One Man's Terrorist Is Another Man's Freedom Fighter

The main issue in terrorism does not lie in defining it. There are many works provided by scholars in an attempt to define it. The main issue is that these definitions are not relevant with the varying and competing power/knowledge relations that exist in the international system, therefore to resolve this problem the question that must be answered is “whose knowledge matters?”. Every political actor provides definitions to political concepts that best serve their interests. In the following, the issue raised above will be examined by analysing the genealogy of terrorism, arguing that the reason behind terrorism being a contested concept lies not in the inability to define what terrorism means, but in the variety of political actors and thus the variety of what terrorism stands for, due to the conflict of interests.

Fletcher distinguished the elements that differentiate what a terrorist act is from other forms of violence, yet the title of his article states that terrorism is indefinable (Fletcher, 2006). Chomsky argues that the problem is that there is no definition found that separates us from them, using the United States (U.S.) definition of terrorism, Chomsky argues that the actions U.S. government took can also fall under this definition, thus it has to find a way out of this problem (Chomsky & Achcar, 2016, p. 3). This problem is crystalized in the title of this paper, it represents the ambiguity surrounding the concept of terrorism. It operates on a us vs. them binary which makes it much more difficult since arguments and concepts of binary basis can be abused easily. When a specific kind of characteristic is assigned to somebody they might reject it, especially if such characteristics hold some negative values, because humans always try to assign characters that hold positive values, and this in turn creates a dilemma. The problem here lies in comparing freedom which is an end with terrorism which is a mean, as these two can coexist at the same time; a person might be fighting for his people’s freedom while at the same time will be called a terrorist.

Blain’s study of the genealogy of terrorism helps clarify the dilemma surrounding terrorism. He states that “A genealogy traces the emergence and descent of new concepts like political terrorism to changes in power relations and the emergence of new fields of knowledge.”  (2005, p. 2). Blain analyses the genealogy of terrorism by tracing the changes in the concept of terror throughout history. What is surprising in his analysis is the adaptation of the concept of terrorism to the changing power/knowledge relations. In the period before the French Revolution, the emergence of liberal ideals provoked dissent and criticism in the face of absolute sovereignty which distinguished the violence it perpetrated as necessary for the order and development of society. Thus, revolutionary terrorism was deemed an illegitimate form of political violence because it was democratic and revolutionary (Blain, 2005, p. 9).

However, during the French Revolution, two values were assigned to terrorism; one positive and the other negative, these values originate from different sources of power; in Robespierre’s France, terror was synonymous with justice, while Edmund Burke associated Robespierre’s terror with evil (Blain, 2015, p. 163). However, with the domination of the British after the Napoleonic wars, Burke’s views of the term were the dominant one as well. Therefore, governments had to differentiate between legitimate violence; such as police force, from illegitimate violence; revolution (Blain, 2005, p. 12). This is also strikingly visible during the colonial period, colonialism was justified with a belief in the “White man’s burden” to bring civilization to wherever he goes, and any dissent or revolution against the colonizers is deemed barbaric and an act of terrorism (Blain, 2005, p. 13).

In analysing modern terrorism, a historical analysis of its four “waves” by Rapoport (2012) show resemblance with Blain’s work. Their analysis shows the continuity in the patterns of using the concept of terrorism. Rapoport’s waves are indeed better called waves as they represented a sense of dissent and revolution against the status-quo, with each wave having its own justifications for its causes, a similarity can be identified in the way they employed terrorism as a tool. However, Fettweis provides a binary typology which separates terrorists between two categories; Nationalists “that kill on behalf of their nation or ethnicity,” and Ideological groups “those that are motivated by ideas, broadly defined.” (2009, p. 270). When analysing Fettweis’s paper, with keeping Blain’s and Rapoport’s analysis in mind, the same pattern among the terrorists is still operating; that they’re fighting for a just world. In both categories terrorism is used as a tool, but their end is what they perceive to be the real freedom, so they ascribe themselves to be fighting to that end, these groups justify their use of terrorism, yet they would not define it as such, they would consider this term as being employed by their enemies to undermine their cause “Such groups often deny that they are terrorists at all, preferring instead to be thought of as "freedom fighters" waging a just war of liberation on behalf of their people. Ideological terrorists, on the other hand, are much more likely to embrace the label, if sometimes with gusto and other times with regret.” (Fettweis, 2009, p. 273).

A freedom fighter, does not necessarily engage in political violence, Gandhi is an example. Yet freedom fighting does not exclude the use of violence as a means to reach their end, people like Mandela fall under the category of Fettweis’s nationalist terrorism, had he failed in his struggle to liberate his country there would have been no doubt that he will be still deemed as terrorist. Yet Mandela’s case is a modern example of metaphors like terrorist and freedom fighter shift based on power/knowledge relations. Another contemporary example can be found in examining Iran, Syria and Hezbollah before 2010, they were considered terrorists by the U.S.; they considered themselves as forming an Axis of Resistance against the “big devil”, but recently Iran and U.S. are getting things sorted out between them after years of vilifying each other.

In conclusion, the title of this paper is valid as terrorism and freedom fighting are all metaphors used to serve political ends. Blain’s, Rapoport’s and Fettweis’s analysis show how the concept of terrorism evolved and how it was employed by different actors. Most of the scholars are able to define what are the characteristics of terrorism (Fletcher, 2006), be able to distinguish an act as an act of terrorism or not, yet they won’t settle on a definition of terrorism. They cannot reach a definition that differentiates us from them. As in the example of Iran and U.S. one wonders now; Where is the “big devil”? Where are the terrorists?

References

Blain, M. (2005). On The Genealogy of Terrorism. The 37th World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology. Stockholm: Frontiers in Sociology.

Blain, M. (2015). Social Science Discourse and the Biopolitics of Terrorism. Sociology Compass, 161–179.

Chomsky, N., & Achcar, G. (2016). Perilous Power: the Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Routledge.

Fettweis, C. (2009). Freedom fighters and Zealots: Al Qaeda in Historical Perspective. Political Science Quarterly, 269-296.

Fletcher, G. F. (2006). The Indefineable Concept of Terrorism. Journal of International Criminal Justice, 894-911.

Rapoport, D. C. (2012). The four waves of modern terrorism. In J. Horgan, & K. Braddock, Terrorism Studies, a reader (pp. 41-60). Abingdon: Routledge.