Origins of Terrorism
Terrorism has as many sources as there are terrorists, each with their own comlex of motivations. Terrorism is a tactic, or a strategy, but generally hoped to be a transitional phase leading to the eventual triumph of the cause for which the tactic is embraced.
But the "origins" of terrorism are a different matter. At what point in time did the acts that are presently recognized as "terrorism" come into existence? At what point in time, and at what place, did the various elements that are now considered "terrorism" first come together into a single act?
The word "terror" originally meant "government by intimidation," and was first used in 1795 to describe the French "Reign of Terror," a period of the French Revolution in which revolutionaries seized control of the government and executed noblemen and others believed to be "enemies of the Revolution." There is no single, universally accepted, definition of terrorism. Terrorism is defined in the Code of Federal Regulations as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives” (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85). While this legel definition may be adequate to build a criminal case, it does not constitute a political definition. The status of the actor is important. The phrase "unlawful use of force" is a step in the right direction, but in common usage a "terrorist" is a non-state actor. Terror as a tactic may be employed by states, and this may be done on such a scale as to be illegal under international law [eg, ethinic cleansing, genocide, etc]. But it is probably not useful to group Einsatzgruppen and the Rote Armee Fraktion into a common taxonomy.
The element of "force and violence" goes to the scale of the action. Mere petty criminality, holiganism, or street fighting probably does not rise to the level of terrorism. This is a non-trivial point, since feeble acts of terrorism may be difficult to differentiate from common criminality, and may be so distinguished only by evidience of criminal intent [eg, cries of "Allah hu Akbar", jihadist social media connnections, etc....] But the more interesting forms of terrorism rise above such feeble acts, but rather are mass casuality events.
Now an effective definition of "terrorism" begins to come into focus. Acts of "terrorism" are mass-casualty events perpetrated by non-state actors. At once it is seen that here the emphasis must be on "event" - a single act producing mass casualties. A serial killer may terrorize a population with multiple killings over a period of time, but a fiend such as the Zodiac Killer is evidently not of the same genre as al-Qaeda. Actors such as the Unabomber are ambiguous, but this ambiguity demonstrates the utility of the distinction.
The earliest forms of political violence are lost in the dim mists of antiquity. Surely the genesis of non-state political violence must date to the time that Cain slew Able. But the contemporary form of terrorism is a decidedly recent phenomenon.
Guns and gun-powder were the keys that unlocked the opportunity for non-state actors to state mass casualty events.
Possibly the first instance of this was the Gunpowder Plot, a fanatical project on the part of a few Roman Catholics to destroy the King, Lords, and Commons on the meeting of Parliament on November the 5th, 1605. Accordingly, thirty-four barrels of powder were deposited in the cellars beneath the Parliament House, and Guy Fawkes was prepared to kindle it at the proper time. The plot was discovered when the gunpowder was discovered, and Fawkes taken into custody. The stylized Guy Fawkes masks, made popular in the 2005 Hollywood film V for Vendetta, have been used in protests around the world against alleged abuse of power. The dramatic, opera-like mask has black eyebrows, a Van Dyke style beard, rosy cheeks and a smile.
But the Gunpowder Plot had elements of state sponsorship, being countenanced by the Bishop of Rome. And the central element of the plot, renting out storage space beneath the House of Lords, is too quaint for modern minds.
Probably the first recorded act that meets the modern definition of terrorism was the Infernal Machine that was used in a failed attempt to assassinate Napoleon. The Bourbon plotters were a non-state actor, and lacked evident state sponsorship. The "Infernal Machine" was a keg of gunpowder suspended beneath a horse-drawn cart - surely the prototype of the car bomb. But this was apparently a one-off event, and not a pattern of activity.
Probably the first modern terrorist group was the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret order formed in Lexington, Kentucky, on July 4, 1854. The Knights were a pro-slavery group active across the USA before and during the war. A number of members of the Order spent time in a basement in Indianapolis experimenting with Greek Fire, while the people thought they were at church. Steamboats belonging to the United States Government that had been destroyed on the Mississippi River,and elsewhere, had been burned by this Greek Fire. John Wilkes Booth was said to have been a member of the Knights. So this non-state group was engaged in bombing and assassiantions, the hallmarks of modern terrorism. Most scholars recognize the Russian reformist group Narodnaya Volya (The People's Will) as the first modern terrorist group. This is because their assassination of Russian Czar Alexander II in 1881 marked the first use of the combination of tactics, organization, and ideology in the modern era. The members of Narodnaya Volya believed in "the propaganda of the deed" -- that violence aimed at symbolic targets by heroic revolutionaries could instruct the masses and incite them to demand wholesale political, social, and economic change.
By the end of the century, Russian-style terrorism had spread across Europe and all the way to India. While not "modern" terrorism, per se, the Irish struggle for liberation from British control was the first example of international terrorism: terrorism that was organized and funded (and sometimes staged) from outside the political territory that was being contested. The Fenian organization Clan na Gael was based in Chicago and supported attacks on the British mainland, not just on British landlords in Ireland. The modern successor organization to the various Fenian movements was the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which pioneered the tactic of creating and sustaining mayhem at a level that was too high for the British to suppress without a tremendous cost in blood and treasure.
Marie Francois Carnot, president of France, was stabbed mortally at Lyons by Cesare Santo, an anarchist, on Sunday, June 24, 1894. Following the assassination of Carnot, the Johann Most, German-American anarchist editor, preached the doctrine of scientific murder in the following language: "Whosover wants to undertake an assassination should at first learn to use the weapon with which he desires to accomplish his purpose before he brings that weapon definitely into play. Attempts by means of the revolver are utterly played out, because of twenty-five attempts only one is successful, as experience has thoroughly shown. Only expert dead shots may thoroughly rely on their ability to kill. No more child's play! Serious labor! Long live the torch and bomb!"
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