, most of this horror has nothing to do with Israel or the West. In 2014, six jihadis affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban attacked a school in Peshawar. These jihadis came from outside of Pakistan—there was a Chechen, two Afghans, and three Arabs. They murdered 145 people, 132 of whom were children. They burned a teacher alive in front of her students, and then killed all the children they could get their hands on. They didn’t take any hostages. They had no list of demands. They intended to die to achieve martyrdom. And they did die, so they got at least half of what they wanted. It is very difficult for secular people to understand how this behavior could be possible. They assume only madmen would do this sort of thing.

But that’s the horror of it—you don’t have to be mad to be a jihadist. You don’t even have to be a bad person. You just have to be a true believer. You just have to know, for sure, that you and all the good people will get everything you want after you die, and that the Creator of the Universe wants nothing more than for you to kill unbelievers. Here is what a supporter of the Pakistani Taliban said when interviewed about the school massacre:

Human life only has value among you worldly materialist thinkers. For us, this human life is only a tiny, meaningless fragment of our existence. Our real destination is the Hereafter. We don’t just believe it exists, we know it does.

Death is not the end of life. It is the beginning of existence in a world much more beautiful than this. As you know, the [Urdu] word for death is “intiqaal.” It means “transfer,” not “end.”

Paradise is for those of pure hearts. All children have pure hearts. They have not sinned yet… They have not yet been corrupted by [their kafir parents]. We did not end their lives. We gave them new ones in Paradise, where they will be loved more than you can imagine.

They will be rewarded for their martyrdom. After all, we also martyr ourselves with them. The last words they heard were the slogan of Takbeer [“Allah u Akbar”].

Allah Almighty says Himself in Surhah Al-Imran [3:169-170] that they are not dead.

You will never understand this. If your faith is pure, you will not mourn them, but celebrate their birth into Paradise.

My point is that we have to take declarations of this kind at face value, because they are honest confessions of a worldview—and it is a worldview that is totally antithetical to everything that civilized people value in the 21st century. This problem is much bigger than the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Palestinians.

As many of you know, I’ve always had a paradoxical position on Israel. I’ve said that I don’t think it should exist as a Jewish state—because, in my view, organizing a state around a religion is irrational and divisive. This follows directly from my views about organized religion in general. So, obviously, I don’t think there should be Muslim states either—or Christian ones, for that matter. However, there are over 20 countries in which Islam is the official state religion, and over 50 in which Muslims are the majority—and there is exactly one Jewish state. Given the history of genocidal anti-Semitism, which persists even now, mostly in the Muslim world, given that the Jews have been run out of every other country in the Middle East and North Africa where they lived for centuries, if any people deserve a state of their own, organized on any premise they want, it’s the Jews.

In 1939, the SS St. Louis, a ship carrying over 900 Jews seeking to escape the Holocaust was denied entry into Cuba, and the United States, and Canada, and then forced to return to Europe, where many of those Jews ended up in the ovens of Auschwitz. In my view, that’s all the justification for Israel one needs. Never again should Jews have to beg to stand on some dry patch of earth, only to be denied one, and then systematically murdered.

As I’ve said before on this podcast, I’ve never taken modern anti-Semitism very seriously. I think I’ve done exactly one episode on the topic. I’ve studied it. I understand its roots in Christian theology—despite the fact that Jesus, and his apostles, and the Virgin Mary were all Jews. I’m a student of the Holocaust. And I’m well aware of the anti-Semitism that existed in Europe and the U.S. at the time. Read David Wyman’s book “The Abandonment of the Jews” to understand how widespread anti-Semitism was in America, even as Jews were being killed by the millions in Europe. And, of course, I’m all too aware of the anti-Semitism that is endemic to Islam—and of the way it has been compressed into a diamond of intolerance and hatred throughout the Muslim world by the modern influence of Nazism. There’s some very depressing history there, for anyone who wants to read it. 

And I’ve been aware that year after year in the United States, no group has been targeted with more hate, and hate crime, than Jews. This is something that many Americans aren’t aware of. As I said, the American Left would have you believe that “Islamophobia” is a major concern. Vice President Kamala Harris is now heading a commission on “Islamophobia” in America, as though that’s the problem we’ve been seeing in recent weeks—just a massive outpouring of hatred for Muslims in America by non-Muslims. Has that ever happened?

Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Jews were targeted far more than Muslims. And that has been true every year since. According to FBI statistics, though Jews are just over 2 percent of the population, they receive over half the hate in America, and five times the level that Muslims do (and I think it’s safe to say that much of this hate comes from Muslims themselves). Jewish schools and synagogues have always incurred greater security costs than non-Jewish institutions, and for good reason, because the threat to them is greatest.

Now, while this status quo has been despicable, I have always believed that it was tolerable. And I say this as someone who has received death threats for two decades, and many of these threats are often explicitly anti-Semitic. Even given all of this, I have felt that anti-Semitism, as a real threat to Jews, certainly in the West, was behind us. I can’t say that now. In the last few weeks, with Jews being openly reviled and threatened all over the world, in the immediate aftermath of the most shocking atrocities committed against them since the Holocaust, I’ve begun to think that anything is possible.

Incidentally, if you ever wondered how you might have behaved had you been a German on the morning after Kristallnacht—if you’ve ever wondered whether you would have just gone about your business or done something to resist the slide of your society into absolute depravity—more or less everyone on Earth is now getting the chance to see just that. There was a mob chanting “Gas the Jews” in front of the Sydney Opera House. We have Jewish students in Ivy League universities cowering behind locked doors in fear for their physical safety. All university administrators, and Diversity Equity and Inclusion geniuses, and Hollywood celebrities who rushed to sign open letters in support of the Palestinian cause, without taking a moment to understand what actually happened on October 7th, or understanding it and not caring, you are all now part of history. 

The outpouring of anti-Semitism that we have witnessed since October 7th, really seems to mark a new moment, both in the US and globally. And for the first time, I now worry that my daughters will live in a world where their Jewishness will matter to people who do not wish them well, and they will be forced to make certain life choices on that basis, choices that I never had to make. Apart from being a public figure, and having to deal with disordered people of every description, I have never been concerned about anti-Semitism for even 5 minutes in my life. I now feel that I have been quite naïve. That’s putting it charitably. I’ve been utterly ignorant of what has been going on beneath the surface. 

I guess there were some recent intimations of this that caught my attention: I did criticize Elon Musk for how he handled the deluge of anti-Semitism that came onto Twitter, once he started randomly turning knobs and flipping switches over there like a villain in a James Bond movie. Is he still threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League? That would be prudent use of resources, wouldn’t it, right about now? Let’s sue the Jews for complaining about murderous anti-Semitism on the platform that I own. Why are the Jews so worried about conspiracy theories that make people want to kill them? Can’t they take a joke? I thought Jews were funny. I also criticized Lex Friedman for platforming Kanye. How does that decision look now? Anyone in alternative media want to stick a microphone in front of Kanye so he can tell us more about how much he hates Jews? Or what about RFK Jr.? Can we get a tech-bro interview with RFK Jr. where he just asks some more questions about Covid being engineered not to infect Ashkenazi Jews? I mean, we’re in the free-speech business, right? What’s wrong with just asking questions? Surely Alex Jones has got some questions he’d like to ask about whether any of the murdered Jews in Israel were really lizard people. I mean, anything less than a full airing of these profundities would amount to censorship, right? 

Do I sound snide? Ok, I’ll let that go. To be clear, I don’t think Elon, and Lex, and RFK Jr. are anti-Semites. I just think they have been reckless and morally unserious and unwise. 

Of course, the boundary between Anti-Semitism and generic moral stupidity is a little hard to discern—and I’m not sure that it is always important to find it. I’m not sure it matters why a person can’t distinguish between collateral damage in a necessary war and conscious acts of genocidal sadism that are celebrated as a religious sacrament by a death cult. Our streets have been filled with people, literally tripping over themselves in their eagerness to demonstrate that they cannot distinguish between those who intentionally kill babies, and those who inadvertently kill them, having taken great pains to avoid killing them, while defending themselves against the very people who have just intentionally tortured and killed innocent men, women, and yes… babies. And who are committed to doing this again at any opportunity, and who are using their own innocent noncombatants as human shields. If you’re both sides-ing this situation—or worse, if you are supporting the wrong side: if you are waving the flag of people who murder noncombatants intentionally, killing parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents, burning people alive at a music festival devoted to “peace”, and decapitating others, and dragging their dismembered bodies through the streets, all to shouts of “God is Great.” If you are recognizing the humanity of actual barbarians, while demonizing the people who actually worry about war crimes and who drop leaflets and call cell phones for days, in an effort to get noncombatants to leave specific buildings before they are bombed, because those buildings sit on top of tunnels filled with genocidal lunatics—who again, have just sedulously tortured and murdered families as though it were a religious sacrament, because for them it is a religious sacrament. If you have landed, proudly and sanctimoniously, on the wrong side of this asymmetry—this vast gulf between savagery and civilization—while marching through the quad of an Ivy League institution wearing yoga pants, I’m not sure it matters that your moral confusion is due to the fact that you just happen to hate Jews. Whether you’re an anti-Semite or just an apologist for atrocity is probably immaterial. The crucial point is that you are dangerously confused about the moral norms and political sympathies that make life in this world worth living. 

What is more, you don’t even care about what you think you care about, because you have failed to see that Hamas, and jihadists generally, are the principal cause of all the misery and dysfunction we see, not just in Gaza, but throughout the Muslim world. Gaza is only an “open air prison” because its democratically elected government is a jihadist organization that is eager to martyr all Palestinians for the pleasure of killing Jews. A rational government in Gaza that cared about the fate of its citizens could have made something beautiful out of that strip of land on the Mediterranean—or at least not awful. But Hamas has spent billions of dollars on terrorism. The suffering of Gaza is due to the fact that it has been run by a death cult, against which Israel has had to defend itself continuously. The line you keep hearing from defenders of Israel—that “if the Palestinians put down their weapons, there would be peace; if the Israelis put down their weapons, there would be a genocide”—happens to be true. 

But now we have college students at our best universities, tearing down posters of hostages held by Hamas—some of whom are Americans, and some of whom are children—imagining that they are supporting the Palestinian cause. It boggles the mind. We have LGBTQ activists supporting Hamas—when they wouldn’t survive a day in Gaza, because Hamas throws anyone suspected of being gay off of rooftops. They’re directly supported by Iran, where gay people are regularly hanged. 

We’ve got feminist organizations like CodePink going all in for Hamas and accusing the Israelis of genocide. Do they understand how Hamas treats women? Did CodePink support the women of Iran who were thrown in prison and even killed for daring to show their hair in public? Do they realize that women are treated like property throughout the Muslim world and that this is not an accident? Under Islam, the central message about women is that they are second-class citizens and the property of the men in their lives. Rather than support the rights of women and girls to not live as slaves, Western liberals support the right of theocrats to treat their wives and daughters however they want, as long as these theocrats are Muslim. 

If anything good comes from this outpouring of hate and moral confusion, it will be the end of identitarian politics of the Left. A friend of mine was just at an art opening, where they were passing hors d’oeuves, and someone she knew came up to her and asked if she had any food in her teeth. And my friend said, “no, your teeth are perfectly white and beautiful.” Unfortunately, the woman herself was black and considered the association of the terms  “white” and “beautiful” to be a microaggression. She got greatly offended and stormed off. What, did she want brown teeth? I know nothing more about this person apart from this anecdote, but I guarantee you that this prodigy of social justice is completely confused about Israel and Hamas and jihadism. This is the sort of person for whom words are violence, but massacring women and children with knives, or burning them alive, is a completely defensible response to “oppression.” Most elite circles in the West—academia, Hollywood, the media, nonprofits—have been poisoned, to one degree or another, by this social justice psychosis—where imaginary harms are seized upon as though they were existential concerns, and pure evil is easily shrugged off, or even celebrated as a moral victory.

In a previous podcast, I argued that the bright line, ethically, between Israel and her enemies can be seen on the question of human shields. There are people who use them, and there are people who are deterred by them, however imperfectly. Hamas put its headquarters in Gaza under a hospital. Let me say that again: Hamas put its headquarters in Gaza under a hospital. Again, imagine the Jews of Israel doing that, and imagine how little it would matter to Hamas if they did. Hamas is telling people to stay in Gaza, and has even physically prevented them from leaving, so that they will be killed by Israeli bombs. They are using their own people as human shields—in addition to more than 200 hostages they took for this purpose. No one cares less about Palestinian women and children than Hamas does. However horrible the images coming out of Gaza, it is Hamas that should be blamed for the loss of life there. You’re calling for a ceasefire now? There was a ceasefire on October 6th. Hamas broke it by deliberately murdering more than 1400 hundred innocent people. 

Of course, Israel should hold itself to the highest ethical standards for waging war. For two reasons: One, because it should. It is right for the IDF to do whatever it can to minimize the loss of innocent life. And, two, they should hold themselves to the highest ethical standards because the rest of the world will hold them to impossible ones. 

Look at these protests we’re seeing all over the world, which began before Israel had dropped a single bomb. Now that there have been several thousand Palestinian casualties, cities across the globe are seething with rage. But Assad has killed hundreds of thousands of his fellow Muslims in Syria. The Saudis have killed well over a one hundred thousand Muslims in Yemen. Where are the protests? No one cares, least of all Muslims. They only care when non-Muslims produce these casualties—and they especially care when Jews do it. Israel is routinely condemned by the United Nations, and the U.N. could not pass a condemnation of Hamas for the atrocities it committed on October 7th. 

As I said, I don’t know whether a ground invasion is the right approach. But there is no question that Israel had to act; they have to destroy Hamas; and, whatever they do, noncombatants will get killed in the process. Again, this is Hamas’ fault. 

But the problem is much bigger than Hamas. Civilized people everywhere—both non-Muslim and Muslim—have no choice but to combat jihadism. This has been glaringly obvious since September 11th, 2001, but it should be much more obvious now. For Israel, October 7th was much worse than 9/11 was for America. There’s almost no comparison. The revealed threat to Israel really is existential. However, in the long term, I think the threat of jihadism is existential for the West too. 

This demands a much longer conversation about what to do about jihadism. I happen to think that most of our response to it should be covert. I don’t know why the Israelis or the Americans or the British or anyone else has to take credit for anything. However long it takes, members of Hamas, and Hezbollah, and al Qaeda, and the Islamic State, and al Shebab, and Boko Haram, and Pakistani Taliban, and every other jihadist organization on Earth should be made to understand, every day of their lives, that the martyrdom they seek will be granted to them. Jihadism has to be destroyed in every way it can be destroyed—logistically, economically, informationally, but also in the most material sense, which means killing a lot of jihadists. We can argue with their sympathizers. And we can hope to de-radicalize them. But we also have to kill committed jihadists. These are not normal antagonists with rational demands. These are not people who want what we want. This is not politics, and it will never be politics. It is a very long war. 

Back in 2016, I released an episode of this podcast titled “What Do Jihadists Really Want?”, based on an issue of the magazine Dabiq, put out by the Islamic State. You can listen to that for more detail. You can also read the book I wrote with Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, to understand more of my thinking on this topic. Jihadist ideology has nothing to do with Israel, or American foreign policy, or colonialism, or any other rational grievance, and there is no concession that any civilized society can make to appease it. 

We’ve forgotten about jihadism in recent years. But it hasn’t gone away. Whatever one thinks about our withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was surely perceived as a victory by jihadists everywhere—and the implications of that have yet to be felt. In the West, we tend to remain blissfully unaware of Islamic terrorism (which is just another name for jihadism) unless it happens in the US or Europe. We don’t tend to notice jihadist atrocities committed in Afghanistan or Pakistan or India, much less in the dozen or so countries in Africa that suffer them more or less continuously. And we are totally unaware of foiled plots, of which there have been many. 

As I said, we also tend to think in terms of “terrorism” or “violent extremism,” and while I use those words myself, we have to focus on jihadism, because that is the underlying ideological commitment. 

Now, jihadists themselves are not a unified front. There is a very deep schism between Sunni and Shia—despite the fact that some groups will collaborate across it, as we see with Hamas and the Iranian regime. And there are internecine divisions even among jihadists of the same faith. The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban don’t even get along at this point. And that’s a very good thing. Hopefully, we have an army of smart people with the necessary language skills, sowing hatred and confusion among jihadist groups 24 hours a day. But jihadists are all united in their hatred of liberal, Western values, and in their certainty of Paradise, and in their willingness to turn this world into an abattoir for the glory of God. 

We cannot tolerate jihadists. We cannot let them immigrate into our open societies. And by we, I mean not just non-Muslims, I mean all Muslims who want to live sane lives in the 21st century. In the case of Israel and Palestine, the Palestinians have to rid themselves of their jihadists. And if that’s not possible, a stable peace with the Palestinians is not possible. 

But this problem is so much bigger than Israel, or even global anti-Semitism. Spend some time reading about how the Islamic State treats Shiites. Look at the history of terrorism in Pakistan or India. If you want a totally painless way to do this, watch “Hotel Mumbai”—it’s a great film that depicts the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008, by the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba. If you’ve forgotten, around a dozen jihadists killed over 160 people in Mumbai, many at the Taj Hotel, and the film shows this with brutal realism. And while they killed some Jews too, at a Jewish center, this attack had nothing to do with Israel, or America, or race, or so-called “settler colonialism,” or any of the other factors that Leftist fellow travelers have been fixated on since October 7th. Really, this is the least boring piece of homework you will ever be given. Go watch “Hotel Mumbai,” and once the killing starts, ask yourself how anyone, East or West, Muslim or non-Muslim, can live with these people. 

There is an intuition out there that in order to solve the problems in the Middle East, we must understand them in all their depth and complexity. And for this, the most important thing to grapple with is the so-called “historical context.” But for the purpose of really understanding this conflict, and why it is so intractable, historical context is a distraction—every moment spent talking about something other than jihadism is a moment when the oxygen of moral sanity is leaving the room. 

There’s no sorting this out by reference to history, because any group can arbitrarily decide where to set the dial on its time machine. In any case, the Jews in Israel are “indigenous people.” The British were colonialists. Colonialists have some place to go back to. Where could the Jews go back to? There has been a continuous presence of Jews in what is now Israel for thousands of years. Most of the recent immigrants—Jews from Iraq, and Syria, and Yemen, and Libya, and other Muslim-majority countries were driven from their homes by their Muslim neighbors after 1948, in collective punishment for the founding of Israel. Is anyone talking about their right of return? There are displaced people everywhere on Earth, but only the Palestinians have been turned into a global fetish, for their right of return. 

Incidentally, if a history of land theft and oppression were sufficient to produce genocidal terrorism, where are the Native American suicide bombers? Where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? Do you realize how much oppression they have experienced at the hands of the Chinese? Where are the Palestinian Christian suicide bombers? (I think there has been one.) The truth is, ideas matter. It absolutely matters what people believe. Certainty about Paradise, and about martyrdom as a way of getting there, is one of the most potent memetic poisons the human mind has ever produced. Whatever historical, or political, or economic context you want to apply to Israel and Palestine, jihadism is real; its intentions toward the Jews, and infidels, and apostates are genocidal; and this is a global problem, because jihadism enjoys an appalling level of support throughout the Muslim world, despite the fact that it is responsible for far more death and destruction among Muslims than Israel’s acts of self-defense have ever been. 

Now, obviously, there are whole populations throughout the Muslim world that are effectively hostages to the religious fanatics that control them—and certainly a large percentage of the Palestinians fit that description, as does much of Iran. But it is very easy to underestimate how much sympathy there is for the jihadist project among Muslims who are not themselves actively waging jihad. And this is a terrible thing to contemplate. When one hundred thousand people show up in the center of London in support of Hamas—we have a problem. Of course, it’s an open question how many of those people really support jihad. But imagining that very few of them do is pure delusion. We have to win a war of ideas with these people. Because if the future is going to be remotely tolerable, the vast majority of Muslims have to disavow jihadism and unite with non-Muslims in fighting it. When hundreds of thousands of people show up in London to condemn Hamas, or the Islamic State, or any specific instance of jihadist savagery, without both-sides-ing anything, then we will know that we’ve made a modicum of progress. When Muslims by the millions pour into the streets in protest, not over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, but over the murder of cartoonists by their own religious fanatics, we will know that an open-ended future of pluralistic tolerance might be possible. 

Yes, there are many other problems in the world at the moment: There’s the war in Ukraine and the looming possibility of conflict between the US and China. Some of these problems appear much bigger than jihadism, but they all admit of some rational basis for negotiation and compromise. However bad things get with the Russians or the Chinese, they are not chanting “We love death more than the Americans and the Europeans love life.” Only jihadism has the power to turn our future into a zombie movie. Jihadists are the enemy with whom there is no rational or pragmatic compromise to make—ever. 

So, as I’ve said many times before, the Muslim world needs to win a war of ideas with itself, and perhaps several civil wars. It has to de-radicalize itself. It has to transform the doctrine of jihad into something far more benign than it is, and it has to stop supporting its religious fanatics when they come into conflict with non-Muslims. This is what’s so toxic: Muslims supporting other Muslims no matter how sociopathic and insane their behavior. And if the Muslim world and the political Left can’t stand against jihadism, it is only a matter of time before their moral blindness fully empowers rightwing authoritarianism in the West. If secular liberals won’t create secure borders, Christian fascists will. 

