Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

INTRODUCTION • lvThe other unexamined assumption within this typology lies in thedistinction between “revolutionary” and “subrevolutionary” politicalviolence, which appears to reflect a tendency, largely unquestioned incontemporary Western political thought, to link the idea of revolutionconnotatively with that of political development or progress, and specificallywith leftist or socialistic political movements, while regardingrightist or fascist political movements as atavisms that cannot be classifiedas truly “revolutionary.”In fact, right-wing authoritarian states and left-wing totalitarianstates resemble each other structurally far more closely than eithertype resembles Western liberal democracy, while they and their statefunctionaries, or else state-sponsored agents and proxies, also behavesimilarly. The implied claim, that true revolutionary movementsachieve systematic transformation while subrevolutionary ones do not,actually begs the question whether the supposedly “true” revolutionarymovements ever do live up to their aspirations of holistic change andtransformation. Historically it seems more evident that upon seizingpower the new revolutionary order usually incorporates large structuralelements of the repressive system it replaces. For example, the Bolshevikrevolutionaries replaced the Tsarist Okhrana with their own Cheka,which eventually became the Soviet Union’s KGB, thus perpetuating ina more efficient form an instrument of statist absolutism.Moreover, even “subrevolutionary” nationalistic or secessionist politicalmovements often claim to seek the same types of social and economictransformations sought by avowedly socialist and internationalistmovements. Despite these limitations, Schultz’s typology, and otherslike it, have provided a valuable comparative framework in which toanalyze terrorism in its many forms.THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ONCHANGING TYPES OF TERRORISMWhile the common elements of violence, political motivations, andcommunication (or mass manipulation) described above provide linesof continuity running through terrorism’s long and complex history, astrong case can be made that technological innovation has created a newform of terrorism, nonterritorial terrorism, which is not confined to aclearly delineated geographical area. 9