[BRIEF NOTE] The Origins of Terrorism
Nov. 24th, 2005 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldNorman Geras takes issue with Terry Waite's recent argument in The Guardian that impoverishment and exclusion are root causes of terrorism.
This, Geras argues, is a mistake. "Yet again, the standard trope: terrorism as the (generalized) effect of poverty, lack of jobs, political displacement. Yet again, the failure to ask - never mind answer - the question why, in that case, the specific forms of terrorism we are speaking of here have not been more common in, say, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. The problems Waite refers to are real ones. But terrorism is a (criminal) political choice, not some sort of natural eruption. And it's terrorism rather than 'terrorism'. Terry Waite might have been expected not to fudge this."
Geras' failure to note the violent urban terrorism that beset Latin America in the 1960s and the 1970s, and his passing by the central roles played by exiles--individuals, social classes, entire ethnicities--in the turbulence of post-colonial Africa, is surprising. Most surprising is his failure to note the radical revolutionary groups like the People's Will which sprung up in the last half-century of Tsarist Russia in response to the generalized oppression meted out by the Imperial government.
In all these cases, terrorism was seen explicitly by its proponents and by foreign supporters as a way to remove a criminally irresponsible regime. The central acts of all of these terrorist movements--affiliated with the left or with the right, with parochial national or class affiliations or with grand supranational schemes--were of course criminal. The fact of terrorism's criminality doesn't disprove the thesis of terrorism's origins in real social issues. Justification is a separate issue, but the explanatory power of motives does not extend to justifications, not necessarily. Terry Waite can be expected to know this.
On my first visit to Lebanon since my release as a hostage in 1991 I visited a refugee camp. I met some young people who were on a computer-literacy course. They had made good progress. "What about your future?" I asked. "What future?" one replied. "To get a job in Lebanon is virtually impossible as jobs go first to Lebanese citizens. We have no right of return to the place our grandfathers came from, and how can we go abroad when we are refugees? We are trapped."
That young man uttered the sentiments of thousands of displaced people in the Middle East and beyond. As I left the classroom I thought it remarkable that more young people did not join "terrorist" groups.
This, Geras argues, is a mistake. "Yet again, the standard trope: terrorism as the (generalized) effect of poverty, lack of jobs, political displacement. Yet again, the failure to ask - never mind answer - the question why, in that case, the specific forms of terrorism we are speaking of here have not been more common in, say, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. The problems Waite refers to are real ones. But terrorism is a (criminal) political choice, not some sort of natural eruption. And it's terrorism rather than 'terrorism'. Terry Waite might have been expected not to fudge this."
Geras' failure to note the violent urban terrorism that beset Latin America in the 1960s and the 1970s, and his passing by the central roles played by exiles--individuals, social classes, entire ethnicities--in the turbulence of post-colonial Africa, is surprising. Most surprising is his failure to note the radical revolutionary groups like the People's Will which sprung up in the last half-century of Tsarist Russia in response to the generalized oppression meted out by the Imperial government.
In all these cases, terrorism was seen explicitly by its proponents and by foreign supporters as a way to remove a criminally irresponsible regime. The central acts of all of these terrorist movements--affiliated with the left or with the right, with parochial national or class affiliations or with grand supranational schemes--were of course criminal. The fact of terrorism's criminality doesn't disprove the thesis of terrorism's origins in real social issues. Justification is a separate issue, but the explanatory power of motives does not extend to justifications, not necessarily. Terry Waite can be expected to know this.