There may be two sides to the past, but there really aren’t two sides to the present. There are two sides to the story of how the Palestinians and Jews came to fight over land in the Middle East. Understanding all of that is important—and I think it is important to understand the cynical game that the Arab world has played with the plight of the Palestinians for the last 50 years. If there is a stable political settlement to ever be reached between Israel and the Palestinians, it will entail a full untangling of the facts from all the propaganda that obscures them, while keeping the problem of jihadism in view. It will also entail that the religious lunatics on the Jewish side get sidelined. As I said, the building of settlements has been a continuous provocation. But even on the point of religious fanaticism, there really aren’t two sides worth talking about now. Whatever terrible things Israeli settlers occasionally do—and these are crimes for which they should be prosecuted—generally speaking, the world does not have a problem with Jewish religious fanatics targeting Muslims in their mosques and schools. You literally can’t open a Jewish school in Paris because no one will insure it. Yes, there are lunatics on both sides, but the consequences of their lunacy are not equivalent—not even remotely equivalent. We haven’t spent the last 20 years taking our shoes off at the airport because there are so many fanatical Jews eager to blow themselves up on airplanes. 

There is a bright line between good and a very specific form of evil that we must keep in view. It is the evil of bad ideas—ideas so bad that they can make even ordinary human beings impossible to live with. 

There’s a piece of audio from October 7th that many people have commented on. It’s a recording of a cell phone call that a member of Hamas made to his family, while he was in the process of massacring innocent men, women, and children. The man is ecstatic, telling his father and mother, and I think brother, that he has just killed ten Jews with his own hands. He had just murdered a husband and wife and was now calling his family from the dead woman’s phone.

Here's a partial transcript of what he said:

“Hi dad — Open my ‎WhatsApp now, and you’ll see all those killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!”

And his dad says “May God protect you.”

“Dad, I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her, and I killed her husband. I killed ten with my own hands! Dad, ten with my own hands! Dad, open WhatsApp and see how many I killed, dad. Open the phone, dad. I’m calling you on WhatsApp. Open the phone, go. Dad, I killed ten. Ten with my own hands. Their blood is on their hands. [I believe that is a reference to the Quran] Put mom on.”

And the father says, “Oh my son. God bless you!”

“I swear ten with my own hands. Mother, I killed ten with my own hands!”

And his father says, “May God bring you home safely.”

“Dad, go back to WhatsApp now. Dad, I want to do a live broadcast.”

And the mother now says, “I wish I was with you.”

“Mom, your son is a hero!”

And then, apparently talking to his comrades he yells, “Kill, kill, kill, kill them.”

And then his brother gets on the line, asking where he is. And he tells his brother the name of the town and then he says “I killed ten! Ten with my own hands! I’m talking to you from a Jew’s phone!”

And the brother says, “You killed ten?”

“Yes, I killed ten. I swear!”

Then he says, “I am the first to enter on the protection and help of Allah! [Surely that’s another scriptural reference] Hold your head up, father. Hold your head up! See on WhatsApp those that I killed. Open my WhatsApp.”

And his brother says, “Come back. Come back.”

And he says, “What do you mean come back? There’s no going back. It is either death or victory! My mother gave birth to me for the religion. What’s with you? How would I return? Open WhatsApp. See the dead. Open it.”

And the mother sounds like she is trying to figure out how to open WhatsApp…

“Open WhatsApp on your phone and see the dead, how I killed them with my own hands.”

And she says, “Well, promise to come back.”

I don’t speak any Arabic, and it seems to me that not every word in the audio that’s being circulated was translated, but I think we get the gist. When I spoke to Graeme Wood about this, he said that to him the mother and father sounded more shocked and worried than anything else, which would be understandable. But I would submit to you that this piece of audio is more than just the worst WhatsApp commercial ever conceived. It is a window onto a culture. As I told Graeme, this is not the type of call that would have been placed from Vietnam, by an American who just participated in the My Lai Massacre. Nor is it the parental reaction one would expect from an American family, had their beloved son just called them from a killing field. I mean, as terrible as Vietnam was, can you imagine a call back to Nebraska, “Mom, I killed ten with my own hands! I killed a woman and her husband, and I’m calling from the dead woman’s phone. Mom, your son is a hero!” Do you see what a total aberration that would have been, even in extremis? 

This call wasn’t a total aberration. This wasn’t Ted Bundy calling his mom. This was an ordinary member of Hamas, a group that might still win an election today, especially in the West Bank, calling an ordinary Palestinian family, and the mere existence of that call, to say nothing of its contents, reveals something about the wider culture among the Palestinians.

It’s important to point out that not only members of Hamas, but ordinary Gazans appear to have taken part in the torture and murder of innocent Israelis and the taking of hostages. How many did this? And how many ordinary Gazan’s were dancing in the streets and spitting on the captured women and girls who were paraded before them after having been raped and tortured? What percentage of Palestinians in Gaza, or the West Bank, many of whom are said to hate Hamas for their corruption and incompetence and brutality, nevertheless support what they did on October 7th with a clear conscience, based on what they believe about Jews and the ethics of jihad? I don’t know, but I’m sure that the answers to these questions would be quite alarming. We’re talking about a culture that teaches Jew hatred and the love of martyrdom in its elementary schools, many of which are funded by the UN. 

Of course, all of this horror is compounded by the irony that the Jews who were killed on October 7th were, for the most part, committed liberals and peace activists. Hamas killed the sorts of people who volunteer to drive sick Palestinians into Israel for medical treatments. They murdered the most idealistic people in Israel. They raped, tortured, and killed young people at a trance-dance music festival devoted to peace, half of whom were probably on MDMA feeling nothing but love for all humanity when the jihadists arrived. In terms of a cultural and moral distance, it’s like the fucking Vikings showed up at Burning Man and butchered everyone in sight. 

Just think about what happened at the Supernova music festival: At least 260 people were murdered in the most sadistically gruesome ways possible. Decapitated, burned alive, blown up with grenades… And from the jihadist side this wasn’t an error. It’s not that if they could have known what was in the hearts of those beautiful young people, they would have thought, “oh my God, we’re killing the wrong people. These people aren’t our enemies. These people are filled with love and compassion and want nothing more than to live in peace with us.” No, the true horror is that, given what jihadists believe, those were precisely the sorts of people any good Muslim should kill and send to hell where they can be tortured in fire for eternity. From the jihadist point of view, there is no mistake here. And there is no basis for remorse. Please absorb this fact: for the jihadist, all of this sadism—the torture and murder of helpless, terrified people—is an act of worship. This is the sacrament. This isn’t some nauseating departure from the path to God. This isn’t stalled spiritual progress, much less sin. This is what you do for the glory of God. This is what Muhammad himself did. 

There is no substitute for understanding what our enemies actually want and believe. I’m pretty sure that many of you listening to this aren’t even comfortable with my use of the term “enemy,” because you don’t want to believe that you have any. I understand that. But you have to understand that the people who butchered over 1400 innocent men, women, and children in Israel on October 7th were practicing their religion, sincerely. They were being every bit as spiritual, from their point of view, as the trance dancers at the Supernova festival were being from theirs. They were equally devoted to their highest values. Equally uplifted. Ecstatic. Amazed at their good fortune. They wouldn’t want to trade places with anyone. Let this image land in your brain: They were shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) all day long, as they murdered women and children. And these people are now being celebrated the world over by those who understand exactly what they did. Yes, many of those college kids at Harvard and Stanford and Cornell are just idiots who have a lot to learn about the world. But in the Muslim community, and that includes the crowds in London, and Sydney, and Brooklyn, Hamas is being celebrated by people who understand exactly what motivates them. 

Again, watch “Hotel Mumbai” or read a book about the Islamic State so that you can see jihadism in another context—where literally not one of the variables that people imagine to be important here is present. There are no settlers, or blockades, or daily humiliations at check points, or differing interpretations of history—and yet we have same grotesque distortion of the spiritual impulse, the same otherworldliness framed by murder, the same absolute evil that doesn’t require the presence of evil people, just confused ones—just true believers. 

Of course, we can do our best to turn the temperature down now. And we can trust that the news cycle will get captured by another story. We can direct our attention again to Russia, or China, or climate change, or AI alignment, and I will do that on this podcast, but the problem of jihadism and the much wider problem of sympathy for it isn’t going away. And civilized people—non-Muslim and Muslim alike—have to deal with it. As I said in a previous podcast on this topic: We all live in Israel now. It’s just that most of us haven’t realized it yet.

The moral questions in the debate on what constitutes terrorism

Associate Professor of Philosophy, West Virginia University

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Jessica Wolfendale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Akayed Ullah, a 27-year-old man, has been accused of detonating a pipe bomb strapped to his body in a New York subway, injuring four people on the morning of Dec. 11. The Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating the attack and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said it was “an attempted terrorist attack.”

Just over a month ago, when Sayfullo Saipov killed eight people in New York on Oct. 31 by driving a truck through a bicycle path, it was called a terrorist act within a few hours.

In contrast, Devin Kelley, who killed 26 people in a church in Texas, was not called a terrorist. Like many mass shooters , he had a history of domestic violence . His motivation was supposedly rage at his ex-wife .

This distinction between terrorist and nonterrorist mass killers is not new. The Pulse Nightclub shooter in Orlando and the San Bernardino shooters were quickly labeled terrorists, but not the Sandy Hook shooter or the Las Vegas shooter . Dylann Roof, who killed nine African-American churchgoers in 2015, was labeled a terrorist by some commentators but not others .

Going by the accepted definitions of terrorism, some mass killers are terrorists but others are not. But, from my perspective as an ethicist and scholar of terrorism this raises some ethical questions: Is this distinction applied fairly? And are there moral differences between terrorist and nonterrorist violence?

The significance of the label ‘terrorist’

Calling an act “terrorist” has huge implications: Terrorism is often depicted as a serious threat justifying radical counterterrorism measures, including mass surveillance , immigration bans and even torture .

In addition, the label “terrorist” often expresses a particularly strong form of moral condemnation. Philosopher Michael Walzer , for example, calls terrorism “indefensible” because it targets innocent people and creates fear in everyday life. While we condemn all murders, terrorist murders are often regarded as particularly morally reprehensible.

So in thinking about whether Ullah, Saipov and other mass killers are terrorists, two questions arise: Do their actions meet an accepted definition of terrorism? And is there something about their actions that justifies strong moral condemnation and radical preventive measures?

What is terrorism?

Let’s first consider whether Ullah’s and Saipov’s actions count as terrorism.

Leading philosophers, such as Igor Primoratz and C. A. J. Coady , define terrorism as politically or ideologically motivated violence targeting innocent people. Other scholars, such as Robert Goodin , include the intention to spread fear .

According to some reports, Ullah was “ inspired by the Islamic State .” Saipov also, like the Pulse nightclub shooter , apparently claimed allegiance to the IS . Although he acted alone, his motivation seems ideological, he killed innocent people and spread terror. Dylann Roof also plausibly fits this definition of terrorism because he was motivated by an ideology of racial hatred, despite not being charged with domestic terrorism.

In contrast, the Texas church shooter Kelley was apparently not ideologically motivated, even though he too killed innocent people and spread terror. So labeling some killers “terrorist” helps distinguish their motivation from killers like Kelley.

Comparing terrorists and other killers

But do terrorists deserve stronger moral condemnation than other mass killers? Many might argue that terrorists are particularly abhorrent for two reasons: One, ideologically motivated violence threatens innocent lives more than other forms of violence, and two, terrorism involves “ the intrusion of fear into everyday life .” Reasons like these are taken to justify a range of U.S. counterterrorism responses.

I disagree.

Between December 2001 and December 2015, five terrorist attacks killed 24 people . If we include the 2016 Orlando shooting, the deadliest attack since 2001, the toll would be 73 over a 15-year period. In contrast, in the same time span mass shootings killed approximately 500 people each year . And what is more shocking, between 2003 and 2014, over 5,000 women were murdered in domestic killings. The truth is, one in four women will experience severe domestic violence in her lifetime.

However, I agree that terrorists undermine our basic sense of security. Terrorism has serious long-term effects on victims and communities. As philosopher Karen Jones explains, victims of intentional violence are more likely to be “ psychologically devastated ” than victims of natural disasters or accidents.

But this is true of mass killers who are not labeled terrorists. Mass shooters have killed people in churches, cinemas and schools. Like terrorism, mass shootings cause profound harm to victims and communities.

This is also true of domestic violence. Domestic violence severely harms women’s physical and mental health , harms children and undermines women’s ability to feel safe in their intimate relationships. For scholar Jay Sloane-Lynch , these are reasons to “recognize domestic abuse for what it truly is: terrorism.” Other philosophers, such as Claudia Card , agree.

The problem of inconsistency

Even though domestic killings and nonterrorist mass shootings kill more Americans than terrorism and undermine our security, these acts typically don’t lead to calls for radical preventive measures, such as new gun control laws . Indeed, in some cases , gun laws are relaxed, rather than tightened, after a mass shooting.

From an ethical perspective, that’s a problem . If two acts of violence kill or injure similar numbers of people, have similar effects on victims and communities, and spread fear and terror, we, as a society, should see them as equally abhorrent, regardless of whether they are ideologically motivated. And we should see the goal of preventing such acts as equally urgent.

But, as I see it, most of us don’t. And that’s unfair. It’s unfair to the victims of mass killers and domestic violence, whose safety and security are not regarded as warranting the same outrage and demand for radical preventive measures that terrorist killings call for.

• Domestic violence
• Sandy Hook shootings
• Mass shootings
• Mass surveillance
• San Bernadino
• Orlando shooting 2016
• Las Vegas shooting 2017
• Texas shooting 2017

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How Terrorism Is Wrong: Morality and Political Violence

Virginia Held, How Terrorism Is Wrong: Morality and Political Violence , Oxford University Press, 2008, 205pp., $45.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780195329599.

Reviewed by Igor Primoratz, University of Melbourne

This is a book on terrorism and political violence more generally, written by a philosopher and accordingly focusing on conceptual and moral, rather than empirical or historical, questions. The book is meant for fellow philosophers and political theorists, but it is written clearly and without philosophical jargon, and will be accessible, and of much interest, to the general reader too.

While political violence is a traditional topic in political and moral philosophy, terrorism -- the type of political violence generally considered most difficult to defend -- was not much discussed before the attacks in the US on 11 September 2001. Virginia Held is one of the few philosophers who gave it sustained attention before it became a fashionable topic. The present book is a collection of seven essays she has published over the last twenty-odd years and one previously unpublished paper. Some essays discuss terrorism or political violence generally, while others look into such related issues as the ways the media deals with political violence, or collective responsibility for ethnic hatred and violence. There is also an essay on the methods of moral inquiry.

In her approach to moral questions, Held combines consequentialism, deontological ethics and the ethics of care. The relevance of the last approach to discussing issues of political violence is rather limited, and Held's position on terrorism and political violence is grounded in consequentialist and deontological considerations of a more traditional type. So is just war theory, but Held's views are not a version of that theory. Indeed, she doubts that just war theory can be of much help in understanding and judging contemporary armed conflicts.

The title of the book might be thought somewhat misleading, as Held does not so much seek to show how terrorism is wrong as how it can be right. To be sure, a title highlighting the latter prospect probably would not have been a good idea in the current atmosphere of the "war on terror." This "war" is both driven and defended by a "moral clarity" claimed by leaders of some major powers and by many analysts and commentators. Held rightly challenges this facile "moral clarity," according to which all terrorism is morally the same, clearly distinct from war, and a monopoly of insurgents, who are both amoral and utterly irrational and fanatical, and therefore never to be engaged with in dialogue or negotiation. She goes on to argue that we should not adopt a sweeping moral rejection of all terrorism, whatever the cause it serves, the circumstances in which it does so, and the consequences of refraining from it; that terrorism is not "uniquely atrocious"; and that it is not necessarily morally worse than war.

The scope and import of any moral assessment of terrorism depends on just what is meant by "terrorism". Accordingly, Held discusses at some length the question of how the term should be defined. The usage over the two centuries or so since the term entered political and moral discourse in the West has been notoriously confusing, fraught with moral emotions and political passions, and plagued by relativism and double standards. It is in such cases that philosophy can demonstrate its relevance to public debates by clarifying central concepts and main positions, spotting missteps in argument, exposing prejudice and double standards, and thus facilitating more rational and discerning moral deliberation and choice. Most definitions of terrorism crafted by philosophers acknowledge the two traits that make up the core concept underlining all shifts in descriptive and evaluative meaning: terrorism is violence aiming at intimidation (fear, terror). Beyond this, philosophers tend to disagree, most importantly on whether terrorism is violence against civilians (non-combatants, innocent people), or can also target members of the military and security services and highly placed government officials. This is the question of a narrow vs. wide definition. A wide definition is in line with common use over two centuries, whereas a narrow definition is revisionary. Yet a narrow definition may be more appropriate in the context of moral assessment of violence and terrorism. Surely there is a considerable moral difference between planting a bomb in an office of (what is considered) an extremely oppressive government and killing a number of its officials, and planting a bomb in a coffee shop and killing a number of common citizens.

Held prefers a wide definition, for reasons I do not find convincing. One is common use. Held points out that the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, or much Palestinian violence directed at Israeli soldiers, would not count as terrorism on a narrow definition, while the bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima would, and finds these implications unacceptable. To me, they seem just right. She quotes Walter Laqueur's remark that "most terrorist groups in the contemporary world have been attacking the military, the police, and the civilian population" (p. 55) as showing the inadequacy of a narrow definition. But surely the fact that a group has engaged in terrorism to an extent sufficient to consider it a terrorist group does not turn every act of political violence committed by the group into an act of terrorism. Finally, Held rejects narrow definitions on the ground that "it is not at all clear who the 'innocent' are as distinct from the 'legitimate' targets. We can perhaps agree that small children are innocent, but beyond this, there is little moral clarity" (pp. 19-20). Yet even if only "small children" were morally protected against violence that would be a weighty consideration, as indiscriminate political violence against civilians or common citizens is bound to kill and maim children too. Moreover, there are other classes of civilians that are just as clearly innocent in the relevant sense, i.e. innocent of the (alleged) injustice or oppression: opponents of the government, those too old or infirm to take part in political life, or those inculpably ignorant of the immorality of their government's policies.

The book offers two somewhat different definitions of terrorism: as "political violence that usually spreads fear beyond those attacked" and "perhaps more than anything else … resembles small-scale war" (p. 21), and as political violence employed with "the intention either to spread fear or to harm non-combatants" (p. 76). Both definitions run together war and terrorism, and imply that an act of war proper, i.e. one aimed at a legitimate military target, counts as terrorism. For, as Trotsky pointed out in his defense of the "red terror", "war … is founded upon intimidation… . [It] destroys only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the remainder and breaking their will" ( Terrorism and Communism , Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 58). Held accepts this implication of her position; I find it problematic.

Philosophers working with a wide definition of terrorism usually distinguish terrorism that targets the military and high government officials and terrorism that attacks common citizens, and argue that the former type of terrorism can be morally justified in certain circumstances, while the latter type is never, or almost never, justified. Held does not take this line. Her book offers two different justifications of terrorist violence, and both apply to the latter as well as the former kind of terrorism.

The first is in terms of the responsibility of citizens in a democracy for what their government does on their behalf. This justification is only suggested at several points in the book and is never developed and defended from likely objections. Held does not make it clear whether she sees common citizens as proper objects of terrorist violence because, as voters, they authorize the government's actions and policies (p. 20), or on account of various types and degrees of support they give the government (pp. 56, 78). Both these lines of argument are open to serious queries.

Held's second justification of terrorism, presented in chapter 4 )“Terrorism, Rights, and Political Goals”) is carefully spelled out. It focuses on the issue of human rights. When human rights of a person or group are not respected, what may we do in order to ensure that they are? On one view, known as consequentialism of rights, if the only way to ensure respect of a certain right of A and B is to infringe on the same right of C, we will be justified in doing so. Held does not accept such trade-offs in rights with the aim of maximizing their respect. But she points out that rights sometimes come into conflict, whether directly or indirectly. When that happens, we cannot avoid comparing the rights involved in terms of their stringency and making certain choices. That applies to the case of terrorism too. Terrorism violates some human rights of its victims. But its advocates claim that in certain circumstances a limited use of terrorism is the only way of bringing about a society in which the human rights of all will be respected.

Even when that is so, it is not enough to make resort to terrorism justified. But it will be justified if an additional condition is met: that of distributive justice. If there is a society where the human rights of a part of the population are respected, while the same rights of another part of the population are being violated, and if the only way of putting an end to that and bringing about a society in which human rights of all are respected is a limited use of terrorism, and finally, if terrorism is directed against members of the first group, which until now has been privileged as far as respect of human rights is concerned -- then terrorism will be morally justified. This is an argument of distributive justice, brought to bear on the problem of violations of human rights. It is more just to equalize the violations of human rights in a stage of transition to a society where the rights of all are respected, than to allow the group which has already suffered large-scale violations of human rights to suffer more such violations (assuming that in both cases we are dealing with violations of the same, or equally stringent, human rights). Human rights of many are going to be violated in any case. "If we must have rights violations, a more equitable distribution of such violations is better than a less equitable one" (p. 88).

This is an original, deontological cum consequentialist justification of terrorism. Neither the indispensable contribution of terrorism to bringing about equal respect of human rights of all nor the justice in the distribution of violations of such rights in the transition stage is, in itself, enough to justify its use. Each is necessary, and jointly the two are sufficient for its justification. Obviously, a critique that reduces Held's position to either of its prongs falls short of the mark. So does the objection that terrorism is as a matter of fact highly unlikely ever to help usher in a better, more just society. If so, that tells against terrorism, rather than against Held's (or any other) stringent moral requirements for a morally defensible recourse to it.

