What is terrorism?

I would define terrorism as the use of violent acts by individuals or organizations for political reasons. However, your terrorist might be my freedom fighter depending on what we each believe.

@janbb – Does the target of the violence come into play here? In other words, must the target be civilians?

Good question. I think they probably “should” occur in a time or place of general peace and not in an active war zone, but as in of the case the anarchists who assassinated Presidents, the target could be a political leader or even a military installation. I would say that Ben Ghazi was an act of terrorism as were Lincoln’s and McKinley’s assassinations.

NATO defines it as “The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against individuals or property in an attempt to coerce or intimidate governments or societies to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives.”

And the FBI descirbes it as “Perpetrated by individuals and/or groups inspired by or associated with designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored)”

But I find those as too limiting and not including other instances of mass violence. I would include any attempt at spreading fear in retaliation for perceived injustice. So I would include the Vegas shooter and the Austin bomber.

Can terrorism be perpetrated by the state?

Yes

According to the FBI’s definition, the USA can’t perpetrate terrorism, but every other nation can.

So far we have…

PERPETRATOR(S):
– can be individual, group, or state

MOTIVE:
– attempt to coerce or intimidate governments or societies to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives, or spreading fear in retaliation for perceived injustice

TARGET:
– can be property, civilian, military, or government leader

What about methods? What methods can be included here? Only direct, immediate violence, or can more indirect methods be used?

@Zaku Domestic Terrorism

@SergeantQueen I was responding to @thisismyusername ‘s question: “Can terrorism be perpetrated by the state?”

“Domestic Terrorism” AFAIK is a Patriot Act term about people terrorizing other people of the same citizenship, and I imagine doesn’t intentionally refer to acts by the USA against US citizens, though I’d say that’d be appropriate too…

Seems to be a rather difficult question. I’ve always found the term confusing at best.

After attempting to define the perpetrator, motives, and target, we are still left with the methods. Additionally, there is the issue of how we define those that fund and facilitate these actions. The more we try to define this term, the more questions I have.

Is the term useful? It seems that whenever there is a mass shooting, there are some people that define the act as “terrorism” if there is a Muslim involved, and “tragic” if the perpetrator is white. And there is some debate about terrorism within this narrow frame. But I’m wondering what use it serves at all, if it covers so many acts of violence carried out by governments – including the US and its allies.

How about any endeavor designed to generate mass terror

It is difficult to tell whether an attack is a personal vendetta or is intended to have political consequences. I don’t know of any case where terrorism was ever successful politically, but that does not prevent people from using it for that purpose.

@thisismyusername “Is the term useful? It seems that whenever there is a mass shooting, there are some people that define the act as “terrorism” if there is a Muslim involved, and “tragic” if the perpetrator is white. And there is some debate about terrorism within this narrow frame. But I’m wondering what use it serves at all, if it covers so many acts of violence carried out by governments – including the US and its allies.”
– It has a use and a reason in Orwellian propaganda. This is intentional systematic abuse of language to program the population at large to accept policies favored by the oil industry which wants military/industrial domination of the Middle Eastern oil fields, and wants people instead to see it as a threat against them by evil terrorist Muslims.