Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

lviii • INTRODUCTIONThe revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no interests of his own, noaffairs, no attachments, no belongings, not even a name. Everything inhim is absorbed by a single thought, a single passion—the revolution. . . .The revolutionary enters into the world of the state, of class, of so-calledculture, and lives in it only because he has faith in its speedy and totaldestruction. He is not a revolutionary if he feels pity for anything in thisworld. If he is able to, he must face the annihilation of a situation—everythingand everyone must be equally odious to him. All the worse forhim if he has family and loved ones in this world; he is no revolutionaryif he can stay his hand. 12Modern terrorist tactics also developed during this period. The NarodnayaVolya (People’s Will) organization employed dynamite andbombings in its assassination campaigns against the officials of theTsarist regime. During this period, the followers of anarchism furtherdeveloped terrorism as a weapon of propaganda and communication.The leading advocate of anarchism, Mikhail Bakunin, recognized thatviolence sent a potent message to both allies and enemies. This message,through the medium of violence called “propaganda by the deed,”is still practiced today before the lens of the video camera.The impact of technology on communications and control of informationheightened the capacity of those who used terrorism as a form ofpropaganda not only to convey a message but, more ominously, to exert asocial and political control over subject populations that went far beyondthe capability of the most repressive dictators of the past. The penetrationand consequent control of all levels of political, social, and economic lifeby a repressive regime led to the development of the modern totalitarianstate. The reign of terror pioneered by the French revolution was expandedwith murderous efficiency by Stalin through the massive purgesand show trials of the 1920s and 1930s and reached its zenith in the genocideattempted under the Third Reich with its concentration camps andcrematoria. This murderous combination of technology and attendant organizationalcapabilities led to the maturation of “terrorism from above.”Modern state terrorism had come of age, aptly defined thus: “State terrorismcan be seen as a method of rule whereby some groups of people arevictimized with great brutality, and more or less arbitrarily by the state,or state-supported actors, so that others who have reason to identify withthose murdered, will despair, obey, or comply. Its main instruments aresummary arrest and incarceration without trial, torture, political murder,disappearances, and concentration camps.” 13