Another objection is that in allowing for sacrificing such basic human rights as the right to life and to bodily security of individual victims of terrorism for the sake of a more just distribution of violations of the same rights within a group in the course of transition to a stage where these rights will be respected throughout that group, Held adopts a collectivistic position that offends against the principles of separateness of persons and respect for persons. In response, Held argues that

to fail to achieve a more just distribution of violations of rights (through the use of terrorism if that is the only means available) is to fail to recognize that those whose rights are already not fairly respected are individuals in their own right, not merely members of a group … whose rights can be ignored. … Arguments for achieving a just distribution of rights violations need not be arguments … that are more than incidentally about groups. They can be arguments about individuals' rights to basic fairness. (pp. 89-90)

Still, a common citizen belonging to the relatively privileged section of the population has done nothing to forfeit her right to life. If she is killed by a terrorist seeking to make the distribution of right to life violations in the entire population more just, her right to life is violated for reasons to do with the group: for the sake of more justice within the group. This has nothing to do with her sins of commission or omission, and in this sense Held's is a collectivistic argument -- and an argument that I, for one, do not find convincing. Held argues that, if we fail to resort to terrorism in the circumstances described in her argument, we thereby fail to recognize that individuals belonging to the disadvantaged section of the population "are individuals in their own right," rather than merely members of a group whose human rights can be ignored. This argument is predicated on moral equivalence of acts and omissions, and on ascription of negative responsibility. This, too, I find problematic. We do not fail to respect the right to life of disadvantaged individuals when we fail to kill or maim other individuals, personally innocent of the plight of the former. The disadvantaged individuals do not have a right that we should engage in terrorism in their behalf, and we do not have a duty to do that. Indeed, I believe we have a duty not to do that.

Whether Held's two-prong justification of terrorism can be successfully defended against this and other possible objections or not, it remains an original, complex, and highly important position on the morality of terrorism. The essay presenting it is the centerpiece of Held's book and her most valuable contribution to the discussion of terrorism as far as fellow philosophers are concerned. The general reader will find much of interest in all the essays in this book. In the wider context of public debate about terrorism and the "war" against it, Held provides a strong antidote to the simplistic deliverances of "moral clarity" many of our political leaders and "public intellectuals" claim to possess.

International Terrorism: The Challenge to Global Security Essay

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Introduction

International terrorism as a global challenge, discussion and conclusion.

The damaging effect of terrorism on modern society was brought to the world’s attention following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001. This acts by the Al-Qaeda terror network demonstrated that international terrorism has the power to disrupt social life even in the world’s super power.

Since then, a wide-ranging debate has developed about the level of threat that international terrorism poses to the global community. While some people regard international terrorism as a marginal threat, others see it as an existential threat to society.

This paper will argue that international terrorism is the main challenge facing the world in the context of international security and therefore, measures should be taken to address this issue and safeguard global security.

International terrorism has become the greatest danger to world security, overtaking the threats of military confrontations from rival great powers. Stewart (2006) observes that the international security threat posed by military confrontations between rival great powers has reduced dramatically since the Second World War.

Most Western nations have formed alliances such as NATO, which makes it almost impossible for them to engage in aggressive military confrontation against each other. The possession of nuclear weapons by the major powers such as Russia and China acts as a deterrence from any major confrontation (Lutz & Brenda 2004).

Nations are therefore more likely to resort to diplomacy instead of risk military confrontation with each other. However, international terrorists attack nations without fear of retaliation since they do not have a well established base or economic resources that they hope to protect.

The activities of international terrorist organization have made the world unsafe. Terror activities have not been limited to US targets and the rest of the world has suffered from the actions of terrorists. The international terror organization, Al Qaeda did not limit its attacks to US targets and on March 11, 2004, it carried out the Madrid train bombings.

London also experienced terrorist attacks in July 2005 when the London Underground was bombed by Islamist extremists (UK Defence and Security Report 2010). Indonesia experienced terrorist attacks in 2002 that killed 202 people while a hotel in Jakarta was bombed in 2003 killing 12 people.

Thieux (2004) asserts that these attacks prove that international terrorism is a serious and potential threat not only for the United States but also for EU member states and the rest of the world.

International terrorism presents the most significant risk to global nuclear non-proliferation efforts. Presently, all functioning Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) including nuclear weapons are in the hands of legitimate governments.

However, intelligence reports indicate that terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda have made efforts to obtain WMDs especially from weak states such as Pakistan. Bowen and Cottee (2012) state that if international terrorists obtain WMDs, they will be able to inflict major damages to targets all over the world.

International terrorism has increased the vulnerability of nations to attacks from their own citizens. Thieux (2004) documents that in addition to the Islamic radicals who joined the Al Qaeda network in the past, this terror organization now attracts members who are well integrated in the society.

International terrorist organizations are able to radicalize citizens of a country leading to the development of home-grown terrorists. For example, individuals can access jihadi websites and obtain information on suicide bombing (The UK Defence & Security Report 2010). Tackling this threat has proved to be a major challenge for most nations.

Thieux (2004) notes that international terrorism has led to a blurring between foreign and domestic affairs as nations have to deal with issues such as home-grown terrorists and sleeper cells. The difficulty of identifying terrorists increases the risk that these elements pose to the global community.

International terrorists are spread all over the world and it is difficult for law enforcement agencies to correctly identify all potential suspects. Stewart (2006) notes that unlike in a conventional war where the enemy combatants are easy to identify, the diverse pool of individuals involved in international terrorism makes the threat hard to identify.

International terrorism presents a major challenge since these actors do not follow any international laws of combat. There are well-established rules that can be used by nations when dealing with traditional security threats. These laws include rules of engagement that forbid soldiers from attacking unarmed civilians.

Diplomacy can also be used to resolve the differences between nations without resorting to armed confrontation. With international terrorism, there are no rules of engagement and terror organizations target civilians in order to spread fear (Engene 2004). The traditional tools of military deterrence and diplomacy are not effective in dealing with the threat of international terrorism.

International terrorism has led to the development of poor relationships between Western countries and the Arab world. Since most international terrorist organizations are operated by radical Islamists, the policies adopted by countries such as the US to counter them focus on these radical elements. The fight against terrorism has therefore focused on tackling the issue of Islamic extremism (Victoroff 2005).

This has proved to be problematic since terrorism organizations are not disparate and therefore cannot be handled using a uniform policy response. Hammond (2008) asserts that the overemphasis on Islamic extremism has led to the strengthening of the misperception especially in the Middle East that “the anti-terror campaign is actually a war on Islam” (p.220).

This situation has threatened to divide the world on religious basis. Hammond (2008) suggests that the division based on religious differences fostered by international terrorism is proving to be the greatest threat to international unity since the cold war.

International terrorism has contributed to the unpopularity of the US in many countries all over the world and the subsequent inclination of terrorists to attack US targets. Meyer (2009) states that terrorism threatens global security by disrupting the “peace of mind” of citizens and prompting aggressive retaliation by individual states.

Hammond (2008) reveals that following the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration engaged in controversial security policies and effectively declared that America was at war with international terrorists. Due to the Bush policies, the US carried out military activities against terrorists and their affiliates and used economic means to influence the behaviours or interests of nations that harbour terrorists.

Terrorism threatens to disrupt international relations among traditional allies. Due to globalization, the movement of people from country to country has increased. Many international companies have established themselves in foreign countries and global trade is at a high level. International terrorists target Western citizens in foreign countries leading to immense political and psychological impact.

Tan (2007) documents that in 2002, the Al Qaeda affiliated network in South East Asia, Jemmah Islamiah, planned to carry out a terror attack against American targets in Singapore. If this attack had succeeded, it would have deteriorated the good relationship between the US and Singapore and greatly contributed to the growth of insecurity in the region.

The relationship between Pakistan and the UK has suffered due to international terrorism. The UK has accused Pakistan of not doing enough to prevent terrorism. In 2009, the UK arrested 12 Pakistani students in UK on suspicion of involvement in terrorism (UK Defence and Security Report 2010).

International terrorism undermines the good relationships between nations, and without this amicable relationship, global peace and security cannot be achieved.

The global community considers terrorism to be a significant threat to international peace. Following the events of 9/11, most nations, led by the US, have made a public declaration of war against international terrorism. The potential damages that international terrorists can cause, especially if they acquire WMD has led to arguments that terrorism is an “existential threat” for modern society (Meyer 2009).

With this realization, Western nations have tried to come up with a common and coordinated way of dealing with the threat of international terrorism. However, Thieux (2004) notes that the efforts have not been adequate and terrorism is still a major international threat.

This paper set out to demonstrate that international terrorism is the greatest threat to international security that the global community faces today. It begun by nothing that the global security threat posed by conventional military confrontations between nations is very low. However, the threat presented by international terrorism to global security is on the rise.

This threat has led to the deterioration of relationships especially between the West and Arab countries. The influence of terrorists has spread into many countries all over the world and various attacks have been carried out. For this reason, many countries view international terrorism as a threat to their security. Fighting global terrorism should therefore be a key priority for all nations.

Bowen, W & Cottee, M 2012, ‘Multilateral cooperation and the prevention of nuclear terrorism: pragmatism over idealism’, International Affairs , vol. 88, no. 2, pp. 349–368.

Engene, O 2004, Terrorism in Western Europe: Explaining The Trends Since 1950, Edward Elgar Publishing, NY.

Hammond, A 2008, ‘Two countries divided by a common threat? International perceptions of US and UK counter-terrorism and homeland security responses to the post-September 2001 threat environment’, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy , vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 218–239.

Lutz, J & Brenda, J 2004, Global Terrorism , Routledge, NY. Print.

Meyer, C 2009, ‘International terrorism as a force of homogenization? A constructivist approach to understanding cross-national threat perceptions and responses’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs , vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 647-666.

Stewart, P 2006, ‘Weak States and Global Threats: Fact or Fiction?’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 27-53.

Tan, A 2007, ‘Singapore’s Cooperation with the Trilateral Security Dialogue Partners in the War Against Global Terrorism’, Defence Studies , vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 193-207.

Thieux, L 2004, ‘European Security and Global Terrorism: the Strategic Aftermath of the Madrid Bombing’, Central European Review of International Affairs , vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 59-74.

UK Defence and Security Report 2010, Domestic Security Overview , Business Monitor International Ltd, London.

Victoroff, J 2005, ‘The Mind of the Terrorist: A Review and Critique of Psychological Approaches’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution vol. 49, no.1, pp. 3-42.

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Terrorism Essay in English [100, 150, 200-250, 300 Words]

Terrorism Essay in English: Terrorism is the use of indiscriminate violence for political ends. In this article, you are going to learn how to write an essay on Terrorism. Here we’ve provided 4 short and long essays (100, 150, 200-250, and 300 words). These essays will be helpful for the students from class 1 to class 12. So, let’s begin.

Table of Contents

Terrorism Essay: 100 Words

Terrorism is the result of widespread discontentment that has gone deeper into the minds of the poor and exploited class of people. Being instigated by some power-hungry politicians, these people take up arms against the establishment to voice their protest. When the language of protest violence and cause takes the shape of immense damages to mankind, it becomes terrorism.

Poor, ordinary people remain helpless at the hands of terrorists who want to exercise their authority against the government. Explosions and other terrorist attacks make the country unsafe and take away the peace of common people. The government has taken many steps to curb terrorist attacks, yet the menace of terrorism is still rocking the foundation of a stable country like India.

Essay on Terrorism: 150 Words

Terrorism is the use of violence to attain one’s political ends. Every day there are reports of sensational and shocking terrorist activities. A worldwide phenomenon, today it has struck terror in the hearts of the people. Terrorism includes kidnapping of eminent personalities, bombing of civilian territories, blowing of buses, trains, aeroplanes and killing innocent people all with a view to spreading fear among the masses. It is a kind of proxy war against the existing elected government.

The evils of terrorism are obvious and the world has become very familiar with its acts. It is a crime against humanity Terrorism must be curbed with a heavy hand. A group of senseless people cannot be allowed to hold the country to ransom. Law and order enforcement agencies should be made more effective to combat the terror campaign and prevent the creation of fear. The root causes should be analyzed to eradicate terrorism. If that is done people all over the world can live in peace and prosperity.

Also Read: Essay on Republic Day

Terrorism Essay in English: 200-250 Words

Terrorism becomes now a days a great problem all over the world. It is also a great threat to mankind. It is the use of terror or violence. A certain group of people adopt it as tactics for a purpose. This group is said to be the terrorists. The purpose is a gain, Most gains are political. Sometimes there may be a personal gain. The criminals operate violence to fulfill their wishes or demands. They have various modes of operation.

Sometimes it is in the form of kidnapping or hijacking. Sometimes it is a kind of blasting bombs in a crowded train or bus. In some cases, they release their hostage on a big ransom. At times their terms and conditions are hard to accept and impossible to fulfil. On most occasions, a dateline is fixed. If they are refused or dishonoured, they turn hostile. The criminals kill their captives. It is a matter of great regret that some countries harbour the militants.

Terrorism creates social unrest. It intends to damage the national progress. Even a government falls victim to their wishes. Such a group hijacked an Indian Boeing from Nepal on the 24th December, 1999. They released it when India freed their leader Masood Azhar from the jail. The militants skyjacked American planes and crashed them into World Trade Centre. It was destroyed completely. The massacres in our Parliament and the American Embassy are the glaring examples in the recent times. We can combat and perish it from the face of the earth. But we must keep it in mind: United we stand, divided we fall.

Also Read: Essay on Independence Day

Terrorism in India Essay: 300 Words

Communal disharmony is one of the causes of terrorism in India. People here are belonging to the different ethnic groups. Prejudiced, some of them show their commitment to their own minority. And this kind of conservative attitude is the genesis of terrorism in India.

Since 1947 India and Pakistan are regarded as two different free countries, although they were undivided India during the reign of the British colonialists. The British left India by conferring freedom on both India and Pakistan, but the relationship remained unfriendly. Although it is not right to say that Pakistan directly gave shelter to the terrorists, there is little doubt that the terrorists have to some extent nourished by Pakistan.

The terrorists threatened the peace in Jammu and Kashmir. Even the terrorists often attacked India between these two countries by way of causing explosions in large cities like Mumbai, Delhi, and Hyderabad. Some Tamil terrorists have also been constantly threatening the peace of India. The most crucial problem that India has now been facing is the activities of the Maoists in West Bengal.

Indians are now uneasy because of the price hike, corruptions in a large scale, and the problem of unemployment. At this time terrorist activities are obligatory to the progress of the nation. All of the political leaders and the Government should be aware of the fact that communal disharmony causes this terrorism. Thus, the liberalism of Indians and proper development of the country, and above all, good administration are very necessary to stop this evil of terrorism.

If it continues, the nation will soon lose its integrity and become the most disgraceful country in the world. Unfortunately, political leaders do politics for the sake of politics only, not for the sake of the making of their country. Every Indian should be conscious of the curse of terrorism and should do well in order to restore the peace of India.

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Before the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001, the subject of terrorism did not loom large in philosophical discussion. Philosophical literature in English amounted to a few monographs and a single collection of papers devoted solely, or largely, to questions to do with terrorism. Articles on the subject in philosophy journals were few and far between; neither of the two major philosophy encyclopedias had an entry. The attacks of September 11 and their aftermath put terrorism on the philosophical agenda: it is now the topic of numerous books, journal articles, special journal issues, and conferences.

While social sciences study the causes, main varieties, and consequences of terrorism and history traces and attempts to explain the way terrorism has evolved over time, philosophy focuses on two fundamental—and related—questions. The first is conceptual: What is terrorism? The second is moral: Can terrorism ever be morally justified?

Philosophers have offered a range of positions on both questions. With regard to the problem of defining terrorism, the dominant approach seeks to acknowledge the core meaning “terrorism” has in common use. Terrorism is understood as a type of violence. Many definitions highlight the experience of terror or fear as the proximate aim of that violence. Neither violence nor terror is inflicted for its own sake, but rather for the sake of a further aim such as coercion, or some more specific political objective. But there are also definitions that sever the conceptual connection of terrorism with violence or with terror. With regard to the moral standing of terrorism, philosophers differ both on how that is to be determined and what the determination is. Consequentialists propose to judge terrorism, like everything else, in light of its consequences. Nonconsequentialists argue that its moral status is not simply a matter of what consequences, on balance, terrorism has, but is rather determined, whether solely or largely, by what it is. Positions on the morality of terrorism range from justification when its consequences on balance are good, or when some deontological moral requirements are satisfied, to its absolute, or almost absolute, rejection.

Philosophers working in applied philosophy have also sought to complement the discussions of terrorism in general with case studies—studies of the role and rights and wrongs of terrorism in particular conflicts, such as “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland (George 2000; Simpson 2004; Shanahan 2009), the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Ashmore 1997; Gordon and Lopez 2000; Primoratz 2006; Kapitan 2008; Law (ed.) 2008), and the bombing of German cities in World War II (Grayling 2006; Primoratz 2010).

1.1.1 The reign of terror

1.1.2 propaganda by the deed, 1.1.3 the state as terrorist, 1.1.4 terrorists and freedom fighters, 1.2.1 violence and terror, 1.2.2 wide and narrow definitions, 1.2.3 some idiosyncratic definitions, 2.1 complicity of the victims, 2.2.1 terrorism justified, 2.2.2 terrorism unjustified, 2.3.1 basic human rights and distributive justice, 2.3.2 supreme emergency and moral disaster, 2.3.3 terrorism absolutely wrong, books, book chapters, and articles, special journal issues, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the conceptual issue.

The history of terrorism is probably coextensive with the history of political violence. The term “terrorism”, however, is relatively recent: it has been in use since late 18th century. Its use has repeatedly shifted in some significant respects. Moreover, in contemporary political discourse the word is often employed as a polemical term whose strong emotional charge occludes its somewhat vague descriptive meaning. All this tends to get in the way of sustained rational discussion of the nature and moral standing of terrorism and the best ways of coping with it.

1.1 “Terrorism” from the French Revolution to the early 21st century

When it first entered public discourse in the West, the word “terrorism” meant the reign of terror the Jacobins imposed in France from the fall of 1793 to the summer of 1794. Its ultimate aim was the reshaping of both society and human nature. That was to be achieved by destroying the old regime, suppressing all enemies of the revolutionary government, and inculcating and enforcing civic virtue. A central role in attaining these objectives was accorded to revolutionary tribunals which had wide authority, were constrained by very few rules of procedure, and saw their task as carrying out revolutionary policy rather than meting out legal justice of the more conventional sort. They went after “enemies of the people”, actual or potential, proven or suspected; the law on the basis of which they were operating “enumerated just who the enemies of the people might be in terms so ambiguous as to exclude no one” (Carter 1989: 142). The standard punishment was death. Trials and executions were meant to strike terror in the hearts of all who lacked civic virtue; the Jacobins believed that was a necessary means of consolidating the new regime. This necessity provided both the rationale of the reign of terror and its moral justification. As Robespierre put it, terror was but “an emanation of virtue”; without it, virtue remained impotent. Accordingly, the Jacobins applied the term to their own actions and policies quite unabashedly, without any negative connotations.

Yet the term “terrorism” and its cognates soon took on very strong negative connotations. Critics of the excesses of the French Revolution had watched its reign with horror from the start. Terrorism came to be associated with drastic abuse of power and related to the notion of tyranny as rule based on fear, a recurring theme in political philosophy.

In the second half of the 19th century, there was a shift in both descriptive and evaluative meaning of the term. Disillusioned with other methods of political struggle, some anarchist and other revolutionary organizations, and subsequently some nationalist groups too, took to political violence. They had come to the conclusion that words were not enough, and what was called for were deeds: extreme, dramatic deeds that would strike at the heart of the unjust, oppressive social and political order, generate fear and despair among its supporters, demonstrate its vulnerability to the oppressed, and ultimately force political and social change. This was “propaganda by the deed”, and the deed was for the most part assassination of royalty or highly placed government officials. Unlike the Jacobins’ reign of terror, which operated in a virtually indiscriminate way, this type of terrorism—as both advocates and critics called it—was largely employed in a highly discriminate manner. This was especially true of Russian revolutionary organizations such as People’s Will or Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR): they held that it was morally justified to assassinate a government official only if his complicity in the oppressive regime was significant enough for him to deserve to die, and the assassination would make an important contribution to the struggle. Their violence steered clear of other, uninvolved or insufficiently involved persons. Some instances of “propaganda by the deed” carried out by French and Spanish anarchists in the 1880s and 1890s were indiscriminate killings of common citizens; but that was an exception, rather than the rule. The perpetrators and some of those sympathetic to their cause claimed those acts were nevertheless morally legitimate, whether as retribution (exacted on the assumption that no member of the ruling class was innocent) or as a means necessary for the overthrow of the unjust order. Accordingly, in their parlance, too, the term “terrorism” implied no censure. When used by others, it conveyed a strong condemnation of the practice.

The terrorism employed by both sides in the Russian Revolution and Civil War was in important respects a throwback to that of the Jacobins. The government set up in Russia by the victorious Bolsheviks was totalitarian. So was the Nazi rule in Germany. Both sought to impose total political control on society. Such a radical aim could only be pursued by a similarly radical method: by terrorism directed by an extremely powerful political police at an atomized and defenseless population. Its success was due largely to its arbitrary character—to the unpredictability of its choice of victims. In both countries, the regime first suppressed all opposition; when it no longer had any opposition to speak of, political police took to persecuting “potential” and “objective opponents”. In the Soviet Union, it was eventually unleashed on victims chosen at random. Totalitarian terrorism is the most extreme and sustained type of state terrorism. As Hannah Arendt put it, “terror is the essence of totalitarian domination”, and the concentration camp is “the true central institution of totalitarian organizational power” (Arendt 1958: 464, 438). While students of totalitarianism talked of terrorism as its method of rule, representatives of totalitarian regimes, sensitive to the pejorative connotation of the word, portrayed the practice as defense of the state from internal enemies.

However, state terrorism is not the preserve of totalitarian regimes. Some non-totalitarian states have resorted to terrorism against enemy civilians as a method of warfare, most notably when the RAF and USAAF bombed German and Japanese cities in World War II (see Lackey 2004). Those who designed and oversaw these campaigns never publicly described them as “terror bombing”, but that was how they often referred to them in internal communications.

