Revised Terrorism Essay

Erika Dennery

Professor Shirk

Global Politics of Terrorism

May 3rd, 2018

Revised Terrorism Essay

At the start of this semester my definition of terrorism was that any goal to inflict terror or harm against civilians, regardless of motive, should be recognized as a form of terrorism. This definition challenges the idea that acts of terrorism are typically carried out for a political goal as well as the idea that terrorism can only be committed by state actors. After taking this class, my definition of terrorism remains unchanged. I believe that there are many ways that acts of terrorism can be committed but I think that the definition of terrorism that is so widely accepted, the definition that argues the need for a political motivation and a non-state actor committing the crime, should be broadened to include acts of terrorism committed by state actors as well as acts committed by civilians against civilians. This change is necessary because too many violent actors, especially in the United States, are getting away with the murder of American citizens and they aren’t being considered terrorists due to our government’s socially constructed definition of it; this should change so that people can be punished proportionally for the crimes they commit. Through looking at domestic terrorism as well as the Holocaust, I will demonstrate why I fully support the definition of terrorism that I do. 

The first case which validates my claim for a definition of terrorism that encapsulates any goal to inflict terror or harm against civilians by any actor, is domestic terrorism. For example, animal rights activist Kevin Johnson was charged and convicted with terrorism, but not for reasons that one may typically assume; Mr. Johnson released 2,000 minks from a fur farm, and the government decided that he was thus a terrorist due to laws put in place to retain people from committing such acts. Arguably, Mr. Johnson should not be considered a terrorist for releasing innocent animals from a fur farm, and yet the government labels him as so and still fails to recognize people like the Parkland shooter Nicolas Cruz as a terrorist. Although Cruz killed 17 people and Johnson saved thousands of animals, the government has failed to alter its definition of terrorism and thus people like Johnson are deemed a threat when in actuality the real threat is still out there. Going off of this, Johnson was in fact acting for a political goal of saving the animals and taking a stand against the companies who use their fur, whilst the Parkland shooter simply committed murder because he wanted to due to mental illness or whatever the reason may be. It is for this reason that acts of terrorism should not require a political motive, seeing as one could argue Johnson had a political motive but good intentions, whereas Cruz had a non political motive and bad intentions that elicited much more fear and terror than Johnson the “terrorist” did; for some reason Cruz is simply labeled a murderer. People aren’t getting punished proportionally for the crimes they are committing because the government is unwilling to consider them terrorists, and this gets at the issue of terrorism being a socially constructed entity as argued by Lisa Stampnitzky; because of this the definition should be stretched to include non political acts that inflict terror as well as the political ones that do, if the definition of terrorism is a social construct then the definition can be altered (Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror). It is up to the people to either agree or disagree with the definition of terrorism the government provides us with, and quite frankly I’m more terrified of Mr. Cruz the murderer than I am of Mr. Johnson the animal rights activist.

The next case that I examined was the Holocaust, to eliminate the idea that only non-state actors can commit acts of terrorism. As many are aware, the Holocaust would not have occurred if it hadn’t been for Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany at the time, and the Nazi soldiers; it is very clear that these were state actors seeing as they controlled all of Germany at the time. Though in this case there was indeed a political goal of creating an Aryan race and bringing Germany out of its economic depression, if there hadn’t been one there would still be no way to argue that Hitler and the Nazis did not inflict major terror and cause mass destruction to a large population of people, thus it is very naive to argue that states cannot commit terrorism. If the Holocaust had been committed by a non-state actor, the acts would have been just as terrible, but would this have made the mass killing more likely to be deemed an act of terrorism than it is now? If so, then this is exactly what is wrong with our current definition of terrorism. Regardless of who committed the acts, the Holocaust was a horrific representation of the worst side of human nature, and it is for this reason that it should not matter if the acts are committed by state or non-state actors, what should truly be judged is how horrendous the act itself is and until that is the case then many acts of atrocious terrorism will continue to be committed by state actors against their own people. These acts will go unpunished and unfiltered, and this could lead to major damage where state actors harm their people with no regard for how horrendous their acts truly are.

By limiting our definition of terrorism to only those acts that are tied to certain groups or committed with certain motivations we are attempting to avoid the fact that there is a serious threat brewing right in our own country, and it has nothing to do with politics. Acts of terror come in many forms, and to recognize this means to put aside our biases and our preconceived notions and to look at terror from an objective standpoint. This is not to say that terrorism can’t be political, often times it is political, but denying the fact that terror is created in ways other than political ones is simply an unwillingness to challenge ideas that may be difficult to think about. In the end, terrorism should be defined as an act by a group that causes extreme fear through the unlawful use of violence and intimidation against civilians, typically with a political goal but not requiring one. Terror comes in many different forms and it is about time that we stop limiting the definition to politics, maybe then we can attempt to put an end to the true threat.