Terrorist action and thought

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 430.

Political terrorism

This is a form of terrorism (a tactic of violence that targets civilians) used to influence socio-political events so that gains occur that might not have otherwise happened by peaceful means. There are obviously different types of psychic terror, from religious and magical terror, to fear of the natural world. Criminal terrorists — those who use blackmail, intimidation, and the promotion of fear — are differentiated from political terrorists because the former seek to enrich themselves, whereas for the latter, it is a sine qua non that terrorist action is motivated and justified by the furtherance of an objective cause.

Terrorist action is indiscriminate, arbitrary and unpredictable; the rules of war are disregarded; and non-combatants, men, women, and children, are all seen as potential victims. An action is considered to be terrorist when its psychological influences are out of proportion with its physical consequences. Terrorism is not a single random act, nor it is number of interspersed violent acts; it is a sustained, organized policy of terror that one group of some sort wages on another, usually more powerful, group. Terrorists either reject current moral values as the ideology of the status quo or they hold an amoral outlook, and they claim with their actions that humanitarian considerations can be sacrificed along with human life for a greater political end. They are the ultimate Nietzscheans: might is right, and terror is the weapon of the expedient. In the early stage of an insurgency, a terrorist group may use symbolic violence (such as assassinations) to advertise their cause and alert a population to their threat, but, by necessity, will become more clandestine.