After the heyday of totalitarian terrorism in the 1930s and 1940s, internal state terrorism continued to be practiced by military dictatorships in many parts of the world, albeit in a less sustained and pervasive way. But the type of terrorism that came to the fore in the second half of the 20th century and in early 21st century is that employed by insurgent organizations. Many movements for national liberation from colonial rule resorted to it, either as the main method of struggle or as a tactic complementing guerrilla warfare. So did some separatist movements. Some organizations driven by extreme ideologies, in particular on the left, took to terrorism as the way of trying to destroy what they considered an unjust, oppressive economic, social and political system. This type of terrorism is, by and large, indiscriminate in its choice of target: it attacks men and women of whatever political (or apolitical) views, social class, and walk of life; young and old, adults and children. It shoots at people, or blows them up by planting bombs, in office buildings, markets, cafes, cinemas, places of religious worship, on buses or planes, or in other vulnerable public places. It also takes people hostage, by hijacking planes and in other ways.

As “terrorism” has by now acquired a very strong pejorative meaning, no-one applies the word to their own actions or to actions and campaigns of those they sympathize with. Insurgents practicing terrorism portray their actions as struggle for liberation and seek to be considered and treated as soldiers rather than terrorists or criminals. They often depict their enemy—the alien government, or the agencies of the social, political and economic system—as the “true terrorists”. For them, the test of terrorism is not what is done , but rather what the ultimate aim of doing it is. If the ultimate aim is liberation or justice, the violence used in order to attain it is not terrorism, whereas the violence aiming at maintaining oppression or injustice, or some of the “structural violence” embodying it, is. On the other hand, governments tend to paint all insurgent violence with the brush of “terrorism”. Government spokespersons and pro-government media typically assume that terrorism is by definition something done by non-state agents, and that a state can never be guilty of terrorism (although it can sponsor terrorist organizations). For them, the test of terrorism is not what is done , but who does it. When a state agency uses violence, it is an act of war, or reprisal, or defense of the security of the state and its citizens; when an insurgent group does the same, it is terrorism. Under these circumstances, one person’s terrorist is indeed another’s freedom fighter, and public debate about terrorism is largely conducted at cross purposes and to little effect. Attempts of the United Nations to propose a definition of “terrorism” that could be accepted by all states and embedded in international law so far have been frustrated by the same sort of relativism. Islamic countries would accept no definition that allowed national liberation movements in the Middle East and Kashmir to be portrayed as terrorist, whereas Western countries would accept no definition that allowed for state agencies to be guilty of terrorism.

1.2 Two core traits of terrorism and two types of definition

The evaluative meaning of “terrorism” has shifted considerably more than once. So has its descriptive meaning, but to a lesser degree. Whatever else the word may have meant, its ordinary use over more than two centuries has typically indicated two things: violence and intimidation (the causing of great fear or terror, terrorizing). The dominant approach to the conceptual question in philosophical literature reflects this. Terrorism is usually understood as a type of violence. This violence is not blind or sadistic, but rather aims at intimidation and at some further political, social, or religious goal or, more broadly, at coercion.

That is how (political) “terrorism” is defined by Per Bauhn in the first philosophical book-length study in English:

The performance of violent acts, directed against one or more persons, intended by the performing agent to intimidate one or more persons and thereby to bring about one or more of the agent’s political goals (Bauhn 1989: 28).

Another good example of a mainstream definition is provided in C.A.J. Coady’s article on terrorism in the Encyclopedia of Ethics :

The tactic of intentionally targeting non-combatants [or non-combatant property, when significantly related to life and security] with lethal or severe violence … meant to produce political results via the creation of fear (Coady 2001: 1697).

Yet another example is the definition proposed by Igor Primoratz:

The deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people, with the aim of intimidating some other people into a course of action they otherwise would not take (Primoratz 2013: 24).

These definitions put aside both the question of who the actor is and the question of what their ultimate objectives are, and focus on what is done and what the proximate aim of doing it is. They present terrorism as a way of acting that could be adopted by different agents and serve various ultimate objectives (most, but perhaps not all of them, political). It can be employed by states or by non-state agents, and may promote national liberation or oppression, revolutionary or conservative causes (and possibly pursue some nonpolitical aims as well). One can be a terrorist and a freedom fighter; terrorism is not the monopoly of enemies of freedom. One can hold high government or military office and design or implement a terrorist campaign; terrorism is not the preserve of insurgents. In this way much of the relativism concerning who is and who is not a terrorist that has plagued contemporary public debate (see 1.1.4 above) can be overcome.

Beyond concurring that violence and intimidation constitute the core of terrorism, the definitions quoted above differ in several respects. Does only actual violence count, or do threats of violence also qualify? Must terrorist violence be directed against life and limb, or does violence against (some) property also count? Does terrorism always seek to attain some political goal, or can there be non-political (e.g. criminal) terrorism? All these points are minor. There is also one major difference: while Coady and Primoratz define terrorism as violence against non-combatants or innocent people, respectively, Bauhn’s definition includes no such restriction. Definitions of the former type can be termed “narrow”, and those of the latter sort “wide”. Philosophical literature on terrorism abounds in instances of both types.

Should we adopt a wide or a narrow definition? A wide definition encompasses the entire history of “terrorism” from the Jacobins to the present, and is more in accord with current ordinary use. A narrow definition departs from much ordinary use by restricting terrorist violence to that directed at non-combatants or innocent persons. Thus it leaves out most of 19th century “propaganda by the deed” and political violence perpetrated by Russian revolutionaries which they themselves and the public called terrorist.

For these reasons, historians of terrorism normally work with a wide definition, and social scientists do so much of the time. But philosophers may well prefer a narrow definition. They focus on the moral standing of terrorism and need a definition that is particularly helpful in moral discourse. Morally speaking, surely there is a difference—for some, a world of difference—between planting a bomb in a government building and killing a number of highly placed officials of (what one considers) an unjust and oppressive government, and planting a bomb in a tea shop and killing a random collection of common citizens, including children. While both acts raise serious moral issues, these issues are not identical, and running them together under the same heading of “terrorism” will likely hamper, rather than help, discerning moral assessment.

Narrow definitions are revisionary, but (unlike those discussed in the next section) not implausibly so. They focus on the traits of terrorism that cause most of us to view the practice with deep moral repugnance: (i) violence (ii) against non-combatants (or, alternatively, against innocent people) for the sake of (iii) intimidation (and, on some definitions, (iv) coercion). In highlighting (ii), they relate the issue of terrorism to the ethics of war and one of the fundamental principles of just war theory, that of non-combatant immunity. They help distinguish terrorism from acts of war proper and political assassination, which do not target non-combatants or common citizens. It does not matter very much whether the victims of terrorism are described as “non-combatants” or “innocent people”, as each term is used in a technical sense, and both refer to those who have not lost their immunity against lethal or other extreme violence by being directly involved in, or highly responsible for, (what terrorists consider) insufferable injustice or oppression. In war, these are innocent civilians; in a violent conflict that falls short of war, these are common citizens.

Talk of involvement of individuals and groups in injustice or oppression raises the question: is the injustice or oppression at issue, and thus the standing of those implicated in it, to be determined by some objective criteria, or from the point of view of those who resort to violence? Coady chooses the former option. He approaches terrorism from the standpoint of just war theory and its principle of noncombatant immunity. “Combatants” is a technical term designating agents of aggression or, more broadly, “dangerous wrongdoers” or “agents of harm”; they are legitimate targets of potentially lethal violence. All others are noncombatants, and enjoy immunity from such violence (Coady 2004). This approach may not be difficult to apply in war, where the wrong or harm at issue is either aggression that needs to be repelled, or systematic and large-scale violations of human rights that provide the ground for humanitarian intervention. Issues of injustice or oppression that arise in an internal conflict that falls short of war, however, tend to be highly contentious: what some consider an imperfect, but basically morally legitimate political and social order, others may see as the epitome of injustice and oppression that must be overthrown, if need be by violence. Under such circumstances, when a highly placed political official is killed by insurgents, that may be characterized (and condemned) by many as an act of terrorism, while the insurgents and those sympathetic to their struggle may reject this characterization and portray (and justify) the killing as political assassination.

In order to avoid this kind of relativism, Primoratz puts forward a view that in one important respect takes on board the standpoint of the terrorist. The direct victims of terrorism are innocent in the sense of not being responsible, on any credible understanding of responsibility and liability, for the injustice or oppression the terrorists fight against—not responsible at all, or at least not responsible to the degree that makes them liable to be killed or maimed on that account. The injustice or oppression at issue need not be real; it may be merely alleged (by the terrorists). Being responsible for a merely alleged great injustice or oppression is enough for losing one’s immunity against violence, as far as the type of immunity and innocence relevant to defining terrorism is concerned. According to the traditional version of just war theory one does not lose immunity against acts of war only by fighting in an unjust war, but by fighting in any war. Similarly, one does not lose immunity against political violence only by holding office in or implementing policies of a gravely unjust government, but by holding office in or implementing policies of any government: as King Umberto I of Italy said after surviving an assassination attempt, such risk comes with the job. Members of these two classes are not considered innocent and morally protected against violence by those attacking them; the latter view their acts as acts of war proper or of political assassination, respectively. If the terrorists subscribe to a credible view of responsibility and liability, then, when they attack common citizens, they attack people innocent from their own point of view, i.e., innocent even if we grant the terrorists their assessment of the policies at issue. (This is not to say that those who consider a government to be gravely unjust have a moral license to kill its officials, but only that if they do so, that will not be terrorism, but rather political assassination. We can still condemn their actions if we reject their judgment of the policies at issue, or if we accept that judgment, but believe that they should have opposed those policies by nonviolent means. But we will not be condemning their actions qua terrorism.)

On this account, not only real, but also merely alleged injustice or oppression counts in determining the innocence of the victims and deciding which acts are acts of terrorism; thus such decisions are not hostage to endless debates about the moral status of contested policies. Nevertheless, a residue of relativity remains. The account presupposes a certain understanding of responsibility and liability: a person is responsible for a state of affairs only by virtue of that person’s voluntary, i.e., informed and free, act or omission that has a sufficiently strong connection with that state of affairs, and thereby becomes liable to some proportionately unfavorable response. Provided the terrorists accept some such understanding of responsibility and liability, they kill and maim people they themselves must admit to be innocent. To be sure, some militant organizations resort to violence which we perceive as terrorist, yet object to the label. They profess a view of responsibility and liability based on extremely far-fetched connections between states of affairs and human choices and actions, and argue that entire social classes or nations are responsible for certain policies and practices and all their members are liable to be attacked by deadly violence (for more on this, see 2.1 below). Such arguments can only be regarded as preposterous. We should insist on viewing their actions as terrorist, although they reject this description. It is not clear how this residue of relativity could be removed (Primoratz 2013: 16–21).

Some object to defining “terrorism” as violence against non-combatants or innocent persons. They argue that doing so runs together the question of the nature of terrorism and that of its moral status, and begs the moral issue by making terrorism unjustified by definition. We should rather keep these questions separate, and take care not to prejudge the latter by giving a wrong answer to the former. What is needed is a morally neutral definition of terrorism, and that means a wide one (Corlett 2003: 114–20, 134–35; Young 2004: 57). But it is doubtful that “terrorism” can be defined in some morally untainted way. The wide definitions these philosophers adopt contain the word “violence”, which is itself morally loaded. A narrow definition is not completely morally neutral, as violence against the innocent is clearly morally wrong. But what is clear is that such violence is prima facie wrong. The definition implies a general presumption against terrorism, not its sweeping moral condemnation in each and every instance, whatever the circumstances and whatever the consequences of desisting from it. The definition does not rule out that in certain circumstances it might not be wrong, all things considered. Ethical investigation is not preempted: a particular case of terrorism still needs to be judged on its merits.

Another way of settling the issue of wide vs. narrow definition is offered by Georg Meggle. He adopts a wide definition of terrorism, and goes on to distinguish two different types: terrorism in the strong sense, which deliberately, recklessly, or negligently harms innocent people, and terrorism in the weak sense, which does not. Obviously, the moral assessment of the two types of terrorism is going to be significantly different (Meggle 2005).

The vast majority of cases almost anyone without an ax to grind would want to classify as “terrorism” exhibit the two traits implied in ordinary use and highlighted by mainstream philosophical definitions such as those quoted above: violence and intimidation. But philosophical literature also offers definitions that leave out one or the other core component.

Some seek to sever the connection between terrorism and violence. Carl Wellman defines terrorism as “the use or attempted use of terror as a means of coercion”. Terrorism is often associated with violence, but that is because violence is a very effective means of intimidation. Yet “violence is not essential to terrorism and, in fact, most acts of terrorism are nonviolent” (Wellman 1979: 250–51). The last claim seems false on any non-circular interpretation. There may be many acts generally considered terrorist that do not involve actual violence, but are meant to intimidate by threatening it; but that is not enough to support the notion of “non-violent terrorism”, which seems odd. So does Wellman’s example of “classroom terrorism”: a professor threatens to fail students who submit their essays after the due date, causes panic in class, and thereby engages in terrorism.

Robert E. Goodin offers a similar account, emphasizing the political role of terrorism: terrorism is “a political tactic, involving the deliberate frightening of people for political advantage” (Goodin 2006: 49). This, he claims, is the distinctive wrong terrorists commit. Whereas on Wellman’s account one can commit an act of terrorism without either engaging in or threatening violence, merely by making a threat in order to intimidate, on Goodin’s account one need not even make a threat: one acts as a terrorist by merely issuing a warning about the acts of others that is meant to intimidate. This, too, seems arbitrary, although it makes sense as a step in an argument meant to show that “ if (or insofar as ) Western political leaders are intending to frighten people for their own political advantage, then (to that extent ) they are committing the same core wrong that is distinctively associated with terrorism” (Goodin 2006: 2).

It has also been suggested that terrorism need not be understood as inducing terror or fear. According to Ted Honderich, terrorism is best defined as “violence, short of war, political, illegal and prima facie wrong” (Honderich 2006: 88). This definition might be thought problematic on several counts, but the idea of “terrorism” without “terror” seems especially odd. The two are connected etymologically and historically, and this connection is deeply entrenched in current ordinary use. Intimidation is not the morally salient trait of terrorism ( pace Goodin), but it is one of its core traits that cause most of us to condemn the practice. We might consider severing the connection if Honderich offered a good reason for doing so. But he supports his highly revisionary definition by the puzzling claim that to define terrorism as violence meant to intimidate is to imply that terrorism is particularly abhorrent and thereby “in effect … invite a kind of prima facie approval or tolerance of war” (Honderich 2006: 93).

2. The moral issue

Can terrorism be morally justified? There is no single answer to this question, as there is no single conception of what terrorism is. If we put aside definitions that depart too much, and for no compelling reason, from the core meaning of “terrorism” (such as those cited in 1.2.3), we still need to decide whether the question assumes a wide or a narrow understanding of terrorism. A narrow conception of terrorism seems to be better suited to ethical investigation (1.2.2). Moreover, philosophers who work with a wide definition typically hold that terrorism that targets non-combatants or innocent persons is much more difficult to justify than “selective” terrorism which attacks only those who cannot plausibly claim innocence of the injustice or oppression at issue (and which accordingly does not count as “terrorism” on a narrow definition of the term). The present discussion therefore focuses on terrorism understood as violence against innocent civilians or common citizens, intended to intimidate and thereby to achieve some further (political) objective or, more broadly, to coerce.

One might try to justify some acts or campaigns of violence of this kind in two ways. One could argue that the victims may be non-combatants or common citizens, but nevertheless are not innocent of the wrongs the terrorists are fighting against. Alternatively, one could concede the innocence of the victims and argue that attacks on them are nevertheless justified, either by their consequences on balance, or by some deontological considerations.

If the former line of argument is successful, will it prove too much? In showing that an instance of violence was justified because those targeted were not really innocent, we will have shown that the act or campaign of violence at issue was actually not a case of terrorism. This may be merely a matter of semantics. There is a much more damaging objection. A terrorist act is characteristically the killing or injuring of a random collection of people who happen to be in a certain place at a certain time. Arguments to the effect that those people are not innocent of the wrongs the terrorist fights against will therefore have a very wide reach, and accordingly will be based on some simplistic conception of collective responsibility. These arguments will be of the sort offered, for example, by the 19th century anarchist Emile Henry. He planted a bomb at the office of a mining company which, if it had exploded, would have killed or injured a number of people who did not work for the company, but lived in the same building. He also planted a bomb in a café that did go off, injuring twenty people, one of whom later died of his injuries. At his trial, Henry explained: “What about the innocent victims? […] The building where the Carmeaux Company had its offices was inhabited only by the bourgeois; hence there would be no innocent victims. The whole of the bourgeoisie lives by the exploitation of the unfortunate, and should expiate its crimes together” (Henry 1977: 193). When commenting on the second attack, he said:

Those good bourgeois who hold no office but who reap their dividends and live idly on the profits of the workers’ toil, they also must take their share in the reprisals. And not only they, but all those who are satisfied with the existing order, who applaud the acts of the government and so become its accomplices … in other words, the daily clientele of Terminus and other great cafés! (Henry 1977: 195)

This is an utterly implausible view of responsibility and liability. It claims that all members of a social class—men and women, young and old, adults and children—are liable to be killed or maimed: some for operating the system of exploitation, others for supporting it, and still others for benefiting from it. Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant the anarchist’s harsh moral condemnation of capitalist society, not every type and degree of involvement with it can justify the use of extreme violence. Giving the system political support, or benefiting from it, may be morally objectionable, but is surely not enough to make one liable to be blown to pieces.

Another, more recent example, is provided by Osama Bin Laden. In an interview in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001 he said:

The American people should remember that they pay taxes to their government and that they voted for their president. Their government makes weapons and provides them to Israel, which they use to kill Palestinian Muslims. Given that the American Congress is a committee that represents the people, the fact that it agrees with the actions of the American government proves that America in its entirety is responsible for the atrocities that it is committing against Muslims (Bin Laden 2005: 140–141).

This, too, is a preposterous understanding of responsibility and liability. For it claims that all Americans are eligible to be killed or maimed: some for devising and implementing America’s policies, others for participating in the political process, still others for paying taxes. Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant Bin Laden’s severe condemnation of those policies, not every type and degree of involvement with them can justify the use of lethal violence. Surely voting in elections or paying taxes is not enough to make one fair game.

Attempts at justification of terrorism that concede that its victims are innocent seem more promising. They fall into two groups, depending on the type of ethical theory on which they are based.

2.2 Consequentialism

Adherents of consequentialism judge terrorism, like every other practice, solely by its consequences. Terrorism is not considered wrong in itself, but only if it has bad consequences on balance. The innocence of the victims does not change that. This is an instance of a general trait of consequentialism often highlighted by its critics, for example in the debate about the moral justification of legal punishment. A standard objection to the consequentialist approach to punishment has been that it implies that punishment of the innocent is justified, when its consequences are good on balance. This objection can only get off the ground because consequentialism denies that in such matters a person’s innocence is morally significant in itself.

Those who consider terrorism from a consequentialist point of view differ in their assessment of its morality. Their judgment on terrorism depends on their view of the good to be promoted by its use and on their assessment of the utility of terrorism as a means of promoting it. There is room for disagreement on both issues.

Kai Nielsen approaches questions to do with political violence in general and terrorism in particular as a consequentialist in ethics and a socialist in politics. The use of neither can be ruled out categorically; it all depends on their utility as a method for attaining morally and politically worthwhile objectives such as “a truly socialist society” or liberation from colonial rule. “When and where [either] should be employed is a tactical question that must be decided … on a case-by-case basis … like the choice of weapon in a war” (Nielsen 1981: 435). Nielsen has a wide definition of terrorism, but his examples show that the innocence of the victims of terrorism makes no difference to its justification—that is, that his conclusions apply to terrorism in both the wide and narrow sense. In his view,

terrorist acts must be justified by their political effects and their moral consequences. They are justified (1) when they are politically effective weapons in the revolutionary struggle and (2) when, everything considered, there are sound reasons for believing that, by the use of that type of violence rather than no violence at all or violence of some other type, there will be less injustice, suffering and degradation in the world than would otherwise have been the case (Nielsen 1981: 446).

Historical experience, in Nielsen’s view, tells us that terrorism on a small scale, used as the sole method of struggle in order to provoke the masses into revolutionary action, is ineffective and often counterproductive. On the other hand, terrorism employed in conjunction with guerrilla warfare in a protracted war of liberation may well prove useful and therefore also justified, as it did in Algeria and South Vietnam. (For an earlier statement of the same view, see Trotsky 1961: 48–59, 62–65.)

Nicholas Fotion also uses a wide definition of terrorism. He, too, is a consequentialist (although some of his remarks concerning the innocence of many victims of terrorism might be more at home in nonconsequentialist ethics). But he finds standard consequentialist assessments of terrorism such as Nielsen’s too permissive. If some types of terrorism are justifiable under certain circumstances, such circumstances will be extremely rare. Terrorists and their apologists do not perform the requisite calculations properly. One problem is the “higher good” to be promoted by terrorism: more often than not, it is defined in ideological terms, rather than derived from settled preferences or interests of actual people. But for the most part Fotion discusses the issue of means. If a terrorist act or campaign is to be justified instrumentally, it must be shown (1) that the end sought is good enough to justify the means, (2) that the end will indeed be achieved by means of terrorism, and (3) that the end cannot be achieved in any other way that is morally and otherwise less costly. Terrorists not only, as a matter of fact, fail to discharge this burden; Fotion argues that, with regard to terrorism that victimizes innocent people, it cannot be discharged. All direct victims of terrorism are treated as objects to be used—indeed, used up—by the terrorist. But

in being treated as an object, the innocent victim is worse off than the (alleged) guilty victim. Insofar as the latter is judged to have done a wrong, he is thought of as a human. […] For the terrorist the innocent victim is neither a human in this judgmental sense nor a human in the sense of simply having value as a human being. Of course the terrorist needs to pick a human being as a victim … because [that] brings about more terror … But this does not involve treating them as humans. Rather, they are victimized and thereby treated as objects because they are humans (Fotion 1981: 464).

