Terror (politics)

Policy of political repression and violence

For other uses, see Terror (disambiguation).

See also: Political terror scale

Victims of Red Terror in Crimea, 1918

Terror (from French terreur, from Latin terror "great fear", terrere "to frighten"[1][2]) is a policy of political repression and violence intended to subdue political opposition. The term first appears in the Reign of Terror, a revolutionary violence during the French Revolution,[2][3] which also gave rise to the term terrorism.[4]

Before the late twentieth century, the term "terrorism" in the English language was often used interchangeably with "terror". The term "terrorism" frequently refers to acts by groups with a limited political base or parties on the weaker side in asymmetric warfare, while "terror" refers to acts by governments.

## Terror and terrorism

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See also: Definitions of terrorism

Charles Tilly defines "terror" as a political strategy defined as "asymmetrical deployment of threats and violence against enemies using means that fall outside the forms of political struggle routinely operating within some current regime", and therefore ranges from "(1) intermittent actions by members of groups that are engaged in wider political struggles to (2) one segment in the modus operandi of durably organized specialists in coercion, including government-employed and government-backed specialists in coercion to (3) the dominant rationale for distinct, committed groups and networks of activists".[5] According to Tilly, the term "terror" spans a wide range of human cruelties, from Stalin's use of executions to clandestine attacks by groups like the Basque separatists and the Irish Republican Army and even ethnic cleansing and genocide.[5]

## State terrorism

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Main article: State terrorism

State terrorism is a particular concept for a type of political terror that is characterized as terror perpetrated by governments against their own citizens or other states.

## Revolutionary and counter-revolutionary terror

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Main article: Revolutionary terror

Revolutionary terror, also known as "Red Terror", was often used by revolutionary governments to suppress counterrevolutionaries. The first example was the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution in 1794.[6] Other notable examples include the Red Terror in Soviet Russia in 1918–1922, as well as simultaneous campaigns in the Hungarian Soviet Republic and in Finland. In China, Red Terror in 1966 and 1967 started the Cultural revolution.

Counter-revolutionary terror is usually referred to as "White Terror". Notable examples are the terror campaigns in France (1794–1795), in Russia (1917–20), in Hungary (1919–1921) and in Spain. Modern examples of counter-revolutionary terror include Operation Condor in South America.

## Legal prosecution

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The ICTY Tribunal convicted several people for terror in relation to Siege of Sarajevo

The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Stanislav Galić, the Bosnian Serb commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), Radovan Karadžić, the President of Republika Srpska, and Ratko Mladić, Chief of Staff of VRS, guilty of terror as a crime against humanity, among other crimes, for their role in the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, and sentenced them each to life imprisonment.[7][8][9]

In the Galić judgement, the ICTY found that the term "terror" refers to an attack or targeting of civilians or civilian property not justified by military necessity, its only objective being spreading extreme fear among civilian population. It was declared a violation of the Laws or Customs of War (Article 51 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949). The legal defense of Galić argued that the defendant cannot be convicted of terror due to the rule Nulla poena sine lege, but the Tribunal found that the first conviction for terror against a civilian population was already delivered previously in July 1947 by a court-martial sitting in Makassar in the Netherlands East-Indies, during the Indonesian National Revolution, and was therefore applicable.[10]

## See also

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* Balance of terror
* Demoralization (warfare)
* Shock and awe

## References

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1. ^ Harper, Douglas. "terror". Online Etymology Dictionary.
2. ^ a b William Safire (23 September 2001). "The Way We Live Now: 9-23-01: On Language; Infamy". New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 14 January 2019. "Finally, the word terrorist. It is rooted in the Latin terrere, "to frighten," and the -ist was coined in France to castigate the perpetrators of the Reign of Terror."
3. ^ Geoffrey Nunberg (28 October 2001). "Head Games / It All Started with Robespierre / "Terrorism": The history of a very frightening word". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 11 January 2010.
4. ^ Terrorism, Encyclopedia Britannica
5. ^ a b Charles Tilly (March 2004). "Terror, Terrorism, Terrorists" (PDF). Sociological Theory. 22 (1): 5–13\. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.183.7706. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9558.2004.00200.x. S2CID 143553555.
6. ^ Barrington Moore (1993). "Social Consequences of Revolutionary Terror". Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Beacon Press. p. 101\. ISBN 0-8070-5073-3 - via Google Books.
\- Chandni Navalkha (28 April 2008). "French revolutionary terror was a gross exaggeration, say Lafayette experts". Cornell Chronicle. Cornell University. Archived from the original on 11 May 2008. Retrieved 8 March 2023.
7. ^ "UN war crimes tribunal sentences Bosnian Serb general to life in jail". UN News. 30 November 2006. Archived from the original on 4 May 2018. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
8. ^ "UN welcomes 'historic' guilty verdict against Radovan Karadžić". UN News. 24 March 2016. Archived from the original on 15 January 2019. Retrieved 15 April 2018.
9. ^ "UN hails conviction of Mladic, the 'epitome of evil,' a momentous victory for justice". UN News. 22 November 2017. Archived from the original on 31 July 2021. Retrieved 23 November 2017.
10. ^ "ICTY, The Prosecutor v. Galić - How does law protect in war?". ICRC.