6 minute read
TERRORISM ON OUR TERMS by Ella Field
16 TERRORISM ON OUR TERMS
CW: discussion of terrorism, violence
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In 1878 Russian socialist revolutionary Vera Zasulich stood before a court in St Petersburg on trial for shooting Fedor Trepov, the city’s governor. When asked why she had only wounded but not murdered him, she famously responded, ‘I am a terrorist, not a murderer!’. For this, she received applause from the trial’s audience and, with the help of an excellent lawyer, was acquitted of her crime.
WORDS Ella Field (she/her)
This adulation and acquittal is a far cry from the response we’d expect to a declaration of terrorism today. In recent decades the image of terrorism and terrorists carefully crafted by governments, mainstream media and certain terrorist organisations, have served to make those branded as terrorists some of the most despised and feared people in society. In deep contrast to an applause, a terrorist in 2021 would be feared, fled from, and incarcerated - not to mention all the institutionallyinduced presumptions the average onlooker would have about that individual’s character, colour and religion. Even the words ‘self-declared terrorist’ feel like an oxymoron. Today to be a ‘terrorist’ is more of a societal condemnation than a label one would choose to proudly identify with. So what changed? When and how did terrorism fall from the grace of a political act to enact change and come to connote all the dirty, divisive and murderous things it does today?
It would be easy to dismiss the change in perception of terrorism by using Noam Chomsky’s cliché and overused quote that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. This sentiment would ascribe the difference in reception to Vera versus Al Qaeda as simply the bias implicit in the individual defining the political violence. Yet whilst it is undeniable that Zasulich’s famous line would not have received applause with a politically opposed audience, the crucial point is not the reaction, but the fact that she was both a terrorist and freedom fighter without contention.
Whilst the contents of Chomsky’s quote do not get us any closer to understanding how the meaning of terrorism has changed from its beginnings in anarchism and the French Revolution, it does alight on a significant problem in understanding terrorism - its complete lack of definition and the sheer ambiguity created as a result. Due to its complexity, subjectivity and contentiousness, terrorism is notoriously difficult to define. This has led to the kind of vagueness and subjectivity we see in ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ and has resulted in some scholars even arguing that the only globally workable definition of terrorism is simply ‘violence I don’t support’. Scholar and head of UN Terror prevention branch Alex Schmid analysed the myriad definitions of terrorism and found that while over 80% of definitions included violence, only 65% contained a political element and only 51% included a fear of terror. Whilst it is true that any definition of terrorism is going to reflect the bias of the definer, the foggy no man’s land created by no definition leaves space for terrorists and governments alike to repeatedly redefine terrorism according to their own agendas.
Due to this subjectivity, terrorism cannot be considered as an entity in itself, but a lens through which strategically chosen violence is viewed. Our society is one in which use of violence as a means to power is inescapable - from individual actors to mafias to states. The ability to normatively frame this violence for public perception carries a lot of power. States function by monopolising this violence legally, financially and militarily in order to control populations and exert hard or soft power as far as possible. When states function well, this monopoly on violence is condoned and legitimised by a population who accepts the control the state has as generally beneficial. A state’s legitimacy, however, is chronically fragile due to its reliance on being believed in by the people. By nature, a state is desperate to vindicate its monopoly on violence, terror and ideology, and determined to demonise those who threaten it - such as terrorists. A great way of achieving this is to control the meaning of the word terrorism, as global superpowers in the West do.
Since the term terrorism’s conception in the French Revolution we have seen nation states and the monopoly on violence they command become further entrenched. The very concept of a nation state has been exported across the globe, and with it the formation of an interconnected, globalised and highly militarised world Bonaparte could hardly have dreamt of. As the West has stretched its terror and ideological tendrils across the world in order to sustain global capitalism, it has become more fragile, its legitimacy now reliant on the support of not just one populace but the entire world. With this increased fragility, it is no wonder that the word terrorism has lost its political meaning - the states reporting terrorist acts do not wish to legitimise, or even acknowledge, the opposing political goals of those committing violence out of fear of losing their teetering legitimacy. They instead paint a picture of certain terrorists as crazed, inhuman barbarians, using Julius Caesar’s societally endemic maxim of divide and conquer to create a barbaric ‘other’ and a righteous ‘norm’. It is because of this that far fewer murderous white supremacists have been labelled terrorists than people of colour who commit similar acts. Terrorism, as opposed to anything that quantifies terror or political motivation, has become a tool of the state to condemn those who threaten its legitimacy. Since white supremacists who commit acts of terror do not structurally challenge our racist post-colonial society, their acts of violence are rarely deemed terrorism in mainstream discourse. In this sense, what government or popular media deems terrorism can be understood as a manipulation of the emotionally-charged term. If the state controls the meaning of terrorism, they likewise control what, and whom, society fears most.
Terrorism as a definition-less, emotional and divisive term owned by those creating the narrative serves only to create division and uphold existing hierarchies that benefit the elite. This leaves us with two options - abolition or reconception. To abolish the word terrorism from discourse feels like a pretty tall order, albeit one I would support given its uselessness at delineating anything meaningful and its usefulness at inciting fear, hate and anger. However, reconception of the term and what it means to us, is very much within our remit as the people. If we change our own definition of terrorism to include violent political acts from anti-fascist rioters, Nelson Mandela and Vera Zasulich, to mass school shootings, state air strikes and ISIL, terrorism loses its current meaning and power. By acknowledging all political acts of violence as terrorism, we take the narration on terrorism away from elites and into our own hands, allowing us to analyse the morals and motivations for violent acts with rationality instead of prejudice.
