Terrorism 1

042309 terror

For all most a decade the political buzzword is terrorism and claims that terrorist are everywhere poised to destroy civilization. Radical right politicians justified bad legislation as defense against terrorism, while prosecutors capitalized on the new anti-terrorism laws to avoid due process by charging local crime as terrorist activity.

It is apparent that there is still a lack of understand of terrorism. The fact that an individual is terrified does not make a conspiracy of international terrorism. Terrorism falls into three broad categories there is “State terrorism”, political minority tactical terrorism, and organized crime terrorism.

Criminal terrorism is easy to understand criminal elements terrorize local populations into acceptance of criminals as de-facto rulers of a neighborhood or city. Terrified citizens are afraid to walk the streets or speak out against criminal elements. Examples abound of gang control of “turf”; drug dealers using terror to control markets, in some cases organized crime uses its power to terrorize in order to gain control of elected offices and become the government. Criminals terrorizes for power over the population and profit by that power.

State terrorism is more difficult to identify or understand for States have immense power over its domestic population and in the international community. The goals of State terror are to leverage existing power into total power and control. States target their own population through disinformation that frighten citizens into acceptance of loss of freedoms and insure the governing party’s stability. Political dissent is quickly labeled a threat to stability and dissidents as terrorist intent on overthrow of the existing social order. Governments utilize their legitimacy to establish disinformation bureaus, which reinforce the party line to establish public acceptance of abuse of powers.

Once the domestic population is sufficiently terrorized by its government, that government is free to use terrorism on the international community. Force and threats of force are used on smaller states to gain political control of their decision processes and control populations. States ultimately come to believe it their right to use the tools of terror against other states in order to gain more power. A State may justify invasions, concentration camps and even torture in the name of security and counter terrorism. Domestic opposition is muted in the fury of official disinformation that conceals the illegal nature of State terror. That same disinformation is also directed at international and human rights organizations, naming them as supporters of terrorism even as terrorist.

When State terrorism has been legitimized in the minds of the governing it becomes a dynamic. Members of the government begin to follow their own agendas of rational maximization. They push state terror activities to extremes for the maximum benefit to their careers. These activities begin to become crimes against humanity protected only by the power of the State. Once that power is compromised then the State will face the fury and accountability of the international community.