or so said Joseph Conrad. The terrorists…
…In nineteenth-century usage, however, attacks on the official establishment were conventionally terms acts of terror, and their perpetrators were ipso facto terrorists. Underlying the verbal convention lay a common pool of genuine fear: the obsessive nineteenth-century bourgeois dread of anything that threatened to disturb the social order. If nothing else, an “act of terror,” even one committed in another country, might unsettle the bourse- a prospect that towards the close of the century filled the numerous holders of Russian state debentures with an almost religious horror. It was thus because she frightened the investors in Russia’s backwardness- whether their investment was financial, diplomatic, or simply emotional- that some like a Vera Zasulich deserves to be called a terrorist.
Terror and intimidation were, then, the side effect, rather than the primary aim, of numerous later acts of terrorism. There are no such semantic complications, however, in the act of twentieth-century terrorism contrasted with the Zasulich case: for example the classic example of the massacre at Israel’s Lod Airport on May 30, 1972. Three terrorists in the service of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, debarking from an international flight, managed to smuggle submachineguns into the passenger terminal and empty their chargers at random in the crowded lobby, killing twenty-six persons and wounding seventy-six others. Sixteen of the dead were Puerto Rican pilgrims visiting the Holy Land; and in the twenty first century culminating in 9-11.From the organizer’s point of view the Lod massacre was rational, or at least in accord with the logic of terrorism. It was intended to shock the world, thus focusing international attention on the Palestinian problem, and it did. It was aimed to hurt Israel- psychologically by shaking Israeli pride and self-confidence, economically by damaging the Israeli tourist industry- and it probably did. Perhaps it was meant, like a number of terrorist outrages in all ages, to provoke the adversary into some self-damaging over-reaction. If so, it was at least partly successful: the Israeli reprisal attacks on Lebanon, where the Palestinian guerrillas were based, in all likelihood did the Israeli cause more harm than good. Finally, the attack was revenge for the failure of a Palestinian attempt to hijack a Belgian airliner, three weeks earlier, en route to the same Israeli airport- a dramatic affair in which the Israeli army paratroopers had killed to Arab hijackers and captured two others. All this sound paranoid, to say the least, but lucid enough to understand the broad lines, the basic sketch, of the context that predominates post-modern terrorism.
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)… The French Revolution’s Reign of Terror (1793 – 1794) Modern terrorism began with the Reign of Terror by Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobin Party. Robespierre brought to terrorism the concept that terrorism has virtue in that it can be a tool to bring about “legitimate” governmental ends. He used terror systematically to suppress opposition to the government. Robespierre introduced Government-sponsored terrorism: the use of terror to maintain power and suppress rivals. Before his reign was over hundreds of people met their end with the sound of the guillotine.
Anarchists (1890 – 1910) Anarchists were very active during the late 19th and early 20th century. Russian anarchists sought to overthrow the Russian Czar Alexander II by assassination and eventually succeeded in 1881. The Anarchists believed that killing the Czar and other kings and nobles of Europe would bring down governments. To this end the anarchist introduced to the development of terrorism, Individual terrorism. Individual terrorism is the use of selective terror against and individual or group in order to bring down a government. The use of terror was selective because targets were selected based on their position within the governmental system. Terrorist acts were limited to ensure that innocent bystanders were not hurt. This concept of limited collateral damage to innocents, not targeting innocents, did not survive the second half of the 20th century.
Anarchists also introduced the observation that terrorism has a communicative effect. When a bomb explodes, society asks why. The need to kbow why an act was committed provides the perpetrators of the terrorist act a stage to which an audience is ready to listen. Thus the concept of propaganda by deeds was added to the development of modern terrorism. Terrorism was a tool of communication.
Between 1890 and 1908 anarchists were responsible for killing the kings and queens of Russia, Austria Hungry, Italy and Portugal. Anarchists were also active in the U.S. between 1890 and 1910 setting off bombs on Wall Street. The two most famou
ts by anarchists were the assassinations of President McKinley (1901) and Archduke Ferdinand (1914) which resulted in the Great War.
The Soviet Revolution (1917) Lenin, followed by Stalin, expanded the idea of government-sponsored terrorism as a tool to maintain governmental control.Read More:http://cjc.delaware.gov/terrorism/history.shtml