In reply, terrorists can claim that they advisedly sacrifice valued human beings for a higher good. But for this claim to carry any conviction, they would have to show that they have no alternative. Yet, Fotion argues, they always have the alternative of taking on the opponent’s military establishment, and often also have the option of going after government officials responsible for the wrongs they object to, instead of attacking innocent persons. That kind of terrorism may sometimes be justified, whereas terrorism that targets innocent people never is.

2.3 Nonconsequentialism

Within a nonconsequentialist approach to morality, terrorism is considered wrong in itself, because of what it is, rather than only because (and insofar as) its consequences are bad on balance. But this is not to say that this approach leaves no room whatever for morally justifying certain acts or campaigns of terrorism. Indeed, nonconsequentialist discussions of terrorism also present a range of positions and arguments.

A nonconsequentialist might try to justify an act or campaign of terrorism in one of two ways. One might invoke some deontological considerations, such as justice or rights, in favor of resorting to terrorism under certain circumstances. Alternatively, one might argue that the obvious, and obviously very weighty, considerations of rights (of the victims of terrorism) and justice (which demands respect for those rights) may sometimes be overridden by extremely weighty considerations of consequences—an extremely high price that would be paid for not resorting to terrorism. For the rejection of consequentialism is of course not tantamount to denying that consequences of our actions, policies, and practices matter in their moral assessment; what is denied is the consequentialists’ claim that only consequences matter.

Virginia Held operates with a broad notion of terrorism, but her justification of terrorism is meant to apply to terrorism that targets common citizens. Her discussion of the subject focuses on the issue of rights. When rights of a person or group are not respected, what may we do in order to ensure that they are? On one view, known as consequentialism of rights, if the only way to ensure respect of a certain right of A and B is to infringe the same right of C , we shall be justified in doing so. Held does not hold that such trade-offs in rights with the aim of maximizing their respect in a society are appropriate. Yet rights sometimes come into conflict, whether directly or indirectly (as in the above example). When that happens, there is no way we can avoid comparing the rights involved as more or less stringent and making certain choices between them. That applies to the case of terrorism too. Terrorism obviously violates some human rights of its victims. But its advocates claim that in some circumstances a limited use of terrorism is the only way of bringing about a society where human rights of all will be respected.

Even when this claim is true, that is not enough to make resort to terrorism justified. But it will be justified if an additional condition is met: that of distributive justice. If there is a society where the human rights of a part of the population are respected, while the same rights of another part of the population are being violated; if the only way of changing that and ensuring that human rights of all are respected is a limited use of terrorism; finally, if terrorism is directed against members of the first group, which up to now has been privileged as far as respect of human rights is concerned—then terrorism will be morally justified. This is a justification in terms of distributive justice, applied to the problem of violations of human rights. It is more just to equalize the violations of human rights in a stage of transition to a society where the rights of all are respected, than to allow that the group which has already suffered large-scale violations of human rights suffer even more such violations (assuming that in both cases we are dealing with violations of the same, or equally stringent, human rights). The human rights of many are going to be violated in any case; it is more just, and therefore morally preferable, that their violations should be distributed in a more equitable way (Held 2008).

It might be objected that in calling for sacrificing such basic human rights as the right to life and to bodily security of individual victims of terrorism for the sake of a more just distribution of violations of the same rights within a group in the course of transition to a stage where these rights will be respected throughout that group, Held offends against the principles of separateness of persons and respect for persons (Primoratz 1997: 230–31). In response, Held argues that

to fail to achieve a more just distribution of violations of rights (through the use of terrorism if that is the only means available) is to fail to recognize that those whose rights are already not fairly respected are individuals in their own right, not merely members of a group … whose rights can be ignored.

An argument for achieving a just distribution of rights violations is not necessarily about groups; it can be an argument about the rights of individuals to fairness (Held 2008: 89–90). (For further objections to Held’s argument, see Steinhoff 2007: 125–30; Brooks 2010; Nath 2011.)

In Held’s justification of terrorism, it is justice that requires that inescapable violations of human rights be more evenly distributed. There is a different way of allowing for the use of terrorism under certain circumstances within a nonconsequentialist approach to the ethics of violence. It could be argued that, as far as justice and rights are concerned, terrorism (or, in Held’s terminology, the kind of terrorism that targets the innocent) is never justified. Furthermore, considerations of justice and rights carry much greater weight than considerations of good and bad consequences, and therefore normally trump the latter in cases of conflict. However, in exceptional circumstances considerations concerning consequences—the price of not resorting to terrorism—may be so extremely weighty as to override those of justice and rights.

Michael Walzer offers an argument along these lines in his discussion of “terror bombing” of German cities in World War II. In early 1942, it seemed that Britain would be defeated by Germany and that its military could not prevail while fighting in accordance with the rules of war. Britain was the only remaining obstacle to the subjugation of most of Europe by the Nazis. That was “an ultimate threat to everything decent in our lives, an ideology and a practice of domination so murderous, so degrading even to those who might survive, that the consequences of its final victory were literally beyond calculation, immeasurably awful” (Walzer 2000: 253). Thus Britain was facing a “supreme emergency”: an (a) imminent threat of (b) something utterly unthinkable from a moral point of view. In such an emergency—a case of the “dirty hands” predicament that so often plagues political action (see Walzer 1973)—one may breach a basic and weighty moral principle such as civilian immunity, if that is the only hope of fending off the threat. So for more than three years, the RAF, later joined by the USAAF, deliberately devastated many German cities, killed about 600,000 civilians and seriously injured another 800,000 in an attempt to terrorize the German people into forcing their leadership to halt the war and surrender unconditionally. By early 1943 it was clear that Germany was not going to win the war, and all subsequent terror bombing lacked moral justification. But in its first year, in Walzer’s view, the terror bombing of Germany was morally justified as a response to the supreme emergency Britain was facing. Walzer then expands the notion of supreme emergency to apply to a single political community facing the threat of extermination or enslavement, and eventually to a single political community whose “survival and freedom” are at stake. For “the survival and freedom of political communities—whose members share a way of life, developed by their ancestors, to be passed on to their children—are the highest values of international society” (Walzer 2000: 254).

Here we have two different conceptions of supreme emergency. The threat is imminent in both, but the nature of the threat differs: it is one thing to suffer the fate the Nazis had in store for peoples they considered racially inferior, and another to have one’s polity dismantled. By moving back and forth between these two types of supreme emergency under the ambiguous heading of threat to “the survival and freedom of a political community”, Walzer seeks to extend to the latter the moral response that might be appropriate to the former. Yet whereas genocide, expulsion, or enslavement of an entire people might be thought a moral disaster that may be fended off by any means, its loss of political independence is, at most, a political disaster. If a polity to be dismantled lacks moral legitimacy, its demise may well be a moral improvement. But even if a polity does have moral legitimacy, a threat to its “survival and freedom” falls short of “an ultimate threat to everything decent in our lives”. If so, its military cannot be justified in waging war on enemy civilians in order to defend it. (On supreme emergencies see, for instance, Statman 2006; Kaplan 2011.)

There is another, less permissive position constructed along similar lines, but based on a more austere view of what counts as a moral disaster that might justify resort to terrorism. Contrary to what many fighters against social or economic oppression, colonial rule, or foreign occupation believe, evils of such magnitude that they can justify indiscriminate killing and maiming of innocent people are extremely rare. Not every case of oppression, foreign rule, or occupation, however morally indefensible, amounts to a moral disaster in the relevant sense. Nor does every imminent threat to “the survival and freedom of a political community” qualify, contrary to what Walzer has argued. However, if an entire people is subjected to extermination, or to an attempt at “ethnically cleansing” it from its land, then it is facing a true moral disaster and may properly consider terrorism as a method of struggle against such a fate. In view of their enormity and finality, extermination and “ethnic cleansing” of an entire people constitute a category apart. To be sure, resorting to terrorism in such a case will be morally justified only if there are very good grounds for believing that terrorism will succeed where nothing else will: in preventing imminent extermination or “ethnic cleansing”, or stopping it if it is already under way. Cases where both conditions are met will be extremely rare. Indeed, history may not offer a single example. But that does not mean that no act or campaign of terrorism could ever satisfy these conditions and thus turn out to be justified. Accordingly, terrorism is almost absolutely wrong (Primoratz 2013: chapter 6).

Both the “supreme emergency” and the “moral disaster” view will justify a resort to terrorism only when that is the only way to deal with the emergency, or to prevent the disaster, respectively. Just how certain must we be that terrorism will indeed achieve the goal, while no other method will? One might argue that when in extremis , we cannot apply stringent epistemic standards in deciding how to cope—indeed, if we cannot really know what will work, we must take our chances with what might. This is Walzer’s view: in such a predicament, we must “wager” the crime of terrorism against the evil that is otherwise in store for us. “There is no option; the risk otherwise is too great” (Walzer 2000: 259–260). It may be objected that this position highlights the enormity of the threat, while failing to give due weight to the enormity of the means proposed for fending off the threat—the enormity of terrorism, of deliberately killing and maiming innocent people. When that is taken into account, the conclusion may rather be that even in extremis , if terrorism is to be justified, the reasons for believing that it will work and that nothing else will must be very strong indeed.

Some hold that terrorism is absolutely wrong. This position, too, comes in different versions. Some philosophers work with a wide definition of terrorism, and argue that under certain circumstances “selective” terrorism that targets only those seriously implicated in the wrongs at issue may be justified (Corlett 2003, Young 2004). This seems to suggest that terrorism which is not selective in this way—that is, terrorism in the narrow sense—is never justified. Yet this does not follow: there is still room for arguing that terrorism of the latter type can be justified by further considerations, such as those of “supreme emergency” or “moral disaster”.

Per Bauhn does not leave it at that. He attempts to show that terrorism that targets non-combatants or common citizens can never be justified by deploying a slightly amended version of Alan Gewirth’s ethical theory. Freedom and safety are fundamental prerequisites of action and therefore must be accorded paramount weight. The need to protect them generates a range of rights; the right pertinent here is “an absolute right not to be made the intended victims of a homicidal project” all innocent persons have (Gewirth 1981: 16). When the absolute status of this right is challenged by invoking supreme emergency or moral disaster, Bauhn argues that there is a moral difference between what we are positively and directly causally responsible for, and what we are causally responsible for only indirectly, by failing to prevent other persons from intentionally bringing it about. We are morally responsible for the former, but (except in certain special circumstances) not for the latter. If we refuse to resort to terrorism in order not to target innocent persons, and thus fail to prevent some other persons from perpetrating atrocities, it is only the perpetrators who will be morally responsible for those atrocities. Therefore we must refuse (Bauhn 1989: chapter 5).

Some philosophers base their absolute rejection of terrorism on the slippery slope argument, and argue that “the appeal to supreme emergency is too dangerous to be allowed as a publicly available vindication for terrorism, no matter how rare the circumstances are meant to be” (Coady 2021: 143–44).

Stephen Nathanson seeks to ground the absolute immunity of civilians or common citizens and the absolute prohibition of terrorism which it entails in a rule-consequentialist ethical theory (Nathanson 2010: 191–208). Adopting civilian immunity, rather than adopting any other rule regulating the matter or having no rule at all, is the best way to reduce the killing and destruction in armed conflict. Moreover, the best consequences will be achieved by adopting it as an absolute rule, rather than as a rule allowing for exceptions in supreme emergencies. The idea of supreme emergency is vague. The criteria for proffering supreme emergency exemptions are liable to be applied in arbitrary and subjective ways. Finally, there is the slippery slope argument: “permitting [departures from the rule of civilian immunity, including terrorism] even under the direst circumstances will lower the bar for justifying such acts … broadcast the message that such behavior may sometimes be justified and … thus lend its weight to increasing the use of such methods” (Nathanson 2010: 207).

However, one can adopt rule-consequentialism as one’s ethical theory and yet view the immunity of civilians or common citizens and the attendant prohibition of terrorism as very stringent, but not absolute moral rules. Thus Richard B. Brandt and Brad Hooker do not view this immunity as absolute. They argue that a set of moral rules selected because of the good consequences of their adoption should include a rule that allows and indeed requires one to prevent disaster even if that means breaking some other moral rule. Even such a stringent moral rule as the prohibition of deliberate use of violence against innocent people may be overridden, if the disaster that cannot be prevented in any other way is grave enough. (See Brandt 1992: 87–88, 150–51, 156–57; Hooker 2000: 98–99, 127–36). There is thus some convergence at the level of practical conclusions between their understanding of the immunity of civilians or common citizens and the “moral disaster” position outlined above (2.3.2).

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• –––, 2004, “Political Terrorism as a Weapon of the Politically Powerless”, in Primoratz (ed.), 2004, 55–64.
• Ethics , 114/4, 2004: Terrorism, War, and Justice.
• Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly , 55/1, 2006: Terrorism and Counterterrorism.
• The Journal of Ethics , 8/1, 2004: Terrorism.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Just War Theory : annotated aid to research and instruction in philosophical studies of warfare, maintained by Mark Rigstad (Philosophy, Oakland University)

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Thanks to Andrew Alexandra, Tony Coady, and Thomas Pogge for helpful comments on a draft of this article.

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Essay on Terrorism

Students are often asked to write an essay on Terrorism in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Terrorism

Understanding terrorism.

Terrorism refers to the use of violence, often against civilians, to achieve political goals. It’s a form of fear-based manipulation, aiming to create panic and disrupt peace.

Impacts of Terrorism

Terrorism harms societies both physically and psychologically. It leads to loss of lives, property, and can cause trauma. It also hampers economic growth and societal harmony.

Countering Terrorism

Countering terrorism requires global cooperation. Nations must share intelligence, enforce strict laws, and promote education and understanding to prevent radicalization. Remember, peace and unity are our best defenses against terrorism.

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250 Words Essay on Terrorism

Terrorism, a term that sends chills down the spine, is an act of violence primarily intended to create fear, disrupt societal structures, and promote political or ideological agendas. It is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which has been escalating in frequency and intensity worldwide.

The Root Causes

The root causes of terrorism are multifarious. It can be triggered by political instability, socio-economic disparities, religious fanaticism, or ethnic tensions. Often, it is a combination of these factors, creating a fertile breeding ground for extremist ideologies.

The Impact of Terrorism

The impacts of terrorism are far-reaching and devastating. Beyond the immediate human toll, it disrupts economic stability, social harmony, and political structures. It instills fear, leading to changes in behavior and attitudes, and can even alter the course of history.

Counter-Terrorism Strategies

Counter-terrorism strategies are as diverse as the causes of terrorism. They range from military interventions to intelligence operations, from diplomatic negotiations to socio-economic reforms. However, the most effective strategies are those that address the root causes of terrorism, rather than merely responding to its symptoms.

Terrorism, a grave threat to global peace and security, requires a comprehensive and holistic approach to be effectively countered. By understanding its root causes and impacts, we can devise strategies to combat it, ensuring a safer world for future generations.

500 Words Essay on Terrorism

Introduction to terrorism.

Terrorism, a term that sends chills down the spine of many, is a complex phenomenon that has been the subject of extensive study and debate. It is characterized by acts of violence or threats aimed at creating fear, disrupting societal order, and advancing political, religious, or ideological goals.

The Evolution of Terrorism

Historically, terrorism was primarily a tool of the weak against the strong, a way to destabilize oppressive regimes or draw attention to a cause. However, the advent of the 21st century has seen its evolution into a more global menace, with the rise of transnational terrorist networks like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The digital age has made it easier for these groups to recruit, radicalize, and coordinate attacks, making terrorism a borderless problem.

The Psychology of Terrorism

Understanding the psychology of terrorism is crucial in tackling it. Many terrorists are not psychopaths or inherently evil people, but individuals manipulated into believing that their violent actions are justified. Factors such as social exclusion, economic deprivation, political oppression, and religious indoctrination can contribute to this mindset. This underscores the importance of addressing root causes to prevent terrorism.

Terrorism’s impacts are multifaceted. The immediate effect is loss of life and property, but the ripple effects are far-reaching. It instills fear and insecurity, disrupts economic activity, and can lead to restrictive security measures that infringe on civil liberties. Moreover, it can exacerbate social divisions and fuel cycles of violence and retaliation.

Counter-terrorism strategies must be as multifaceted as the problem they aim to solve. Military and law enforcement responses are necessary to protect citizens and bring perpetrators to justice. However, these approaches should be paired with efforts to address the underlying social, economic, and political conditions that breed terrorism.

Conclusion: The Future of Counter-Terrorism

The future of counter-terrorism lies in a balanced approach that combines hard and soft power. While military and law enforcement measures are necessary, they are not sufficient on their own. The fight against terrorism must also be a fight for hearts and minds, addressing the root causes of terrorism, and building inclusive societies where extremist narratives find no fertile ground.

In conclusion, terrorism is a complex problem that requires a nuanced understanding and multifaceted response. It is not just a security issue, but a social, economic, and political one. By addressing it in this holistic manner, we can hope to make progress in the ongoing struggle against this global menace.

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Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field We invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

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By Kenneth Cloke

December 2005  

Politics are among the most ancient, enduring, and consequential sources of conflict, as they determine how power will be distributed among people, including over life and death, wealth and poverty, independence and obedience. Conflicts concerning these issues have shaped the ways we have interacted as a species over the course of centuries. At their core, as Hannah Arendt wrote, is the conflict that, "from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics: the cause of freedom versus tyranny."

Freedom and tyranny are factors not only in conflicts between minorities and nation states, but also in small, everyday conflicts between parents and teenagers, managers and employees, governments and citizens, and wherever power is distributed unequally. If we define political conflicts as those arising out of or challenging an uneven distribution of power relational, religious, and cultural power, it is clear that politics happens everywhere.

In this sense, "the personal is political," yet the political is also personal, due to globalization the reach and speed of communication, reduced travel barriers, and increasing environmental interdependency. We can even identify an ecology of conflict, in which rapidly evolving international conflicts have the ability to overwhelm safety and security everywhere. Conflicts in Afghanistan, Sudan, Brazil, and East Timor can no longer be ignored, as they touch our lives in increasingly significant ways.

We therefore require improved understanding, not only of the conflict in politics, but the politics in conflict. As our world shrinks and our problems can no longer be solved except internationally, we need ways of revealing, even in seemingly ordinary, interpersonal conflicts, the larger issues that connect us across boundaries, and methods for resolving political conflicts that are sweeping, strategic, interest-based, and transformational. A clear, unambiguous reason for doing so occurred on September 11, 2001. (See Kenneth Cloke's editorial on the U.S. response to 9/11 -- which was originally part of this essay.)

Good and Evil in Conflict

Journalist H. L. Mencken wrote, decades before September 11, that "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." While his description remains valid, our hobgoblins are no longer imaginary.

There are seemingly unending conflicts between Palestinians and Israelis, Indians and Pakistani's, Irish Catholics and Protestants, Turks and Kurds, Hutu's and Tutsi's. In addition to these, there are countless conflicts around the globe between rich and poor , despots and democrats, leftists and rightists, labor and management, natives and settlers, ethnic majorities and minorities, environmentalists and developers, each accusing the other of evil.

The deepest and most serious of these conflicts are no longer confined to the boundaries of nation states, but affect everyone everywhere. Even outwardly minor disputes between competing communities can rapidly escalate into world crises, triggering the slaughter of innocents, rape, ethnic cleansing, economic collapse, the ruin of eco-systems, and hatreds that cannot be dissipated, even in generations. Each of these acts directly affects the quality of our lives, no matter how far away we feel from the actual fighting.

Following these disasters come those who pick up the pieces and start over again. While it is always helpful to offer aid in food, clothing and shelter, the victims of these catastrophes also need to develop skills in resolution, recovery, reconciliation, and regeneration of community. Recovery requires acknowledgement of grief and amelioration of loss. Resolution requires the dismantling of systemic sources of conflict within groups and cultures that actively promoted violence. Reconciliation requires the ability to engage in public dialogue, and speak from the heart. Regeneration of community requires the creation of a new culture based on collaboration , compassion, and respect for differences. Together, these require an understanding of how assumptions of evil, even in petty, interpersonal disputes, lead to war and terrorism .

In political conflicts, it is common for each side to label the other evil. Yet what is evil to one is often good to another, revealing that evil is present in miniature in every conflict. Evil sometimes originates in the attribution of blame to someone other than ourselves for harm that has befallen us, or the assumption that our pain was caused by our opponent's pernicious intentions. Blaming others for our suffering allows us to externalize our fears, vent our outrage, and punish our enemies, or coerce them into doing what we want against their wishes. It allows us to take what belongs to them, place our interests over, against, and above theirs, and ignore their allegations of our wrongdoing.

Evil is not initially a grand thing, but begins innocuously with a constriction of empathy and compassion, leading ultimately to an inability to find the other within the self. It proceeds by replacing empathy with antipathy, love with hate, trust with suspicion , and confidence with fear . Finally, it exalts these negative attitudes as virtues, allows them to emerge from hiding, punishes those who oppose them, and causes others to respond in ways that justify their use.

A potential for evil is thus created every time we draw a line that separates self from other within ourselves. This line expands when fear and hatred are directed against others and we remain silent or do nothing to prevent it; when dissenters are described as traitorous or evil and we allow them to be silenced, isolated, discriminated against, or punished; when negative values are exalted and collaboration, dialogue, and conflict resolution are abandoned and we do not object.

At a more subtle level, identifying others as evil is simply a justification and catalyst for our own pernicious actions. By defining "them" as bad, we implicitly define ourselves as good and give ourselves permission to act against them in ways that would appear evil to outside observers who were not aware of their prior evil acts. In this way, their evil mirrors our diminished capacity for empathy and compassion, and telegraphs our plans for their eventual punishment. The worse we plan to do to them, the worse we need them to appear, so as to avoid the impression that we are the aggressor. The ultimate purpose of every accusation of evil is thus to create the self -permission, win the approval of outsiders, and establish the moral logic required to justify committing evil oneself.

