There is a word that is used to spread terror: it is, of course, the word terrorism.
His story is long and short, very complex. You could talk about a lot of terrorism avant la lettre – before the word was invented – but that invention was French. In 1793 the Révolution and the Patrie appeared to be in danger from attacks from without and from within; The war against the Prussians did not let up; internal enemies were planning; Their most popular leader, Jean-Paul Marat, was murdered in his bathtub by a young lady. Then the Assembly and Robespierre’s “Committee of Public Safety” decided that it was necessary to “use terror to save the people.” There were months of executions and guillotines that were called “la terreur” and the fugitive monarchists began to speak of “terrorism” to condemn what the French state was doing at the time.
Over time, the word branched into two main streams: state terrorism and terrorism against the state. The first was always more powerful and deadly: States have many more resources. The latter was mentioned most often and feared the most: States have much more resources. And that’s how the word is used now: as a means of disqualification, as a means of creating terror. To say that something or someone is a terrorist requires no further argument; It is condemnation in itself. So it is used as a throwing weapon – just as “populism” is used with the same ease – and weapons do not accept nuance or debate.
The terrorist is above all the more or less armed enemy of the one who controls the discourse. The French partisans who resisted the German occupation and its terrible crimes were terrorists for these Nazis. The Spanish maquis, who resisted the murders of the Franco regime, were also there. The founders of the State of Israel themselves, who were organized into militias and planted bombs, were terrorists – and they managed to create a state and accuse others of being one. Sometimes it would be said that a terrorist is generally a fighter who has lost his war; Whoever wins it is a liberator, a hero, a father of a country. It is often very difficult to distinguish between a “terrorist” and a “freedom fighter”; The definition depends much more on who spends it than on who receives it.
That’s why I think a more precise description makes more sense: Terrorism is the attempt to indiscriminately sow terror in a population. Whether it is a state that kidnaps, tortures, murders; already a state bombing the civilian population; and a group that carries out attacks without a clear target, indiscriminately with bombs or knives. I mean: that a state that bombs a barracks or a group that kills an “enemy” general is not a terrorist; It’s something different – not necessarily good, but something different. Terrorism consists in the attempt to sow the most confusing terror, to convince the inhabitants of a place that anyone could suffer this violence – and that it is then in their best interest to give in to the impositions of those who create it.
But even if they don’t, even if they have precise targets and enemies, anyone who tries to change something with any weapon is called terrorist. And blowing up and killing 193 passengers in Atocha or blowing up and killing 21 customers in a Corte Inglés is not the same as blowing up and killing an admiral who was supposed to replace Franco, with Excuse me. The idea is very different, as are the consequences, of course.
But it is easy to ignore these considerations, to take the moral high ground and condemn all forms of violence: they are all reprehensible. Which would keep the bank so full and Europe, for example, would be clean of Jews, homosexuals, invalids, blacks and every other inferior race for a few decades, under the benevolent and careful control of the leader in charge.
Yes, it’s easier to say that they are all terrorists. And being a terrorist means staying outside norms and laws and becoming legalized and tolerated cannon fodder. Among other things, terrorists have the rare privilege of being “killed.” In the media, police officers or soldiers don’t kill, shoot, murder, eliminate, or shoot terrorists: they shoot them. In French, slaughterhouse means slaughterhouse. Our media, which is so attached to the famous political correctness, does not like this word, which turns them into animals. But why do we care: They are terrorists. There is nothing more convenient than being flagged and disqualified. This ends every discussion, every nuance, every attempt to understand what we are experiencing – and what we will experience.
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