What Can We Consider to be Legitimate Violence?
Terrorism seems relatively easy to define or at least understand. After all, it seems we all know who terrorist groups are and what they do. A suicide bomber denotes a bomb in a crowded market, a journalist is beheaded on video, a pickuptruck jammed packed with men holding an assortment of guns drives down a dusty road in a wartorn village. We’ve all watched a million different angles of 911, seen the headlines about stabbings, shootings, and bombings killing civilians, or fought fake terrorists in a Call of Duty campaign. One of the perceived defining factors of terrorism is that it is an illegitimate form of violence, meaning that it operates without the oversight of a greater authority to justify or legitimize it. However, our conception of what terrorism might be is too narrow to fit the broader scope of what constitutes illegitimate violence. The violence perpetrated by groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda, while seemingly easy to isolate and define, becomes much more nuanced when contrasted to violence perpetrated by other illegitimate non-state-sanctioned groups, specifically revolutionary ones. What is the distinction between terrorism and revolutionary violence and more broadly, how do we legitimize violence?
The first issue when separating the two types of violence is that arguably, most terrorist groups are fundamentally revolutionary groups. The two most well known terrorist groups, ISIS and Al Qaeda, have been built upon ideologies of widespread social and political revolution, stemming from fundamentalist islamic teachings. Short for "The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”, ISIS’s main objective is to usher in a new world caliphate, based on their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Al Qaeda’s main objective is also to bring about a global islamic state, however through a slower and more strategic implementation. Both of these overarching goals are inherently revolutionary, as they are attempting to drastically alter the current political, social, and religious state of much of the world. Now let's contrast these goals to those of prominent revolutionary groups, like the Bolsheviks in Russia and the IRA in Ireland. Both of these groups used violence as a means to further their political agendas, the Bolsheviks to promote Communism, and the IRA as a means to fight for independence against the British. According to the FBI’s definition of terrorism as, “violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored)” (FBI), then all of the aforementioned groups would be classified as terrorist organizations. Arguably, any form of violence being perpetrated without the backing of a legitimate state on civilians can be considered terrorism, regardless of motive. However, there are different types of terrorism and one of the critical differences between these groups is scope. Whereas ISIS and Al Qaeda are focused on global jihad, groups like the IRA, are much smaller in scope, fighting for revolutionary change in just a singular nation. This is reflected in the operational aspects of these groups, where more global terrorists like Al Qaeda carry out attacks in countries that might not have directly opposed their goals, but whose ideologies stand in contradiction to theirs. For example, the since the IRA is focused solely on revolution in Ireland, than they would have no reason to attack a third party like the U.S., whereas Al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, while motivated somewhat by U.S foreign policy in the middle east, would have arguably been carried out simply because of the U.S’s unmissable presence in the world.
Another difference between these types of attacks is in their actual operations. Many, if not most, of the attacks carried out by ISIS and Al Qaeda do very little to actually further any practical goals. A group like the IRA on the other hand, would carry out violence as a practical means to a perceived greater end. For example, on August 27, 1979, the IRA planted a bomb on the former governor of India, Lord Mountbatten’s fishing boat while it was moored in Mullaghmore, Ireland. The explosion killed Mountbatten, two members of his family, and a local boy who was working on the boat. While undeniably an act of terrorism as three civilians were killed, the killing was also a strategic means to undermine British authority as well as to draw international attention to the plight of the IRA. Compare this to attacks carried out by ISIS or Al Qaeda which are often carried out with the sole intention of inflicting terror as well as promoting their ideology. This likely stems from the difficulty of the goals they wish to achieve. Opposed to the IRA’s relatively simple and actionable goal of a united Ireland, the quest for global jihad and Islamic fundamental reform is much more difficult, if even possible, to effectively act upon. As a result, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists have developed to perpetrate attacks just because they can, as it is too difficult to achieve their goals.
The fundamental question of legitimacy, is however, more complicated than simply a group's operation capacity and scope of violence. Without an objective authority to fall back to for a definition of legitimate violence, it seems that any type of violence could be characterized as legitimate. In my opinion, the best indicator of legitimacy is simply numbers, or rather, the amount of people behind a certain cause. Illegitimate violence is violence that cannot be reinforced by a greater group, such as domestic terrorism, or isolated terror attacks by individuals acting alone. This is because unfortunately, with no moral or political arbiter to rely on, strength is really the only objective factor to consider. Therefore, while terrorism or revolutionary violence may fall short of our moral standards, the backing it receives legitimizes it. It certainly isn't right, and is something we should undoubtedly strive to erratic, but it is still undoubtedly legitimate violence.
Work Cited:
Rod Aya, Revolution, Theories of, Editor(s): James D. Wright, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), Elsevier, 2015, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780080970868960379. Acsessed 28 Nov
Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Terrorism.” FBI, U.S. Department of Justice, https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
Author’s Name. “Why Terrorists and Revolutionaries Are More Similar Than You’d Think.” Medium, International Affairs Blog, Date of Publication, https://medium.com/international-affairs-blog/why-terrorists-and-revolutionaries-are-more-similar-than-youd-think-267bb02e34af. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