Allegations of evil are therefore directly connected with the unequal distribution and adversarial exercise of power. The German philosopher Nietzsche wrote that perceptions of good and evil originated historically in social relationships of domination  and dependency between unequal economic classes:

[T]he judgment good does not originate with those to whom the good has been done. Rather, it was the "good" themselves, that is to say the noble, mighty, highly placed, and high-minded who decreed themselves and their actions to be good, i.e., belonging to the highest rank, in contradistinction to all that was base, low-minded and plebian.... [Thus, the] origin of the opposites good and bad is to be found in the pathos of nobility and distance, representing the dominant temper of a higher, ruling class in relation to a lower, dependent one.

In contemporary terms, if we, as individuals or nations, believe ourselves to be good and possess more power than others, we will naturally seek to justify our use of unequal power by indicating our intention to use it for the benefit of those with fewer resources who are less good. But without empathy, compassion, and power sharing, this will inevitably evolve into a belief that whatever benefits us must benefit them also. This will lead us to regard their criticism of our self-interested benevolence as ill mannered and ungrateful, and their opposition to our power as support for evil. We will then interpret their desire for self-determination  as rebellion and perhaps, as in Vietnam, seek to "kill them for their own good."

In order to exercise our power without experiencing injury or guilt, we are increasingly driven to dismantle our empathy and compassion until we are no longer able to recognize our opponents as similar to ourselves. We can then feel justified in wielding power selfishly and attacking them, or anyone who tries to curb our power or equalize its distribution. It is at this point that simple, natural, innocent, self-interest begins its descent into evil. At every step, it is aided by anger, fear, jealousy, pain, guilt , grief, and shame and the suppression of empathy and compassion.

Yet all these dynamics occur on a small scale in countless petty personal conflicts every day, and are used to justify our mistreatment of others, including children, parents, spouses, siblings, neighbors, employees, even strangers on the street. Every dominant individual, organization, class, culture, and nation manufactures stories and allegations of evil to justify withholding compassion, using power selfishly, and violating their own ethical or moral principles in response to perceived enemies. Worse, these small-scale justifications can be organized and manipulated on a national scale to secure permission for war and genocide just as war and genocide give permission to individuals to act aggressively and resist reconciliation in their personal conflicts.

For these reasons, we need to carefully consider how, as individuals and nations, we define our enemies, disarm our empathy and compassion, organize our hatreds, and rationalize our destructive acts through conflict. For example, we frequently combine the following elements to create circular definitions of "the enemy" :

• Assumption of Injurious Intentions (they intended to cause the harm we experienced)
• Distrust (every idea or statement made by them is wrong or proposed for dishonest reasons)
• Externalization of Guilt (everything bad or wrong is their fault)
• Attribution of Evil (they want to destroy us and what we value most, and must therefore be destroyed)
• Zero-Sum Expectation (everything that benefits them harms us, and vice versa )
• Paranoia and Preoccupation with Disloyalty (any criticism of us or praise of them is disloyal and treasonous)
• Prejudgment (everyone in the enemy group is an enemy)
• Suppression of Empathy (we have nothing in common and considering them human is dangerous)
• Isolation and Impasse (blanket rejection of dialogue, negotiation, cooperation, and conflict resolution)
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (their evil makes it permissible for us to be an enemy to them)

[Based partly on work by Kurt R. and Kati Spillman]

We can deconstruct and transform each of these elements, for example, by differentiating intention from effect, rebuilding trust through small agreements, accepting responsibility for problems, identifying shared values, adopting interest-based processes , being self-critical and acknowledging, distinguishing individuals within groups, extending empathy, engaging in dialogue and negotiation, and refusing to behave in evil ways ourselves. To begin, we need to recognize how evil is reflected in the language we use to describe our conflicts, enemies, issues, and ourselves.

The Language of Conflict

In every country, there are not only national languages and local dialects, but thousands of micro-languages, ranging from professional terminology to ethnic phraseology, popular slang, bureaucratic technicality, family vernacular, and generational jargon. There are, for example, distinct languages for organizational management, political candidacy, ethnic minorities, social classes, economic cycles, and criminal pursuits. Each of these languages serves a unique purpose and produces unique results in the attitudes and behaviors of those who use them.

There is also a distinct language of conflict. There is the conscious use of exaggerated statements to disguise requests for reassurance, as in stock phrases such as "you always," and "you never." These words are not intended as statements of fact, but mean "You do too much or too little of X for me" and "I would appreciate it if you would do X less or more." Yet the mere use of these phrases indicates the presence of deeper emotional problems, impelling us to:

• Camouflage our requests as statements of fact
• Exaggerate the truth
• Stereotype others as unreasonable
• Not take responsibility for communicating our needs
• Fail to accurately describe what we really want from others
• Miss opportunities to become vulnerable and invite others into more intimate conversation
• Ignore others' needs, explanations, or reasons for acting in their self-interest
• Miss openings to collaboratively negotiate for satisfaction of mutual needs

When we are uncomfortable with intense emotions, or want to camouflage a hidden agenda, it becomes difficult to describe our feelings accurately. When asked how we feel, we use words implying that we are being coerced by others, instead of words accepting responsibility for how we feel about what others have done. Our words contain judgments -- not merely about what others did, but of who they are . We say, for example, "He is infuriating," or "He made me mad," instead of "I am angry." Or, "She is a blabbermouth," instead of "I feel betrayed." Or "He is out to get me," instead of "I am afraid he is going to fire me."

By translating or reframing these statements, we convert a language of powerlessness into a language of empowerment , just as do by turning "you" statements into "I" statements , being precise about what we are feeling, transforming conflict stories, and recognizing that beneath accusations lie confessions and requests, either of which serves our interests better. These are all valuable interventions, but they do not address the underlying problem. A more careful examination of the language used in political conflicts reveals a deep set of issues.

Psychologist Renana Brooks describes the ways language is used to reinforce abuse and domination in power relationships. She cites, for example, broad statements that are so abstract and meaningless they cannot be opposed; excessive personalization of issues so they can only be addressed individually; negative frameworks that reinforce pessimistic images of the world; and inculcation of a "learned helplessness" that assumes change is impossible. Mexican novelist Octavio Paz describes how this deterioration of language reflects a broader social and political decay:

When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous...and alongside oratory, with its plastic flowers, there is the barbarous syntax in many of our newspapers, the foolishness of language on loudspeakers and the radio, the loathsome vulgarities of advertising -- all that asphyxiating rhetoric.

A similar asphyxiation occurs in the rhetoric of conflict as a result of distortions produced by adversarial assumptions in speaking and listening, the strangled expression of intense emotion, the coexistence of fear and rage, the weight and weightlessness of the issues, the craving for revenge and forgiveness, and the simultaneous exhibition of power and powerlessness, arrogance and humility, domination and dependency.

Language in organizations can also become an instrument of domination and control, reinforcing assumptions of hierarchy, bureaucracy and autocracy. Even seemingly innocuous corporate expressions such as "upper management," "direct reports," "bottom line," "alignment," "getting people on board," "raising the bar," "lean and mean," "accountability," "pushing the envelope," and similar expressions reveal myths and assumptions that distort communications. In similar ways, the language of law is replete with terminology conveying arrogance, incomprehension, and hostility directed toward emotionality, vulnerability, artistic thinking, human error, collective responsibility, compassion, frivolity, redemption, play, and forgiveness.

Language and Fascism

Perhaps the best example of the deterioration of language and its use to reinforce power, arrogance, and domination in political conflicts is the rise of fascism in Germany. As Victor Klemperer brilliantly revealed in The Language of the Third Reich , the Nazis deliberately manipulated language in order to change the way people thought about politics and daily life. By using repetitive stereotyping, emotional superlatives, and romantic adjectives; hijacking or poisoning formerly positive terms such as "collective," "followers," and "faith;" transforming formerly negative words into positives, such as "domination," "fanatical," and "obedient;" militarizing and brutalizing common speech; discounting reason and elevating feelings; using "big lies" and doublespeak; and generally debasing and "dumbing down" ordinary language, the Nazis fundamentally altered the way people thought and behaved.

This led Italian novelist and semiologist Umberto Eco to brilliantly define fascism as "the simplification of language to the point that complex thought becomes impossible." This simplification is revealed not only in the crude sloganeering and stereotyping of fascist rhetoric, but in the minor ways ordinary speech is transformed into sermons, prepared scripts, and propaganda, as can be seen, for example, in media coverage following the deaths of political leaders.

In Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism , Franz Neumann analyzed the Nazi's transformation of ordinary speech into fascist propaganda. He began by profoundly defining propaganda as "violence committed against the soul," writing:

Propaganda is not a substitute for violence, but one of its aspects. The two have identical purposes of making men amenable to control from above. Terror and its display in propaganda go hand in hand...The superiority of National Socialist [Nazi] propaganda lies in the complete transformation of culture into a saleable commodity.

In Neumann's view, democratic arguments could never compete with Nazi propaganda, not only because the latter was simpler and appealed to more primitive instincts, but because the Nazi's were willing to use any contrivance, including deliberate lies, in order to succeed. As Adolph Hitler made clear in Mein Kampf :

Propaganda must not serve the truth...All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it...The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad.

It is precisely this transformation of confession into accusation, analysis into propaganda, and fact into lie and doublespeak; this use of language as a mere means that does not count, and can therefore be distorted with impunity; this huckstering salesman's approach to truth, that allows it to hide and justify all manner of political and personal crimes. As George Orwell wrote, in "Politics and the English Language,"

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombed from the air, the inhabitants are driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification . Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers . People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements .

The simplification, distortion, and abuse of language by turning it into propaganda is not restricted to fascist or Stalinist states, but is responsive to a far deeper problem, which is the forced, impossible effort to suppress half of a paradox or polarity, deny part of a contradiction, and obstruct inevitable changes. Alex Cary, for example, attributes the widespread use of propaganda to increasing conflict between democracy and corporate power:

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

Yet the same distortion of language into propaganda can be heard in statements made by US political leaders prior to the war in Iraq, falsely collapsing Iraq into Saddam Hussein, accusing him of hiding weapons of mass destruction that could threaten US cities, linking September 11 to the Iraqi government, stereotyping Arabs as terrorists, demonizing international opposition to the war, and making "preventive war" seem necessary and inevitable.

Similar distortions can also be recognized in ordinary conflict stories, which routinely demonize and stereotype our opponents, link them with events beyond their control, make them seem more powerful than they actually are, ignore the systemic sources of our suffering, personalize our problems, and trigger the fear and anger that make our stories successful. For this reason, it is important to recognize that evil is not something "out there," inside someone else, beyond our reach, or in poorer nations, but also something "in here," inside ourselves, within our reach, and happening every day in wealthier nations, including the US.

Israeli-Palestinian Conflicts

There have been countless conflicts in the history of the world in which accusations of evil have been used to justify the commission of atrocities. A painful example today is the Middle East, where there is so much raw, unresolved grief and insensible hatred that antagonisms feel more like civil wars than wars between opposing states. Entire nations vie, not only in their capacity for revenge, but in their stubborn refusal to accept the necessity of learning how to live together and accept joint responsibility for their slaughter of innocents. As former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir painfully noted: "We can forgive the Palestinians for murdering our children, but we can never forgive them for forcing us to murder theirs."

When we examine these chronic revengeful conflicts, we cannot exclude Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the Koreas, Southern Africa, and examples of internecine warfare and national vendetta, from which no region is immune. By doing so, we can identify seven features that routinely block resolution and invite assumptions of evil. These include:

1. Continuous, intimate, non-consensual relationships between closely related yet diverse parties

2. Gross inequalities in the allocation and distribution of scarce resources, power, wealth, and status

3. Disrespectful, unfair, oppressive, and exploitative attitudes and behaviors by those with more power against those with less

4. Contemptuous, hostile, jealous, and resentful attitudes and behaviors by those with less power against those with more

5. Use of " legitimate " forms of power to coerce or manipulate outcomes favoring the powerful and disfavoring the powerless

6. Use of "illegitimate" forms of power by the powerless to block or provide wider access to legitimate forms of power controlled by the powerful

7. Sufficient accumulation of unresolved grief, loss, fear, and pain on both sides to fuel allegations of evil, suppress compassion, amplify rage, encourage revenge, and obstruct closure

These features can also be found in a wide range of personal, familial, organizational, social, economic, and political conflicts. On every level and scale, we become stuck in conflicts and justify our negative behaviors based on genuine experiences of pain and anger that bolster our assumptions of evil. At a simple level, it feels logical: "If I am good and have been hurt by you, it can only be because you are the kind of person who hurts people for no reason." In the process, we successfully disregard the injuries and insensitivities we caused, stereotype our opponent, and justify our refusal to listen to their explanations or pain because ours have not been heard or ameliorated.

At a deeper level, everyone always and everywhere seeks power or control over their environment, and few seek to share it or are willing to be on the unequal side of its distribution. Yet power is fluid by nature and cannot be fixed. This causes those who possess it to hoard it and distrust anyone who does not, and those who lack it to act in ways that justify its use and intensify their desire to seize it. Since neither side knows how to collaborate without appearing to betray their family, nation, culture, or cause, their conflict slips into a descending cycle of accusation and denunciation, rebellion and repression, terror and war.

The coexistence of intimacy with inequality and exploitation inevitably leads the powerful to hold the powerless in a subordinate, dependent position, triggering a polarization of attitudes and cascade of aggressive behaviors that lead to accusations of evil on both sides. A subconscious awareness of the unfairness of inequality and exploitation in the minds of the powerful lead them to fear the loss of their unequal status and the retributive violence of the powerless. This causes them to become further entrenched, protect their gains, and resist liberalization, democratization, collaboration, and conflict resolution, which require power sharing.

The powerful increasingly come to believe they have only two alternatives: either agree to the demands of the powerless and lose power for themselves, their families, friends, and what they see as their civilizing mission; or use "legitimate" forms of power to crush the powerless, thereby reinforcing the opposition of those they have oppressed, strengthening their resistance, and encouraging them to use violence or terror to achieve what they see as justice. These dynamics lead to stereotyping, prejudice , discrimination, and marginalization of the powerless , including genocide and ethnic cleansing, on the assumption that the powerless as a group are innately evil.

In response, the powerless increasingly come to believe they also have only two alternatives: either accept a temporary, tactical surrender, thereby permitting inequality and exploitation to continue unabated; or use what the powerful define as "illegitimate" forms of power to break their monopoly and end their exclusive control over power and resources, thereby reinforcing the fears of the powerful, strengthening their resistance, and encouraging continued destruction on both sides. Each side behaves toward the other in ways that justify their worst fears, causing the engine of violence to turn in a self-destructive circle.

Using interest-based conflict resolution methods, it is possible to identify a third choice for both sides, which is to share their problems, acknowledge that they are brothers, recognize that the true evil is not who they are , but their readiness to regard each other as evil, and that they cannot brutalize each other without brutalizing themselves. It is to understand that nothing can be gained through other methods that is worth the cost; that their mutual slaughter has been a gigantic, tragic, pointless waste; and that they can reach out at any time to their opponents without glossing over their differences. It is to recognize that there are no differences they cannot solve through dialogue, negotiation, and conflict resolution, or that are worth the damage created by their assumptions of evil. It is to engage in open, honest, collaborative, on-going negotiations over issues of justice and equality; strengthen political, economic, and social democracy; develop interest-based conflict resolution skills; and elicit heartfelt communications that invite truth and reconciliation.

How Should We Respond to Evil?

None of this is intended to imply that there is no such thing as evil, or that it is justifiable, but rather that there is a genesis and logic to its development which, when ignored, call forth adjunct evils in response. Evil is like a cancer that replicates itself by demanding its own destruction, but only through evil means. As the Greek playwright Sophocles wrote, "With evil all around me/There is nothing I can do that is not evil."

Evil has been attributed to everything from the external intervention of Satan to the natural, internal operations of the Id. The French Philosopher Blaise Pascal thought it came from "being unable to sit still in a room," while Novelist Jeanette Winterson wrote that "to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil." Evil is simply the opposite of good, or rather, the good of one that undermines or counteracts the good of another, as what benefits a parasite destroys its host. Yet if good and evil are opposites, it is impossible to end one without also ending the other.

From a conflict resolution perspective, evil is sometimes just a story describing what our opponents did to harm us, while leaving out what we did to harm them. Sometimes it is a failure to separate the act that caused harm from the people who engaged in it, or an inability due to previous conflicts to experience empathy or compassion for others. Sometimes it is negligence, accident, or false assumptions. Sometimes it is deep disappointment, the outpourings of a culture of defeat, or a desire to blame others for our own false expectations. Sometimes it is a way of depriving others of the happiness we lost, or subconsciously trying to recreate in others the conditions that caused us pain. As Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote: "No man consciously chooses evil because it is evil, he only mistakes it for the happiness that he seeks."

Yet there are people who take pleasure in the suffering of others, and it is little consolation to know they had an unhappy childhood or are merely mistaken in seeking their happiness when we suffer as a result of their actions. While there is good in the worst of us and evil in the best of us, there are hierarchies of evil, and some, like those who engineered the holocaust, belong to a different order. What, then, do we do in the face of such evil?

While there may be people, times, and places when it is impossible not to answer violence with violence and evil with evil, it is difficult to distinguish these moments from those that occur everyday in ordinary interpersonal conflicts, except by subjective measurements of their proximity and impact on us. The greater and closer the harm feels to us , the easier it is to justify committing evil in response. Do minor evils then justify minor evils in response? If so, where does it end? And who decides which evil is worse, or whose suffering is greater and more deserving of retribution?

Many people view truth, forgiveness, and reconciliation as laudable, yet impractical in the face of evil and terror, and believe the only effective response is to crush them wherever they exist with whatever power is available. Yet evil has always been a response to prior evil acts that are used to justify the commission of equal or greater evils in return. In this way, "eye for an eye" responses add to the total sum of blindness, while assumptions of evil turn suffering in a circle.

While there may be times, as Bertold Brecht wrote, when it is necessary to "embrace the butcher" to end an evil that will not desist until forced to do so, these cases cannot be contained or defined. How do we know we are not simply transferring our pain to someone else? When and how do we stop? What do we do in response to subtler forms of terror, and commonplace evils? Who do we become as a result? At what price? As Dwight Eisenhower told the London Guardian, "Every gun that is made, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."

Ultimately, there are three consistent responses to evil that do not end up replicating it. The first is to use whatever means may be required to isolate, disarm , and contain it, while at the same time addressing the underlying injustices that brought it into existence. The second is to shift the way we react from power- to rights- to interest-based approaches that do not invite evil responses. The third is to systematically strengthen our skills and abilities in heart-based communications, including forgiveness and reconciliation, which disable evil at its source in the tormented hearts and minds of those who feel powerless to end or grieve their suffering.

These responses require us to encourage dialogue, joint problem solving, and conflict resolution, while simultaneously acting to discourage vengeance, retaliation, and unilateralism. They require us to negotiate, especially with our enemies, while simultaneously minimizing their ability to create harm. They require us to accept responsibility, for example, for the rise of fascism, as a result of our imposition of a vindictive Treaty at Versailles, unwillingness to confront anti-Semitism, support for brutal Tsarist regimes that inspired the Russian Revolution, lack of financial aid for the struggling Weimar Republic, failure to assist the Spanish Republic, and similar acts. Finally, they require us to recognize that can be no peace without justice there.

No Justice, No Peace

In order to discourage assumptions, allegations, and acts of evil and sustain warring parties in dialogue and negotiation, we need to recognize that the true evil is injustice, and as long as it continues, peace will be fleeting, fragile, and a disappointing reminder of all we have suffered and lost. Under such conditions it is easy to agree with Socrates' adversary Thrasymachus that "justice is the interest of the stronger," or Franz Kafka that it is "a fugitive from the winning camp."

Genuine, lasting peace is impossible in the absence of justice. Where injustice prevails, peace becomes merely a way of masking and compounding prior crimes, impeding necessary changes, and rationalizing injustices. As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton presciently observed:

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and leisure.... [T]heir idea of peace was only another form of war.

When millions lack the essentials of life, peace becomes a sanction for continued suffering, and compromise a front for capitulation, passivity, and acceptance of injustice. This led anthropologist Laura Nader to criticize mediation for its willingness to "trade justice for harmony." True peace requires justice and a dedication to satisfying basic human needs, otherwise it is merely the self-interest of the satisfied, the ruling clique, the oppressors, the victors in search of further spoils.

For peace to be achieved in the Middle East or elsewhere, it is essential that we neither trivialize conflict nor become stuck in the language of good and evil, but work collaboratively and compassionately to redress the underlying injustices and pain each side caused the other. Ultimately, this means sharing power and resources, advantages and disadvantages, successes and failures, and satisfying everyone's legitimate interests. It means collaborating and making decisions together. It means giving up being right and assuming others are wrong. It means taking the time to work through our differences, and making our opponents interests our own.

In helping to make these shifts and move from Apartheid to integration, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that for people to reach forgiveness , they needed to exchange personal stories of anger, fear, pain, jealousy, guilt, grief, and shame; to empathize, recognize, and acknowledge each other's interests; to engage in open, honest dialogue; to reorient themselves to the future; to participate in rituals of collective grief that released their pain and loss; and to mourn those who died because neither side had the wisdom or courage to apologize for their assumptions of evil, or the evil they caused their opponents and themselves.

At the same time, they also needed to improve the daily lives of those who suffered and were treated unjustly under apartheid. Where shantytowns coexist with country clubs, peace cannot be lasting or secure. Where some go hungry while others are well fed, terror and violence are nourished. In the end, it comes down to a question of sharing wealth and power, realizing that we are all one family, and that an injury to one is genuinely an injury to all.

