Cjss second Issue: cjss second Issue qxd

1 million people during centuries. Unlike the later terrorists, they did not
persue any political goals, however like the Assasins, the ”Thugees when
caught, looked forward to their execution as a quick route to paradise.”
(Wilson, 2004). 
Another predecessor of modern terrorism is considered to be the tyrani-
cide- or the assasination of the tiran. ”Tyrannicide has traditionally been dis-
tinguished from political assassination in terms of the difference between
public and private life. Tyrannicide was a selfsacrificing act for public benefit
(and so morally esteemed)” (George, 1988). The examples of classical tyran-
nicide include murder of the tyrant of Athens by Harmodios and Aristogeiton
in 514 B.C. According to David George (1988) “The two tyrannicides were
revered not only as the liberators of Athens from Peisistratid tyranny but also
as the founders of Athenian democracy. As a result, they became the object of
a popular, official hero-cult”. Another widely known fact ot tyrannicide was
the murder of Julius the Ceasar in Rome (44 B.C.) by Marcus Brutus and
Cassius, in the honour of whom the Romans had erected a memorial. In his
article ”Distinguishing Classical tirannicide from Modern terrorism” David
George (1988) discusses tyrannicide and terrorism as two interconnected
but separate phenomena. As the author notes, at some moment in history the
classical tyrannicide is finishing and the terrorism begins, however its quite
hard to draw a distinct line between the two concepts as most of the historical
facts have features of both tyrannicide and terrorism. For example such
terrorist attacks as ” such as that of Karl Sand on Kotzebue (1819), the
attempt on the British Cabinet by the Cato Street conspirators (1820), or
Orsini’s attack on Napoleon I11 (1858), were represented and
(mis)interpreted in terms of that classical genre of political murder,
tyrannicide.” (George, 1988) Even Napoleon III during his speech on the
National Assembly, qualified the attack against him as tyrannicide. According
to the author “In part, this was because terrorists and their supporters sought
to justify assassination attempts through appealing to the acknowledged
legitimacy of tyrannicide”. 
The idea of tyrannicide, as an act of secrifice for the purpose of  social
benefits was later well-used by terrorists for justification of their goals. Al-
though today the target of terrorism include civilians together with the polit-
ical figures the arguements stay the same. This is the main subject of the
article by James Wilson ” What Makes a Terrorist?” (2004), where the author
writes: ”Terrorism, however motivated, baffles people, because they cannot
imagine doing these things themselves. This bafflement often leads us to as-
sume that terrorists are either mentally deranged or products of a hostile en-
vironment.”
168
Caucasus Journal of Social Sciences

---

Although today terrorism is associated with the non-governmental or-
ganizations, initially terrorism as a term designated the violence committed
by the state. The word “terrorism” originated from the French terreur (fear)
during the years after the French revolution in 1789. The new government in-
stalled tried to keep its power by the “mechanism of fear”- i.e. having its own
population in constant fear of persecution. Thus in the 18-th century “terror-
ism” was the violence committed exclusively by a state. “Robespierre’s prac-
tice of using revolutionary tribunals as a means of publicizing a prisoner’s
fate for broader effect within the population (apart from questions of legal
guilt or innocence) can be seen as a nascent example of the much more highly
developed, blatant manipulation of media attention by terrorist
groups”(Cronin, 2002).
In the period between the French and the Russian revolutions terrorism
gradually ceased to be the instrument of states and was more widely intro-
duced in the strategies employed by the inter-state groups. In this period ter-
rorism mainly concentrated on assassinations of public authorities. “Yet it
was not until toward the end of the nineteenth century that this novel political
phenomenon was correctly labeled and to some extent recognized for what
it was” (George, 1988). Even then, it was the Russian revolutionaries who
named themselves “terrorists” and described their violent methods as “ter-
rorism”.
The 19
th
century terrorism on the American continent took quite a dif-
ferent shape form the Europe. While the European terrorism targeted the
prominent figures, the American terrorism in the face of Ku Klux Clan directed
its aggression against the whole middle and low class. Ku Klux Clan was es-
tablished by the veterans of the Confederation after the Civil War (1865). The
ideological background on the organization included the ideas of “the white
supremacy”, anti Semitism, racism and anti-Catholicism. In the beginning Ku
Klux Clan directed its aggression against the Afro-Americans, their supporting
whites and the federal government. Soon the list of targets was enriched by
the minorities economically challenging the middle and low-class members
of the Clan. 
After the end of the World War II, when the decolonization process
gained the speed, the newly-emerged nationalist movements entered the
scene. Here we can take as examples the Basque ETA, the Irish IRA, Fattah,
the Islamic Jihad etc. In the second half of the 20
th
century, both superpowers
encouraged dissemination of the ideological terrorism throughout the world
including Columbia, Bolivia, West Germany, Nepal, etc. 
A new phase in terrorism began from 1964 with the emergence of Pales-
tine Liberation Organization. As the Palestinian people have the respect in
169
Caucasus Journal of Social Sciences

---