A Defence of the Concept of ‘State Terrorism’ (original) (raw)
In a context in which academics and policy-makers argue that the notion of 'state terrorism' is unnecessary and unhelpful, the aim of this paper is to provide a defence of the concept and an argument for widening and deepening its study. There are five main arguments typically employed against the concept of state terrorism: (1) states have a legitimate right to use violence; (2) state repression differs from terrorism because the victims are not chosen randomly; (3) state violence is not publicity-seeking; (4) what is described as state 'terrorism' is already adequately described and proscribed as 'repression', 'human rights abuses', 'war crimes', etc: and (5) even if states do engage in acts of 'terrorism', it has different aims, methods and outcomes to non-state terrorism. In the paper, I demonstrate in a step-by-step process how each of these arguments are flawed and based on a misreading of the nature of terrorist violence. I conclude that for both analytical and normative reasons, 'state terrorism' is a useful and important concept. The final section of the paper makes the case for widening and deepening the study of state terrorism and outlines a preliminary future research based on the current state of knowledge.
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