Making justice an integral part of conflict resolution and the search for peaceful solutions means not merely settling conflicts, but resolving, transforming, and transcending them by turning them into levers of social dialogue and learning, catalysts of community and collaboration, and commitments to political, economic, and social change. By failing to take these additional remedial steps, we make justice secondary to peace, undermine both, guarantee the continuation of our conflicts, and prepare the way for more to come.

From Power and Rights to Interests

Political conflicts can only support justice and serve as engines of constructive political, economic, and social development if the means and methods by which they are resolved promote just, collaborative ends. The principal means we have used to resolve political conflicts for thousands of years have been oriented toward power, including war, genocide, terror, domination , and suppression of those seeking change.

Over the last several centuries, we have developed less destructive methods of resolving conflicts based on rights, including adjudication , adversarial negotiations , bureaucratic procedures, coercion , and isolation of those seeking change. What we now require are interest-based methods for resolving political, economic, and social conflicts that integrate peace with justice and undermine resort to evil, including informal problem solving , collaborative negotiation, team and community building, consensus decision-making , public dialogue , mediation and actively rewarding those seeking change.

The problem with most efforts to suppress evil or redress injustices is that they adopt power- or rights-based approaches which result in deeper polarization , resistance, and win/lose  outcomes that simply trade one form of evil or injustice for another. One side then becomes frightened of going too far, tired of fighting, willing to tolerate continuing injustices, and settles or compromises their conflicts rather than resolving, transforming, or transcending them.

Approaching evil and injustice from an interest-based perspective means listening to the deeper truths that gave rise to them, extending compassion even to those who were responsible for evils or injustices, and seeking not merely to replace one evil or injustice with another, but to reduce their attractiveness by designing outcomes, processes, and relationships that encourage adversaries to work collaboratively to satisfy their interests.

Evil and injustice can therefore be considered byproducts of reliance on power or rights, and failures or refusals to learn and evolve. All political systems generate chronic conflicts that reveal their internal weaknesses, external pressures, and demands for evolutionary change. Power- and rights-based systems are adversarial and unstable, and therefore avoid, deny, resist, and defend themselves against change. As a result, they suppress conflicts or treat them as purely interpersonal, leaving insiders less informed and able to adapt, and outsiders feeling they were treated unjustly and contemplating evil in response.

As pressures to change increase, these systems must either adapt, or turn reactionary and take a punitive, retaliatory attitude toward those seeking to promote change, delaying their own evolution. Only interest-based systems are fully able to seek out their weaknesses, proactively evolve, transform conflicts into sources of learning, and celebrate those who brought them to their attention.

Conflict and Political Change

Conflict is the principal means by which significant social and political changes have taken place throughout history. Wars and revolutions can be understood as efforts to resolve deep-seated political, economic, and social conflicts for which no other means of resolution was understood or acceptable to either or both sides, blocking evolutionary change.

When conflicts and pressure to change accumulate, even trivial interpersonal disputes can stimulate far-reaching systemic transformations. In any fragile system, be it familial, organizational, social, or political, resolving conflict can therefore become a dangerous, even revolutionary activity, because it encourages people to redress their injustices, collaborate on solutions, and evolve in ways that could fundamentally transform the system. Indeed, it is possible to regard every collaborative, interest-based effort to resolve systemic conflict as a small but significant resolution, transformation, and transcendence of the system that gave rise to it.

Collaborative, interest-based processes can "socialize," or broaden our conflicts, allowing us to address their systemic sources through group dialogue and discussion, analysis of systemic issues, and recommendations for preventative, system-wide, strategic improvement without political intrigue and infighting. Responsibility for resolving conflicts can then be extended beyond a small circle of primary antagonists to include allies, secret partners, neutral bystanders, and others whose relationship to the participants or issues could make complete solutions possible.

Interest-based conflict resolution techniques offer political systems democratic, socially engaging methods for learning and evolving through conflict. They free us to address political disputes based on equality, respect for diversity, recognition of interests, principled dialogue, collaborative negotiation, and consensus, rather than a desire to retain power or rights. In these ways, peace merges with justice, encouraging learning and evolution.

Yet we can go further and develop preventative, strategic, scale-free approaches to conflict resolution that use storytelling techniques, for example, to promote understanding between hostile social groups; public dialogue techniques to stimulate understanding between representatives of opposing points of view; public policy and environmental mediation techniques to locate complex solutions to intractable political problems; prejudice reduction and bias awareness techniques to increase cross-cultural understanding; and heart-based techniques such as truth and reconciliation commissions to promote reconciliation .

Whether our conflicts are intensely personal and between private individuals, or intensely political and between nations and cultures, three critical areas require on-going improvement and transformation. These are: our personal capacity for introspection, integrity, and spiritual growth; our interpersonal capacity for egalitarian, collaborative, heartfelt communication and relationships; and our social, economic, and political capacity for designing preventative, systemic, strategic approaches to conflict resolution, community, and change.

By creatively combining conflict resolution systems design principles with strategic planning, team building, meditation and spiritual practices, community organizing, and heart-based conflict resolution techniques, we can significantly improve our ability to resolve international political and cross-cultural disputes before they become needlessly destructive. Yet conflict resolution carries a price in the form of our willingness to listen to ideas we dislike and share power and control over outcomes with people different from ourselves.

Ultimately, transcending conflict means giving up unjust, unequal power- and rights-based systems, and seeking instead to satisfy interests, which is why we seek power and rights in the first place. This means surrendering our power to take from others what does not belong to us, and right to coerce them into giving what they are otherwise unwilling to give. Accepting this price allows us to achieve a higher value and right, merge peace with justice, and immensely improve our personal and political lives.

Use the following to cite this article: Cloke, Kenneth. "Mediating Evil, War, and Terrorism: The Politics of Conflict." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: December 2005 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/mediating-evil >.

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Definitions of terrorism

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terrorism , the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies, intelligence services, and police.

Definitions of terrorism are usually complex and controversial, and, because of the inherent ferocity and violence of terrorism, the term in its popular usage has developed an intense stigma. It was first coined in the 1790s to refer to the terror used during the French Revolution by the revolutionaries against their opponents. The Jacobin party of Maximilien Robespierre carried out a Reign of Terror involving mass executions by the guillotine . Although terrorism in this usage implies an act of violence by a state against its domestic enemies, since the 20th century the term has been applied most frequently to violence aimed, either directly or indirectly, at governments in an effort to influence policy or topple an existing regime .

Terrorism is not legally defined in all jurisdictions; the statutes that do exist, however, generally share some common elements. Terrorism involves the use or threat of violence and seeks to create fear, not just within the direct victims but among a wide audience. The degree to which it relies on fear distinguishes terrorism from both conventional and guerrilla warfare . Although conventional military forces invariably engage in psychological warfare against the enemy, their principal means of victory is strength of arms. Similarly, guerrilla forces, which often rely on acts of terror and other forms of propaganda , aim at military victory and occasionally succeed (e.g., the Viet Cong in Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia). Terrorism proper is thus the calculated use of violence to generate fear, and thereby to achieve political goals, when direct military victory is not possible. This has led some social scientists to refer to guerrilla warfare as the “weapon of the weak” and terrorism as the “weapon of the weakest.”

In order to attract and maintain the publicity necessary to generate widespread fear, terrorists must engage in increasingly dramatic, violent, and high-profile attacks. These have included hijackings , hostage takings, kidnappings , mass shootings, car bombings, and, frequently, suicide bombings . Although apparently random, the victims and locations of terrorist attacks often are carefully selected for their shock value. Schools, shopping centres, bus and train stations, and restaurants and nightclubs have been targeted both because they attract large crowds and because they are places with which members of the civilian population are familiar and in which they feel at ease. The goal of terrorism generally is to destroy the public’s sense of security in the places most familiar to them. Major targets sometimes also include buildings or other locations that are important economic or political symbols, such as embassies or military installations. The hope of the terrorist is that the sense of terror these acts engender will induce the population to pressure political leaders toward a specific political end.

Some definitions treat all acts of terrorism, regardless of their political motivations, as simple criminal activity. For example, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines both international and domestic terrorism as involving “violent, criminal acts.” The element of criminality, however, is problematic, because it does not distinguish among different political and legal systems and thus cannot account for cases in which violent attacks against a government may be legitimate . A frequently mentioned example is the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa , which committed violent actions against that country’s apartheid government but commanded broad sympathy throughout the world. Another example is the Resistance movement against the Nazi occupation of France during World War II .

Since the 20th century, ideology and political opportunism have led a number of countries to engage in international terrorism, often under the guise of supporting movements of national liberation. (Hence, it became a common saying that “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”) The distinction between terrorism and other forms of political violence became blurred—particularly as many guerrilla groups often employed terrorist tactics—and issues of jurisdiction and legality were similarly obscured.

These problems have led some social scientists to adopt a definition of terrorism based not on criminality but on the fact that the victims of terrorist violence are most often innocent civilians. Even this definition is flexible, however, and on occasion it has been expanded to include various other factors, such as that terrorist acts are clandestine or surreptitious and that terrorist acts are intended to create an overwhelming sense of fear.

In the late 20th century, the term ecoterrorism was used to describe acts of environmental destruction committed in order to further a political goal or as an act of war, such as the burning of Kuwaiti oil wells by the Iraqi army during the Persian Gulf War . The term also was applied to certain environmentally benign though criminal acts, such as the spiking of lumber trees, intended to disrupt or prevent activities allegedly harmful to the environment .

Since the early 21st the term stochastic terrorism has been used to designate the repeated use of hate speech or other vilifying, dehumanizing rhetoric by a political leader or other public figure that inspires one or more of the figure’s supporters to commit hate crimes or other acts of violence against a targeted person, group, or community . Because stochastic terrorists do not supply their followers with any detailed plan of attack, the particular time and place of the eventual violence are unpredictable.

Good Versus Evil: Argument to Begin Global War on Terrorism

Central Asia issue No.64, Summer 2009

25 Pages Posted: 9 May 2016

Sarfraz Khan

University of Peshawar - Area Study Centre (Russia,China & Central Asia)

Shuja Ahmad

Independent.

Date Written: 2009

This article argues that Good versus Evil (Us versus Them) has been a commonly forwarded argument, in times of War on Terror. Good versus Evil is a complex argument, involving numerous fallacies: false cause, poisoning the well, appeal to force, appeal to pity, appeal to fear, begging the question, slippery slope, false dilemma, etc. It also argues that Good versus Evil argument have been instrumental in framing the case to begin War on Terror in Afghanistan as well as a Global War on Terror. We also argue that once President Bush set the Good versus Evil frame, committing other fallacies ensued. Many people did accept his subsequent arguments, though fallacious, without adequate evidential support.

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Sarfraz Khan (Contact Author)

University of peshawar - area study centre (russia,china & central asia) ( email ).

University of Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan Peshawar, Khyber Pukhtoon Khwa 25120 Pakistan

HOME PAGE: http://www.asc-centralasia.edu.pk/index.html

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Article contents

Terrorism as a global wave phenomenon: an overview.

• David C. Rapoport David C. Rapoport Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.299
• Published online: 26 September 2017

Global terror began in the 1880s, but it took a century before a few scholars began to understand its peculiar dynamic. One reason for the difficulty was that many scholars and government officials had “historical amnesia.” When they saw it disappear, they assumed it had become part of history and no longer had contemporary relevance. But global terror disappears and then reappears. Another reason they failed to understand the pattern is that the concept of generation was rarely used to describe politics, a concept that requires one to recognize the importance of life cycles. Modern global terror comes in the form of waves precipitated by major political events that have important global significance. A wave consists of a variety of groups with similar tactics and purposes that alter the domestic and international scenes. Four very different waves have materialized: the Anarchist, the Anti-Colonial, the New Left, and the Religious. The first three have been completed and lasted around 40 years; the fourth is now in its third decade, and if it follows the rhythm of its predecessors, it should be over in the mid-2020s, but a fifth wave may emerge thereafter.

• historical amnesia
• empirical international relations theory
• Paris commune
• global organizations
• over-reactions
• First Wave Anarchist
• Second Wave Anticolonial
• Third Wave New Left
• Fourth Wave Religious

Introduction

Terrorism is violence for political purposes that goes beyond the legal rules established to regulate violence. Consequently, governments have difficulty treating captured terrorists as prisoners of war or criminals, a problem that affects different governments in various ways. 1 Terrorism confined to particular states has been an intermittent feature of history for a very long time. At times, terror took an international dimension that included only two states. Irish immigrants in the United States, for example, created the Fenians who, after the American Civil War, struck Canadian targets hoping to create a war between the United States and the United Kingdom, which would enable efforts in Ireland to create an independent state. When that failed, the American Fenians bombed targets in England with the same purpose and futile end (Steward & McGowan, 2013 ). Only Irish groups participated. The global international form of terrorism developed later. It involves efforts to change the entire world or transform regions involving more than two states. These activities generate cooperation between foreign terrorists and populations in a variety of states.

Although global terror began in the 1880s, a century elapsed before a few scholars began to understand its peculiar dynamic. One reason for the difficulty was that many scholars and government officials had “historical amnesia.” When they saw terrorism begin to disappear, they assumed it had become part of history and no longer had contemporary relevance. But global terror disappears and then reappears. Another reason they failed to understand the pattern is that the concept of generation was rarely used to describe politics, a concept that requires one to recognize the importance of life cycles. Global terror comes in the form of waves that are precipitated by major political events that have important global significance. A wave consists of a variety of groups with similar tactics and purposes that alter the domestic and international scenes. Four very different waves have materialized: the Anarchist, Anti colonial, New Left, and Religious. The first three have been completed and lasted around 40 years; the fourth is now in its third decade. If it follows the rhythm of its predecessors it should be over in the mid-2020s, and a fifth wave may emerge thereafter.

Historical Amnesia

It took considerable time to understand that global terrorism appeared first in the 1880s and has remained since (Rapoport & Alexander, 1989 ). One reason for the problem was that global terrorism has a special rhythm that makes it seem to disappear often. Note how the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences treated the subject. In the first edition ( 1930 ), J.B.S. Hardman’s interesting terrorism article argued that “revolutionary terrorism” began in the 1880s and reached its high point two decades later. No group ever attained success, and terrorism would soon disappear completely because modern technology made the world so complex that only classes and masses mattered! The second edition ( 1966 ) had no terrorism article. Did the Hardman article persuade the new editors one was not needed even though some successful campaigns materialized after World War II in overseas European empires, or did the editors believe that because those empires had disappeared, terrorism did, too?

Other differences between the two editions suggest that another matter may have shaped the decision. The first edition contained interesting pieces on violence, assassination, and praetorianism that were eliminated in the second edition. 2 The election and succession articles in the first edition emphasized that the processes often produced violence. But the second edition’s election article ignores the fact elections sometimes breed violence (Rapoport & Weinberg, 2001 ). There was no article on succession, perhaps because one could not be written without emphasizing that in some systems violence frequently determines who the successor will be. Why did the “best social scientists” in successive generations understand violence so differently?

For the long span from about 1938 to the mid-1960s . . . the internal life of the country was unusually free of violent episodes. The 1930s generation found it easy to forget how violent “their forebears had been and so it is not simply that historians have found a way of shrugging off the unhappy memories of our past; our amnesia is also a response to the experience of a whole generation.” (Hofstadter, 1970 , pp. 3–4)

The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence established after the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert Kennedy also emphasized the idea that the United States suffered from “historical amnesia.”

Ironically, while the first edition of the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences stated that terrorism had disappeared, when the second edition was published, terrorist activity had become an important element in the Cold War, dominating the international scene, an upsurge that ended in the 1990s after the Soviet Union’s dramatic, unexpected collapse. Historical amnesia then reappeared; this time it was reflected in the U.S. government’s belief that global terrorism no longer existed. The government never seemed to understand that it had been very significant decades before the Soviet Union was even established. Just as Hardman ignored the fact that a new kind of terrorism emerged after World War I, the U.S. government seemed oblivious to the conspicuous fact that various religions in the 1980s produced terrorist groups without Soviet aid that were still functioning. Believing that “terrorism was over, the State Department abolished my office,” wrote Scott Stewart, a Security Service Special Agent (Stewart, 2012 , p. 2). Government subsidies for the Rand Corporation’s useful terrorism research program evaporated and the program disappeared. In 1999 , the Crowe Commission Report Confronting Terrorist Threats examined attacks on U.S. embassies and blamed the government for greatly reducing its intelligence resources. Then the disastrous attacks of September 11, 2011 , occurred. Ironically, the 9/11 Commission Report found that the same indifference made 9/11 easier to perpetrate.

Terrorism studies generally ignore history, an odd fact when we remember how much history obsessed Clausewitz, who founded the “science” of war:

Examples from history make everything clear, and furnish the best description of proof in the empirical sciences. This applies with more force to the Art of War than to any other. If we wish to learn from history we must realize that what happened once can happen again.” (Clausewitz, 1991 , p. 231) 3

Clausewitz’s view of the pertinence of military history still resonates because states retain their armies even though there may be long periods between wars. But many still regard terrorism differently.

After 9/11, President George W. Bush’s “Address to the Joint Session of Congress and the American People” declared that terrorism would be eliminated. “Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government which supports them. Our war . . . will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated” (Bush, 2001 , p. 68).

Although 9/11 was unique, President Bush’s declaration had a largely forgotten predecessor a century before. On September 6, 1901 , after an anarchist assassinated President William McKinley, his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, called for all states to participate in a “crusade” to exterminate anarchist terrorism everywhere, and Congress passed the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 to reduce immigrant numbers who came from countries where many Anarchists lived (Jensen, 2001 ). But four years later, the United States withdrew from the first and only other global counterterrorist campaign.

Generations

Our historical amnesia is partly due to the inadequacy of our analytical tools. Using the concept of generation as a key analytic concept compels one to recognize that as a generation gets older, its energy dissipates. Generation is very different from the more commonly used concepts like class, interest, ethnic identity, etc. Energies inspiring those entities may dissipate in time, too, but that process is not associated with specified short periods. Because very few analysts use the idea of generation to explain important social scenes, it is not surprising that when the activity they are describing dissipates, they believe it has disappeared. 4

The striking differences between generations in the 1960s finally stimulated some academics to use generation to explain change (Rapoport, 1970 ). 5 In 1986 , Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published the first systematic detailed study of generations in his illuminating The Cycles of American History . He used Alexis de Tocqueville’s argument that in democracies “each generation is a new people” to analyze American politics from the 18th century to the present day as a process of successive 40-year cycles. The initial generation was consumed with “political activism and social egalitarianism,” which was then followed by a 40-year period of “quiet conservatism and personal acquisition.” 6

Each new phase flows out of the conditions and contradictions of the phase before and then itself prepares the way for the next recurrence. A true cycle . . . is self-generating. It cannot be determined short of catastrophe by external events. Wars, depressions, inflations may heighten or complicate moods, but the cycle itself rolls on, self-contained, self-sufficient and autonomous. (Schlesinger, 1986 , p. 27) 7

Wave Concept

While linking generations to cycles is useful for studying democratic politics, global terrorism must be viewed differently. Profound, dramatic, unexpected international political events stimulated global terror, inspiring new generations with hope that the world could be transformed. But one cannot assume precipitating events of the same magnitude will always recur and at the same time. While a period lasted roughly 40 years, the rhythm or development process of each period, was different. Wave, rather than cycle, clearly is the appropriate term to describe those periods.

A wave consists of organizations with similar tactics and objectives. Organizations normally do not survive as long as the wave that gave them birth does, though a few organizations are likely to be active when their wave disappears. In those special cases, the organization sometimes incorporates features of the new wave. Surprise attacks are essential because small groups must find ways to publicize their actions to get attention and generate recruits. Surprise attacks sometimes produce overreaction, which terrorists know they can profit from. Each wave has experienced some dramatic overreactions with enormous international consequences. In the First Wave, World War I was precipitated when the Austrian-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated and their government claimed without evidence that Serbia was involved. The anxiety produced by 9/11 made the U.S. government think that Al-Qaeda would use weapons of mass destruction if they could get them, and the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 to prevent that from happening. But no evidence was available that Iraq had those weapons, and the invasion intensified Islamic hostility to the United States and also alienated many U.S. allies. Several other important overreactions in global terror history are discussed below.

The need to secure information to prevent surprise leads governments to employ unusual interrogation techniques that are not used to deal with criminals. Thus, in the First Wave, torture, which had disappeared in Europe, became common everywhere and it has remained a feature of every subsequent wave. Government agents frequently infiltrate groups, a process that induces those agents sometimes to provoke terrorist actions that may not occur otherwise. Another problem in dealing with terrorists comes from the fact that there are no accepted rules for dealing with them. On the one hand, governments generally claim they should be treated as criminals, but rules that designate appropriate responses to criminal deeds are never found to be fully appropriate. Terrorists, on the other hand, usually claim they should be treated as enemy soldiers, but they do not follow the accepted rules of war.

Each wave is driven by a distinctive purpose. The First or Anarchist Wave was committed to equality. Nationalism or the self-determination principle inspired the Second or Anticolonial Wave after World War I; then in the 1960s, more radical aspirations become conspicuous again in the Third or New Left Wave. In 1979 , religion replaced secular principles of legitimacy, and the Fourth or Religious Wave began, which should dissipate in the 21st-century ’s third decade. If history repeats itself, a Fifth Wave will appear with a new purpose, one unlikely to be known ahead of time. In each wave, groups often emerge dedicated to single issue like the Earth Liberation Front, or to support the government, like the Ulster Volunteer Force. Because those groups do not aim to transform the domestic and/or international systems, they are not examined here as part of the wave.

