In many respects, terrorism is a form of political violence. The range of motives behind terrorist plots and the common goals and views of terrorist groups varies greatly. Both domestic and international terrorists often resort to violence in response to some form of political injustice. This was demonstrated numerous times by domestic terrorist here in the homeland when abortion clinics and doctors were murdered. While the fuel for these violent acts may be considered to have been spawned out of personal beliefs of those individuals or groups, it could also be argued that their actions came as a result of them reacting to what they considered a political injustice. Anti-abortion extremists have a strong hate and moral objection to abortion being legal; however, terrorist work on a system of opportunity and effectiveness. Therefore, rather than plotting against a government target for their disagreement with abortion law, they instead redirect their political violence upon individual noncombatants like abortion doctors. Commonly, terrorism and violence against civilians is a way for the terrorist to bring attention to their cause, belief or injustice. Often times, this is done to put pressure on whatever political system is in place to react and or change as a result. Killing innocent people and noncombatants is thought of as a way to scare a population into demanding change so as to avoid future attacks. By doing this, terrorist gain political power and in a way gain support for their cause even by people who do not necessarily agree or have the same views.
Terrorism differs in other respects from political violence in that political violence usually is produced and directed between political forces such as nation verses nation and military verses military. In addition, political violence may also be a result of the emergence or abolishment of a certain type of political system such as the rise of democratic governments as seen in the Arab spring or the worlds fight to abolish dictatorships. Moreover, Charles Tilly (2002) argued that “The correlations of misery and conflict do not result from a general propensity of poor people to lash out in violence. They arise from the tyrannies large and small that flourish in undemocratic regimes in which the state has limited capacity to act for the common benefit” (Tilly, 2002). This statement is correct in that political violence can at times be portrayed as terrorism when the violence involves common people fighting against a government power; however, in these circumstances, when the fight is political in nature and pursued in a revolutionary manner that seeks to over through an unfair, oppressive or tyrannical political system― it is not terrorism. Although, according to Charles Tilly (2002) “The saying goes, one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter” (Tilly, 2002). All in all, true political violence is unfortunately most commonly seen when a regime uses force to gain power or hold power whether that force is against another state, race, regime or even its own people.
References
Tilly, C. (2002). Violence, Terror, and Politics as Usual. Boston Review. Retrieved from http://new.bostonreview.net/BR27.3/tilly.html.
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