Important unanticipated political events were crucial in generating each wave. The Paris Commune catastrophe ( 1871 ) inspired the belief that a new method of insurrection was necessary and helped ignite the First Wave. The Anticolonial Wave was linked to the Versailles Treaty after World War I, which demonstrated how much the international world had become committed to the principle of self-determination. In Europe, the empires of the defeated powers like Austro-Hungary were divided into sovereign nation states. The overseas empires of defeated states largely became League of Nations mandates administered by one of the victorious states until the mandate’s population was deemed able to govern itself. But terrorist uprisings occurred in those territories against the mandate governments and uprisings also occurred in the victors’ overseas empires. The New Left Wave was fueled by Castro’s revolution in Cuba and the U.S. disaster in Vietnam. The Religious Wave was the outcome of four events in 1979 . The Iranian Revolution was the first and most important; it transformed a secular state into a religious one, a state that promoted religious terror. Other events demonstrated the weakness of secular elements in pushing popular international political agendas within the Middle East, such as the Soviet Union's military efforts in Afghanistan to protect a Marxist government.

While waves survive for similar periods, the rhythms of each may be very different. It took some time for the Paris Commune to have its effect. While the end of World War I produced several uprisings quickly, only one was successful. A second major political event, the Atlantic Charter in 1941 , defined the intentions of the Allies toward all imperial territories, making it much easier to generate successful terrorist campaigns after World War II. Indeed, the end of the Second Wave occurred when the energy of governments to resist, not the energy of terrorists to keep fighting, dissipated. The principal event producing Third Wave was the Vietnam War but it lasted 9 years, and not until its fourth year, in 1968 , did the wave get going. The Fourth Wave emerged immediately in 1979 .

Some tactics are used in every wave, but each wave introduces and emphasizes different ones. The First Wave was committed to assassination; the Second Wave aimed to eliminate the police; the Third Wave was consumed with hostage taking; and the Fourth Wave introduced self-martyrdom or suicide bombing. Although the geographic center of each wave is different, Western states have always been a principal target, and they were a major source for terror in the First and Third waves.

A wave contains many individual groups, but the number varies in each wave. Each wave has groups with different purposes. In the First Wave, the populists claimed to represent the masses alienated from a government controlled by an out-of-touch closed elite; the populists had socialist aspirations. Anarchists were the second group aiming to eliminate the state and all forms of inequality. The Anarchist Wave is so named because anarchists seemed to be active everywhere and to produce the most provocative acts, which led the public influenced by the media to make the terms terrorist and Anarchist interchangeable (Jaszi, 1930 ). The third type were the Nationalists, who aimed to create separate states. Nationalists remained present in every wave, though their tactics and rationale varied depending on the wave they were associated with. All Second Wave groups were nationalist, but they had either right-wing or left-wing programs for the states they intended to establish.

The Third or New Left Wave produced two major forms: revolutionaries and separatists. There were two kinds of revolutionaries, the transnational and the national. The transnationals were very small groups that emerged in the developed world of Western Europe and North America and saw themselves as Third World agents. Their internationalism was reflected in their targets and in their commitment to cooperate with foreign groups. But they were the wave’s least durable groups. The priorities of both the national revolutionaries and the separatists were to remake their own states immediately. National revolutionaries sought a state based on radical equality, while the separatists wanted to create a new state from an ethnic base that often transcended state boundaries and thus could create serious tensions with neighboring states. Separatists were present everywhere except Latin America, where all groups were national revolutionaries, a unique quality that is discussed in the analysis of the Third Wave.

Secular causes inspired the first three waves, but religious ingredients were sometimes important because they were connected with ethnic and national identities, as the Irish, Armenian, Macedonian, Cypriot, Quebec, Israeli, and Palestinian examples illustrate (Tololyan, 1992 ). But these earlier groups did not seek to eliminate secular influences by recreating religious regimes within their original boundaries, a process that would uproot the existing international system, an aim that would be a crucial feature for the Fourth Wave.

Fourth or Religious Wave groups are classified by the respective religions that inspired them. Islam initiated the wave. Iran was a secular state that became a religious one; it committed the first terrorist act and was deeply involved throughout the wave in supporting global terrorist activity, a pattern not seen before. Iran originally aimed to bring the Shia and Sunni, the two principal Islamic sects, together, but instead it produced a variety of serious deadly conflicts between those sects that had not been experienced for centuries. One of the conflicts was the Iran–Iraq War ( 1980–1988 ), the 20th century ’s longest conventional war. 8 The wave’s most important durable groups were Islamic, and they devised the wave’s distinctive tactic, self-martyrdom (i.e., “suicide bombing”), which made the wave the most indiscriminate and destructive one. The 9/11 attacks were the deadliest and most spectacular suicide bombing events in history, killing 2,996 people and injuring more than 6,000 others, thus producing more casualties than the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II.

A few Islamic groups like Hamas aim to create a national religious state. But many want to transform the international world by eliminating the system of independent states where each has sovereignty over its territory and equal standing in international law, an arrangement the Treaty of Westphalia created in 1648 . Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) aim to establish a caliphate that all Muslims, no matter where they live in the world, are obliged to obey. The Islamic diaspora intensified the wave’s global character; immigrants occasionally made attacks in their new homes and some went back to join groups in Islamic territories. The First Wave also produced a similar pattern, though the two waves seem very different otherwise.

Other Fourth Wave religions have produced groups with more limited territorial aspirations and therefore pose no threat to the international system as a whole. Sikhs aimed to secede from India and re-establish the religious state of Khalistan (Land of the Pure), which the British made part of India in 1849 . The Tamils of Sri Lanka also aimed to secede. Although it was not a religious group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) used the tactic of suicide bombing to fight against Buddhist efforts to make Sri Lanka a religious state. Sikh and Tamil diasporas in the West were significant supporters and provided much of the finances needed. Religious Jews in Israel want to transform the country into a religious state that would regain all its ancient Biblical territories. Some Christian groups in the United States fought to make it a religious state. Jews and Christians produced far fewer casualties than other groups in the wave, but the apocalypse is a theme in Jewish and Christian groups and could under certain circumstances produce catastrophic experiences.

The number of groups varies in each wave, and that number dissipates when no new ones emerge to replace those destroyed. Waves overlap each other in time and space. A few Second Wave groups in Africa were still alive in the 1970s, and some Third Wave groups aided them in their struggles for independence. The Fourth Wave emerged in the middle of the Third Wave. That induced some Third and Fourth Wave groups to fight each other bitterly, especially in the Middle East, something that never happened before.

Creation of the Global Political and Technological Contexts

The wave phenomenon cannot be understood fully without seeing it as a byproduct of the French Revolution. The first three waves embraced some key aspirations of the Revolution, while the Fourth explicitly rejected the Revolution’s ideals altogether, especially its hostility to religion.

After Napoleon was crushed, the relationship between domestic and international politics in Europe became transformed. Many insurrections occurred, inspired by desires to achieve the French Revolution’s unfulfilled promises, particularly with respect to new state boundaries, republicanism, secularism, and egalitarianism. In 1820 , 1830 , 1848 , and 1871 , uprisings in one European state generated comparable ones elsewhere. Europeans crossed borders easily (as no passports were needed) and became deeply involved in revolts elsewhere. The French Revolution abolished the practice of extraditing individuals for political reasons, and most European states continued this practice afterwards, intensifying the uprisings’ international character (Bassiouni, 1974 ). A new type of person emerged, described by de Tocqueville as the “professional revolutionary” (Richter, 1967 ), an intellectual devoting all his time to revolutions, moving from one country to another to foster them (e.g., Filippo Buonarroti, Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Peter Kropotkin). 9

Uprisings created Belgium, and helped produce Italy and Germany, but there were so many failures that many after 1848 sought a more radical revolutionary model. In 1864 , the First Internationale, claiming 8 million members, emerged to unite socialist, communist, and anarchist groups with trade unions for the impending class struggle. When France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War ( 1871 ), radicals established the Paris Commune, abolishing private property. The French response was devastating. Some 20,000 communards and sympathizers were killed, more than the Franco-Prussian War casualty numbers, and more than 7,500 were either jailed or deported to distant places overseas. Thousands fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain, and the United States. Radicals became convinced that the support of standing armies for their governments made mass uprisings unrealistic. A new method was necessary—small groups employing terror.

Important technological changes contributed to terrorism’s global character. In the First Wave, the telegraph enabled one to transmit information immediately across the world, enabling daily mass newspapers to describe incidents and plans quickly to very large numbers of people. The railroad and the steamship made international travel easy, quick, and inexpensive. Each successive wave was associated with communication and transportation innovations that intensified its global dimension, making it possible to bring global elements even closer together. The telephone and the radio were important in the Second Wave, television and airplanes were crucial in the Third, and the Internet shapes the Fourth.

In 1867 , Alfred Nobel patented dynamite for mining purposes. But soon it was used to make a new type of bomb, much easier to construct, conceal, and move than previous bombs; it could be detonated by a timer, enabling attackers to escape before the explosion. The bomb became the major weapon for terrorists, a major reason Nobel gave his fortune to establish the annual Nobel Prizes, especially the one devoted to peace! 10 The bomb is still the terrorist’s principal weapon, and it is likely to remain so, though many analysts have argued that terrorists will soon use weapons of mass destruction.

Before the 1880s, terrorism was confined to group activities in a particular territory, activity that had no specific impact elsewhere, lasted for different time periods, and therefore had no relationship to the concept of generations. The Zealots and Siccari who led the Jewish uprising against Rome in the 1st century were active for 25 years (Rapoport, 1984 ), the Assassins of the late 11th century survived for three centuries in the Muslim world, the Sons of Liberty who helped stimulate the American Revolution were active for a decade, and the Ku Klux Klan fought a successful 5-year campaign uprooting Reconstruction policies after the American Civil War (Rapoport, 2008 ). But global terror groups interact with each other, states, foreign social entities, and international organizations, and in a generation, the wave appears in most or all inhabited continents and then dissipates.

The First Wave began in Russia and quickly spread throughout Europe. Within a decade, it appeared in North and South America, and in the 20th century , in Asia, Australia, and Africa. Foreign personalities sometimes founded domestic groups (e.g., the Russian Mikhail Bakunin in Spain). Immigrants and diaspora communities became critical elements. Some states gave terrorists aid and sanctuaries. Events in one state often had significant impact elsewhere. Prominent nationalist struggles created serious potential threats to international peace. Armenians and Macedonian militants aimed to provoke major European states to invade the Ottoman Empire. Those European states knew intervention could produce a great war, putting major European powers on different sides, and avoided the situation several times. But somehow that lesson was forgotten in 1914 when the Ottoman Empire was not involved.

A century passed before a scholar recognized that one could not understand global terrorism without putting it in the context of international waves. In 1986 , Zeev Ivianski wrote

The terrorist wave is the work of a generation . . . as a result of some profound historical shock. . . . The generation of the terror destroys itself, has no direct continuation, yet the tradition renews itself in later waves of violence, (Ivianski, 1986 ) 11

The four global waves are discussed in detail in additional articles: the Anarchist, Anti-Colonial, New Left and Religious.

• Anderson, B. (2005). Under three flags: Anarchism and the anti-colonial imagination . New York: Verso.
• Bassiouni, M. (1974). International extradition law and world public order . Amsterdam: Luitingh-Sijthoff.
• Bush, George W. (2001). Available at https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord
• Clausewitz, C. (1991) On war . In A. Rapoport (Ed.), Clausewitz on war . Dorchester, U.K.:Dorset Press.
• Eppright, C. (1997). Counterterrorism and conventional military force: The relationship between political effect and utility. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism , 20 (4), 333–344.
• Hofstadter, R. (1970). Reflections on violence in the United States. In R. Hofstadter & M. Wallace (Eds.), American violence: A documentary history . New York: Alfred E. Knopf.
• Ivianski, I. (1986). Lechi’s share in the struggle for Israel’s liberation. In E. Tavin & Y. Alexander (Eds.), Terrorists or freedom fighters . Fairfax, VA: Hero Books.
• Jaszi, O. (1930). Anarchism. Encyclopaedia of the social sciences . New York: Macmillan.
• Jensen, R. (1981). The International Anti-Anarchist Conference of 1898 and the origins of Interpol. Journal of Contemporary History , 6 (2), 323–347.
• Jensen, R. B. (2001). The United States, international policing, and the war against anarchist terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence , 13 (1), 15–46.
• Passell, P. (1996, September 5). Economic scene. New York Times .
• Pennock, R. (1967). Revolution . New York: Atherton.
• Rapoport, D. C. (1970). Generations in America. In B. Crick & W. Robinson (Eds.), Protest and discontent . London: Penguin.
• Rapoport, D. C. (1982). The moral issue: Some aspects of individual terror. In D. C. Rapoport & Y. Alexander (Eds.), The morality of terrorism: Religious and secular justifications . Oxford: Pergamon.
• Rapoport, D. C. (1984). Fear and trembling: Terrorism in three religious traditions. American Political Science Review , 78 (3), 658–677.
• Rapoport, D. C. (2008). Before the bombs there were the mobs: American experiences with terror. Terrorism and Political Violence , 20 (2), 167–194.
• Rapoport, D. C. , & Alexander, Y. (1989). The orality of terrorism (2d ed., revised). New York: Columbia University Press.
• Rapoport, D. C. , & Weinberg, L. (2001). Elections and violence. In D. C. Rapoport & L. Weinberg (Eds.), The democratic experience and violence . Portland, OR: Frank Cass.
• Richter, M. (1967). Tocqueville’s contribution to the theory of revolution. In C. J. Friedrich & R. Pennock (Eds.), Revolution . New York: Atherton Press.
• Schlesinger, R., Jr. (1986). The cycles of American history . New York: Houghton Mifflin.
• Steward, P. , & McGowan, B. (2013). The Fenians: Irish rebellion in the North Atlantic World, 1858–1876 . Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
• Stewart, S. (2012). The myth of the end of terrorism. Stratford Security Weekly , February 23.
• Tololyan, K. (1992). Terrorism in modern Armenian culture. Terrorism and Political Violence , 4 (2).
• Strauss, W. , & Howe, N. (1991). Generations: The history of America’s future, 1584 to 2069 . New York: Morrow.
• Strauss, W. , & Howe, N. (1997). The fourth turning . New York: Three Rivers Press.

1. In the French Revolution, the government created the Reign of Terror, in which the rules governing criminal acts were ignored; individuals were punished not for their acts but because their character was deemed inappropriate for the new world being created. Our subject in this essay is rebel terror. State terror is discussed briefly in the essay on the First or Anarchist Wave.

2. The absence of assassination is odd. Three years before the 2nd edition was published, President Kennedy became the fourth American president assassinated. Six other presidents were attacked before Kennedy’s tragedy. No major state had as many heads of states and/or prime ministers killed in that 100 year period. Many more efforts were made after the 2nd edition was published; eight presidents were targeted, and Ronald Reagan was wounded.

3. For an interesting discussion of the relevance of Clausewitz for terrorist studies, see Eppright ( 1997 ).

4. The importance of generation has an unusual and often forgotten history. Plato discussed the transformation of governments from one political form to another as a generational process. But his successors thought social status, class, and ethnicity were much more useful to explain change. The concept of generation as essential for understanding political change was revived in the 19th century when democracy became a significant feature of political life. Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic study of American politics stated major changes occurred only when a new generation emerg1ed. “Among democratic nations each generation is a new people” that provokes a “struggle between public and private concerns.” Two other prominent figures in Tocqueville’s generation made similar points. Auguste Comte emphasized that generations had an important role in determining “the velocity of human evolution,” and John Stuart Mill refined Comte’s concept, arguing that in each successive age the “principal phenomena” of society are different only when a “new set” of individuals reaches maturity and takes possession of society. Important early 20th-century scholars also became committed to the notion. Karl Mannheim published his “The Problem of Generations” in 1927 and his contemporary Ortega y Gasset contended that generation is “the pivot responsible for the movements of historical evolution”.

5. In popular U.S. discourse, references to generations appeared before the 1960s and were linked to political events. “Baby Boomers” were born after World War II and became wealthy and “optimistic and produced a striking increase in birth rates. The “Lost Generation” fought in World War I and the “Greatest Generation” fought in World War II!

6. Schlesinger developed the concept of generation in Chapter 2. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that generation usually means 30 years, but sometimes it can mean 40 years.

7. Generation as a tool for analyzing American political history was also employed in two books by Strauss and Howe ( 1991 and 1997 ). They use the term cycle , too.

8. Iran did not start the war, but Iraq was fearful that it would make great inroads in Iraq’s Shia population and decided to attack when Iran had hardly completed its own revolution.

9. Bakunin and Kropotkin were Russian anarchists, Buonarroti was an Italian utopian socialist, and Proudhon a French anarchist.

10. In 1888, Alfred’s Nobel’s brother Ludvig died while visiting France and a French newspaper erroneously thought Alfred had died and published Alfred’s obituary! “The merchant of death is dead . . . who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before.” Furious with this description, Alfred became very concerned with how he would be remembered. He had no wife or children, and gave his fortune to establish the annual Nobel Prizes. See Lallanilla, M. , The Dark Side of the Nobel Prizes (2013). Four persons described as terrorists received the Nobel Peace Prize when they made significant efforts to create peaceful solutions: Menachem Begin (1978), Anwar Sadat (1978), Nelson Mandela (1993), and Yasser Arafat (1994). Ironically, four American presidents also got the prize: Theodore Roosevelt (1905), Woodrow Wilson (1919), Jimmy Carter (2002), and Barak Obama (2009).

11. In this article, Ivianski discussed only the First Wave, but in a later piece, he discussed the Second Wave, in which he participated.

Related Articles

• Waves of Political Terrorism
• Military Defection and the Arab Spring
• Women and Terrorism
• Civil War and Terrorism: A Call for Further Theory Building
• Terrorism as a Global Wave Phenomenon: Anarchist Wave
• Terrorism as a Global Wave Phenomenon: Anticolonial Wave
• Terrorism as a Global Wave Phenomenon: New Left Wave
• Terrorism as a Global Wave Phenomenon: Religious Wave
• Suicide Terrorism Theories

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TERROISM, EVIL, AND EVERYDAY DEPRAVITY

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This essay expresses ambivalence about the use of the term “evil” in analyses of terrorism in light of the association of the two in speeches intended to justify the United States’ “war on terrorism.” At the same time, the essay suggests that terrorism can be regarded as “evil” but only when considered among a multiplicity of “evils” comparable to it, for example: rape, war crimes, and repression.

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Essay on Global Terrorism for Students and Children

500+ words essay on global terrorism.

Global Terrorism

The world has changed significantly since the September 11 attacks. Security has become an all-encompassing concern. People nowadays plan their vacations according to the factor such as whether the destination is safe or not, which route possess the least danger. Thus, after terrorist strikes took place people no longer feel safe in their own countries.

As we know about the attack on Twin Tower on September 11 in the USA in which militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaida hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States.

Among four planes hijacked, two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon Washington D.C., while the fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. These attacks eventually led to attack in Afghanistan by the USA to demolish Mullah Omar’s regime which is called War On Terror.

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War on Terror

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, an international military initiative was launched by the United States. This initiative was called the War on Terror. According to President Bush, this war was targeted at the radical network of terrorists as well as to the governments who supported them.

US and allied troops were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, both believed to be home to terrorist cells and leaders. Lastly, President Barak Obama’s administration formally called an end to the War and announced the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden had allegedly been killed by US Navy Seals and Al-Qaeda wasn’t considered the threat it once used to be.

However, 2014 saw the emergence of ISIS or ISIL. The jihadist organization was dubbed a terrorist group by the UN. This led to the formation of a new operation called Operation Inherent Resolve that would target terror in South Asia and the Middle East.

Threat to Humanity

The word terrorism indicates that extremists who use terror tactics use to develop fear in the hearts of people everywhere. They succeed in it because they target civilians in places where they would ideally be safe such as schools, malls, shopping thoroughfares, pubs, nightclubs, churches, and mosques.

Also, the shock value of these tactics is much higher. Terrorism is a strategy that various organizations use to achieve their aims by targeting innocent people. Terrorist attacks affect public morale and generate an atmosphere of fear. These attacks create divides between people from different regions, ethnicities, and religions. Instead of coming together to fight this threat, people are suspicious of each other and close themselves up.

Terrorism is very much a reality of modern times. The mere threat of a terrorist attack is enough to generate panic and fear among the general populace. We cannot deny the fact that global terrorism has affected policy decisions to a great extent. The internet has given terrorist organizations a global platform to spread their agenda and recruit more people. However, it may be time for a more militaristic solution to the problem of global terrorism.

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Home / Essay Samples / Social Issues / Terrorism

Terrorism Essay Examples

Terrorism is a topic that encompasses a wide range of issues, including its causes, effects, and strategies to combat it. Essays on this subject can be informative, persuasive, argumentative or a combination of these types.

These essays demand thorough research and critical thinking, as they explore complex and often controversial issues. The goal is not only to present facts but also to make a compelling argument, drawing on evidence and logical reasoning

The structure of an essay on terrorism generally follows the traditional essay format, which includes an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. However, the specific content within these sections may vary depending on the type of essay (e.g., informative, argumentative, persuasive, etc.).

The Importance of Essays About Terrorism

Essays about terrorism play a crucial role in understanding one of the most pressing global challenges of our time. The purpose of such essays is to analyze the motivations, methods, impacts, and countermeasures related to acts of terrorism. By examining the complexities of terrorism, these essays contribute to informed discussions, policy decisions, and efforts to prevent and counteract terrorism.

One of the primary goals of essays about terrorism is to understand the motivations that drive individuals and groups to engage in acts of terrorism. These essays explore factors such as political, religious, ideological, and social grievances that may contribute to radicalization.

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Throughout history, there have been episodes with such an impactful magnitude that they have been able to change the course of history forever. For example, the assasination of Archduke Ferdinand II in 1914 was the incident which led to the outbreak of the First World...

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